"Appomattox County Jail (1870) Background Bocock-Isbell House (1850)" by U.S. National Park Service , public domain
Appomattox Court HouseUnion Dissolved |
Brochure 'Union Dissolved', Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (NHP) in Virginia. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).
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Appomattox
Court House
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Appomattox Court House
National Historical Park
Nat. Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute
Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War
In the time between the election of Abraham Lincoln as the first Republican president and the firing on
Fort Sumter, Southerners voiced their beliefs as what they saw as the immediate cause of Southern
secession and the formation of the Confederacy. Lincoln reassured Southerners that he did not advocate
the abolition of slavery but many Southern leaders saw something different in the Republican Party
Platform of 1860.
Republican Party
Platform: Eighth Plank
Nat. Portrait Gallery
“That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom;
That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our national
territory, ordained that ‘no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law,’ it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such
legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all
attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of congress, of a territorial
legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of
the United States.”
1860 candidates Lincoln and Hamlin
Southern Reactions to
Republican Platform
“Is there a cause for this discontent?
The question tendered to the people of the
South is well expressed in the language of the
President elect - that this agitation must go on
until the northern mind shall rest in the belief
that slavery is put in the condition of ultimate
extinction.”
John H. Reagan (Tex.) - helped draft the
Confederate Constitution
“The triumph of the principles which Mr.
Lincoln is pledged to carry out, is the deathknell of slavery.”
White House Historical Assoc.
Abraham Lincoln
Constitutional Rights
of the Southerners
Rev. James Henley Thornwell (S.C.) - 1861
pamphlet “The State of the Country”
“The North pledged anew her faith to yield
to us our constitutional rights in relation to
slave property. They are now, and have
been ever since that act, denied to us, until
her broken faith and impudent threats, had
become almost insufferable before the late
election.” William L. Harris – commissioner
from Mississippi to the Georgia General
Assembly, Dec. 17, 1860
“The animating principle of the [Republican]
party is hostility to slavery…. Its success is a
declaration of war against our property and the
supremacy of the white race. The election of
Lincoln is the overt act.”
Jabez L. M. Curry (Ala.) - helped draft the
Confederate Constitution
“Unfortunately wherever you find the presence
of Black Republicanism it is engaged in this
work of educating the hearts of the people to
hate the institution of slavery.”
Howell Cobb (Ga.) - chaired the Montgomery
Convention
“That negro slavery, as it exists in fifteen
States of this Union, composes an
important portion of their domestic
institutions, inherited from their ancestors,
and existing at the adoption of the
Constitution, by which it is recognized and
constituting an important element of the
apportionment of powers among the
States . . .. “ Jefferson Davis (Miss.) President Confederate States of America
Library of Congress
John Goode, Jr.
“And when we of the South have begged of the people of the North for peace… they have replied …
that there can be no peace so long as we claim the right to hold property in slaves. There, sir, is the
foundation of the whole difficulty.”
John Goode, Jr. - delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention
Secession
“Our position is thoroughly identified
with the institution of slavery – the
greatest material interest in the world.”
“I have, senators, believed from the first that the
agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not
prevented by some timely and effective measure,
end in disunion.”
John C. Calhoun – (1850) U. S. Senator, South Carolina
Mississippi Declaration of Causes of
Secession, January 1861
“We have dissolved the late
Union chiefly because of the
negro quarrel.”
Robert H. Smith (Ala.) - helped
draft the Confederate
Constitution
rd
Museum of the Confederacy
First National Confederate Flag, 3 Florida Infantry
Constitution of the
Confederate States
of America
“There is one disturbing, one dangerous
cause, - the angry controversy arising on
the institution of African slavery, and unless
this controversy can be amicably adjusted
there must be a perpetual end of the Union,
an everlasting separation of the North from
the South.”
“The greatest of all wrongs, one which in my
judgment would require separation from the
North if they had never otherwise injured us,
is the translation of anti-slaveryism to
power… now that it has become an efficient
agent in the government, it is no longer safe
for a slave State to remain under that
government.”
Richard Keith Call - territorial delegate to the
U.S. Congress and as Governor of Florida
George Wythe Randolph – delegate to the Virginia
Secession Convention
On March 11, 1861 the newly formed Confederate States of America adopted a
constitution. It was created with the southerner’s rights in mind, particularly those
concerning the millions of dollars invested in slave property. The following are
excerpts taken from the Confederate Constitution and quotes from some of the
men that assisted in its creation.
Article I, Section 9
(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in
negro slaves shall be passed.
Article IV, Section 3
(3) … the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be
recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants
of the several Confederate States and the Territories shall have the right to take to such
Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate
States.
“The new constitution
has put at rest, forever,
all the agitating
questions relating to
our peculiar institution African slavery as it
exists amongst us – the
proper status of the
negro in our form of
civilization. This was
the immediate cause of
the late rupture and
present revolution.”
“We have now
placed our
domestic institution,
and secured its
rights unmistakably,
in the Constitution;
we have sought by
no euphony to hide
its name – we have
called our negroes
‘slaves,’ and we
have recognized
and protected them
as persons and our
rights to them as
property.”
Alexander H. Stephens
(Ga.) - Vice President of
the Confederate States of
America
Robert H. Smith helped draft the
Confederate
Constitution
PBS.org
1861 map showing the newly formed Confederate States of America in red.
E X P E R I E N CE Y O U R AM E R I C A
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