The first theme is secession. The ideas on secession varied in the North and South and, were in fact, usually polar opposites on the respective sides. The secession of the Southern states is central to this chapter of American History.

In the North, people were concerned about the secession movement. When Lincoln gave his inaugural address, he addressed the Northern concerns. “It follows from these views that no state upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union: that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.” Lincoln went on to state, “Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

Lincoln said that the South was the minority and the minority could not make the rules that woul

There are also many references that people make that slavery retarded the economic progress of the South and took away the initiative to better the South. Frederick Olmsted wrote of the white men, “They work little, and that little badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little; and they have little-very little-of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and it is moral.” A unique viewpoint from the South came from Hinton Rowan Helper. Mr. Helper was from North Carolina but opposed slavery and wrote about it in an article entitled, “Slavery Impedes the Progress and Prosperity of the South.” In his article, Mr. Helper wrote rather scathingly, “The causes which have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce, and other similar pursuits, into the most contemptible insignificance; sunk a majority of our people in galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes; entailed upon us a humiliating dependence on the Free States; disgraced us in the recesses of our own souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized and enlightened nations-may all be traced to one common source…Slavery!”

On the Southern side, there was a much different attitude towards slavery. William Harper quotes from an unnamed Southern Periodical, “Slavery has done more to elevate a degraded race in the scale of humanity; to tame the savage; to civilize the barbarous; to soften the ferocious; to enlighten the ignorant, and to spread the blessings of Christianity among the heathen, than all the missionaries that philanthropy and religion have ever sent forth.” Mr. Harper stated a commonly held belief that existed in the South. The people who believed in slavery truly felt that they were doing a service to the blacks as well as the whites by perpetuating slavery. Charles Grier Sellers Jr. refers to this as a campaign suggesting slavery as a positive good.

Mark Summers’ article Corruption and the Death of the Union give insight as to the mindset of Southerners and how they felt about the North and the ascendancy of the Republican party to power. Mr. Summers states that “Southern states complained that their control of local politics had been challenged. In the hands of [James] Buchanan, federal patronage could protect the slaveowner’s rights, but what if a Republican held the Presidency?” This shows that the Southerners viewed the North and Republicans in a threatening manner. Another part of Mr. Summers’ article that shows this sentiment states, “Only disunion could keep the South from being infected with Northern corruption, just as revolution had freed the colonists from the contagion of British practice in 1776. No alliance with an ‘arrogant, aggressive, mercenary and unprincipled’ people would be safe, no matter what concessions were offered by the South.” This came from the Charleston Mercury which went on to as!

k, “Bargains could only be made with people who could be trusted; but where could one put trust in ‘a corrupted and foul, rotten, insolent and ruinous confederacy?’”

All three of the themes show the contrasts between the No

Some topics in this essay:
Prosperity South”, Fort Sumter, London Times, Lincoln South, Southern Periodical, Alexander Stephens, John Calhoun’s, History North, Federal Union, Fourth July, north south, strong language, slavery truly, civil war, ready lengths, questions issue, progress prosperity, summers’ article, move secession,