Secession, Slavery, and the Sesquicentennial

Today marks the sesquicentennial of South Carolina's secession declaration, the first in a series of moves that led to the Civil War.

Southern celebrations of the event are (understandably) problematic because of sensitivities about slavery. Though organizers focus on "states' rights" or "the southern way of life," to African-Americans they're the same thing.

Not that organizations like the Sons of the Confederacy make things any easier for themselves. The public relations spokeman didn't do much for their image.

My favorite quotes:

• "Slavery is not the main cause or a main cause of the War Between the States. Slavery should be dealt with, but in the context that it was not a cause."
  
• "Why should it be that just the Confederate states are picked on about slavery when slavery existed throughout the United States?"
  
• "If you look at the Union Army, for instance, in the War Between the States, there were a number of states, all slave states then, just like the South."

It's not just them -- historian and author Thomas DiLorenzo claims that the South seceded for fiscal reasons. However, even a cursory glance at the South Carolina Secession Declaration, shows that protecting slavery was the primary reason for secession, at least for South Carolina. Slavery or some variant is mentioned 18 times, while the tariff isn't mentioned even once (only after Southern opposition had left Congress did a higher tariff get through). And the issue of states' rights / reserved rights was applied with a double standard -- the South didn't have a problem with extra-constitutional actions when they benefited slaveholders.

I recommend looking at it. The Secession Ordnance presents its logic linearly, and begins its argument with an assertion of state sovereignty. It refers to the Declaration of Independence clause about each colony being a "free, sovereign and independent state," and that the people have the right to alter/abolish any government found to be "destructive to the ends for which it was instituted. " Likewise, the 1783 Peace of Paris and Articles of Confederation reaffirmed that each state was sovereign.

It then talks about the the Constitution, which it describes as a "compact between the states." The government it formed had "defined objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant." The 10th Amendment assigned to the states, or to the people, all powers not already designated to the federal goverment.

By declaring that its participation in the United States was as part of a compact, South Carolina held that it was possible to leave, given a breach of another party's contractual duties. As evidence of a breach, it gives the fourteen northern state laws that infringe on Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution:

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping to another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party by whom such service or labor may be due.

In other words, slaves couldn't escape slavery even if they ran away to a free state.

The problem, in South Carolina's view, was that the North breached the contract by not adhering to this clause in the Constitution, and therefore the South was free to leave. Things were tolerable while the South could expect cooperation from compliant, Northern Democrat presidents (the 1857 Dred Scott decision to allow slavery into the territories didn't hurt either), but the election of a Republican president convinced them it was time to go.

Having lost influence in the Senate by the admission of Minnesota and Oregon and then losing the presidency, the South reasonably expected the Supreme Court would follow, and thus all possibility of steering the federal government to a pro-slavery policy. South Carolina took the first step and dissolved the bond of union with the United States.

So I don't understand why groups like the Sons of the Confederacy say that slavery wasn't a cause of the war. Protecting its "internal institutions" (the euphemism for slavery) was clearly a huge concern for South Carolina throughout the antebellum era, and justifiably so.

In 1804, Haiti won independence and killed its former slave masters; the South was always afraid the same would happen to them. (Despite his professed love of liberty, Jefferson feared slave insurrection more -- he refused to recognize the new nation.) Blacks outnumbered whites in the South Carolina in every census until 1920. [Source]

In 1822, Denmark Vesey and 64 others were convicted of conspiracy by Charleston authorities for fomenting insurrection. In response, the state passed the Negro Seamen Act -- black sailors (even free ones from other countries) had to stay in the city's prison while their ships were in port, and their captains had to pay all the costs of detention, otherwise they were sold into slavery. [Source] Though ruled unconstitutional, the federal government failed to enforce its repeal, inadvertently emboldening pro-Nullification sentiment.

As for the issue of states' rights, the argument is specious. Historian Henry Brooks Adams points out numerous federal actions that went beyond the strict permissions of the Constitution: the Louisiana Purchase (where Jefferson disregarded the formal limits to his authority to act in the national interest), the annexation of Texas by joint resolution, Polk's conduct leading up to the Mexican War, the Dred Scott Decision, and the Fugitive Slave Acts. [Source]

Such victories for states' rights as the 1842 case Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, which ruled that state officials could not be forced to enforce the unpopular, federal Fugitive Slave Act, went uncelebrated among South states' rights defenders.

So as we pass the sesquicentennial of South Carolina's secession, I think it's a good idea to take a look at hisorical documents and understand the motivations behind the Civil War. At the very least, you might want to do that if you're going to go on TV and speak about them.