The Secession Crisis was a political crisis in the United States that occurred from 6 November 1860 to 8 June 1861 as Southern slave-holding states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, a new nation built on the principles of white supremacism and slavery. On 12 April 1861, the crisis exploded into the American Civil War after the Confederate States Army opened fire on the US Army base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
Background[]
Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be elected on a purely sectional basis with almost exclusively Northern votes. Not only did Lincoln win without any Southern electoral college votes, but he also ran on an explicitly anti-slavery platform, pledging to prevent further territorial expansion of slavery. Republicans recognized the constitutional protection of slavery in states wehre it already existed, and focused on preventing the expansion of slavery in territories that had not yet attained statehood.
South Carolina had seriously contemplated secession during the Nullification Crisis of 1833, but retreated due to a lack of support from other Southern states. Sectional tensions flared again in relation to slavery in the territories captured in the Mexican-American War, but calmed after the passage of the Compromise of 1850.
The Union is Dissolved[]
Shortly after Abraham Lincoln's election as president, the entire Lower South (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) seceded from the Union through the device of state conventions. On the principle that each state was a sovereign entity in and of itself, they voted to form a new nation called the "Confederate States of America". Furthermore, Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the new nation, declared of its government that "its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."
The Upper South's dilemma[]
The new Confederacy began its preparations for war, but the fate of the states of the Upper South remained ambiguous. Virginia, Arkansas, and Missouri elected conventions with Unionists in the majority, while North Carolina and Tennessee chose not to have conventions at all. The border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Delaware, where slavery existed in a limited form, also hung in the balance. While these states refused to join the Confederacy, they also made it clear that they would oppose any Federal attempt to coerce the states of the Lower South back into the Union.
In this confused situation, the sitting President James Buchanan did next to nothing. With the chief executive acting as a lame duck, President-elect Lincoln sought to support Unionist sentiment in the South, while remaining committed to the free soil principles of the Republican Party's platform.
When Lincoln assumed the powers and office of the presidency on 4 March 1861, he faced the thorny political dilemma of how to respond to the newly formed Confederacy's seizure of Federal property in the Lower South, which Buchanan had not opposed. By this time, only two important military installations - Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina and Fort Pickens in Florida - remained in Federal hands. Lincoln wished to sustain the claims of the Federal government to sovereign authority in the seceded states, but he also did not want to trigger a shooting war that might drive the Upper South into the Confederacy.
As Lincoln confronted the question of how to enforce the Federal government's claims to the two endangered Federal forts, the Upper South continued to wrestle with secession. The state of Virginia, in particular, played a critical role in this debate, because of its large population, substantial economic resources, and its symbolic importance to the history of the republic. Upper South and border state legislators led last-ditch attempts at crafting another intersectional compromise to preserve the Union, as had been done in the past, but moderates faced the dual challenges of a president elected on a platform that would prohibit any extension of slavery and the physical fact of the Lower South's secession and the divisions that it created. Meanwhile, as the politicians schemed and quarreled, the Federal military establishment found itself divided.
Most US Army officers came from West Point Military Academy, which ensured sectional balance, because appointments were allotted on the basis of congressional districts. Most, but not all, Lower South officers immediately resigned their commissions to go off and fight for the Confederacy. In contrast, officers from the Upper South found themselves as torn and conflicted as their states.
General in Chief of the Army Winfield Scott - a grand old Virginian who had fought with distinction as a division commander in the War of 1812 with Britain, and had conquered Mexico City in 1846 - advocated a cautious course of conciliation that found de facto support in Buchanan's policy of inaction.
The problem of Fort Sumter[]
When Lincoln assumed office, Scott advised the president to abandon the Federal garrison stationed at Fort Sumter in order to avoid a direct military confrontation, but Lincoln's first loyalty remained with the Federal government. Scott obeyed Lincoln's orders to resupply the fort with provisions, despite Confederate threats to respond with force. Lincoln hoped to avoid bloodshed by initially using only announced and unarmed vessels carrying nonmilitary supplies, but he would not relinquish the post.
From the Confederate perspective, the very fact that Federal troops were manning a military installation in Charleston Harbor within the cradle of secession mocked the idea of Southern independence. The two sides were on a collision course, and the most important question would be how the Upper South would respond to an outbreak of violence.
The Call to Arms[]
At 4:30 AM on 12 April 1861, Confederate batteries around the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter, a Federal fortification built on a small island at the harbor's mouth. The fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, began surrender negotiations the next afternoon. Anderson had staunchly maintained the Union position at Fort Sumter since South Carolina's secession the previous December, but the approach of a Union naval squadron with fresh supplies for the fort had provoked a definitive confrontation.
Local Confederate commander P.G.T. Beauregard had been given orders to demand the immediate evacuation of the fort. When Anderson refused, hostilities began, and were concluded without any combat fatalities on either side. While the Confederacy believed the attack to be a necessary and reasonable defense of its sovereignty, most Northerners saw it as an immoral assault on American troops.
The Republican Party had swept the North in the presidential election of 1860, but the Democrats remained a potent political force, with much weaker anti-slavery instincts. However, most Democrats remained loyal Unionists, and the Confederate attack on "Old Glory" (the national flag) at Sumter outraged their nationalist sensibilities, which led to an outpouring of public support for a military campaign to crush secession.
Lincoln's response[]
On 15 April, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 90-day volunteers. The Northern response overwhelmed the capacity of both Federal and state governments to organize, train, and equip the soldiers. The outpouring of popular support vindicated Lincoln's cautious approach during the secession winter. His attempts to placate Southern opinion by providing only nonmilitary supplies to Anderson's command had caused even Northern Democrats to view the Confederacy as the unprovoked aggressor at Fort Sumter.
The Confederacy expands[]
In the crucial Upper South states of Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, the calling out of a large Federal army meant war. When forced to take sides, these four states chose the Confederacy. Southern views were summed up by the Staunton Spectator, until now a Unionist Virginia newspaper. A day after the president's call for volunteers it declared that "After all his declarations in favor of peace, President Lincoln has taken a course calculated inevitably to provoke a collision, and to unite the whole South in armed resistance."
While strategically important Virginia seceded on 17 April, along with Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the following month, Maryland remained with the Union. Moreover, even in Virginia, the poorest and mostly nonslaveholding farmers of the state's western counties held out for the Union cause - leading eventually to the founding of the state of West Virginia.
Virginia and Tennessee made the Confederacy a viable nation, but there still remained the prize of Kentucky, with its large population and a northern border on the Ohio River that could serve as a defensive barrier against Union invasion. Slavery had a weaker status in the Bluegrass state than in the Old Dominion, and the state did not immediately secede in response to Lincoln's call for many volunteers. Instead, Kentucky acted in the tradition of Henry Clay, the great sectional compromiser, and hoped to adopt a neutral stance toward both the US and Confederate governments.
The fate of Missouri, the origin of so many of the troubles in "Bleeding Kansas", also hung in the balance, although the state did not have the strategic significance of Kentucky.
Aftermath[]
The first fatalities of the Civil War occurred in Baltimore, Maryland on 19 April, a week after the fall of Fort Sumter.
Although Maryland stayed in the Union, sentiment in Baltimore was strongly pro-Confederate. When the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment passed through on its way to Washington DC, a riot erupted, leaving four soldiers and 12 civilians killed in the ensuing melee. The incident is often called the "Lexington of 1861", after the first skirmish of the American Revolution at Lexington, Massachusetts.