These men, along with their elitist constitutes, had grown resentful of the paternal relationship they felt had been thrust upon them by the Federal Government.
The question of slavery remaining lawful in the South as well as in the newly acquired terriortories in the southwest, Nebraska, and Kansas was first and foremost on their agendas.
Besides the discrimitory beliefs most southern held against the black slave these southern elitist had a huge financial interest in slave holding. The freedom granted to the slave would, most southern's felt, instantly bankrupt their many large plantations throughout the south.
The combination of money, discrimination and dis-obedient behavior by southern politicians made war inevitable.
But in retrospect there could have been some points along the dangerous path that may have resulted in a different outcome for a Union that was about to pay a heavy and horrible price.
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The anxiety in the South created by Lincoln's election, prompted Mississippi United States Senator Jefferson Davis to urge the state's legislature to "provide funds for a state armory to manufacture arms and amounition"(DonaldP.126) was a practice being created throughout the slave holding southern states.
These acts being carried out throughout the South were clear violations of Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. President Buchanan could have issued arrest warrants for Senator Davis and other southern state leaders for conspiring to create a threatening army.
This powerful act the president could have enacted, prior to his and congress's constitutional lame duck period, may have discouraged or at least delayed the movements forward progress.
William Yancy, a senator from Alabama and another of the south's leading proponents of secession, proclaimed that by electing a Republican (mainly Lincoln) legitimizes the south's desire to secede. Yancy swayed an Alabama convention, which had heard four days of debate on the issue, by saying " that a sectional party was now in control of the national government and that the Republicans would use their power to destroy the rights of the south"(DonaldP.
