The Civil War, 1860–1865

This is Unit Fifteen, part one, from the last attempt at compromise to the first year of the war. Unit Fourteen closed with a president elected by one section, whose name a southern voter could not have marked on a ballot. This unit is what followed. Two entries here settle an argument that people still have. One is the Confederate Constitution, which states in its own text what the new nation existed to defend. The other is an amendment Congress passed in February eighteen sixty-one that would have guaranteed slavery permanently, which Lincoln accepted and the seceding states declined. Together they tell you what the South was and was not refusing. By the end you will be able to explain why both sides rejected the Crittenden Compromise. To state what the Confederate Constitution declared. To explain what the Corwin Amendment settles. To say what predicted a region's loyalty. And to say what the material balance explains and what it does not.

Two entries on why compromise failed, and the second is the demonstration.

The long causes.

USH1 2101 The Long Causes

The anchor summarises the war's causes as three: the westward expansion of slavery, abolitionism, and the rise of parties organised against slavery's spread, with expansion running from Missouri in eighteen nineteen through Bleeding Kansas. The party line runs Liberty in eighteen forty, Free-Soil in eighteen forty-eight, Republican in eighteen fifty-four. Units Thirteen and Fourteen covered all three.

The last attempt to stop it.

USH1 2102 The Crittenden Compromise

Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed six constitutional amendments and resolutions before Lincoln took office, in the last serious attempt to prevent the war. He would have restored the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes and extended it to the Pacific, protecting slavery south of it and prohibiting slavery north of it. He would have barred Congress from abolishing slavery where it already existed, and barred Congress from interfering with the interstate slave trade. Republicans, Lincoln among them, rejected the proposal because it conflicted with keeping slavery out of the territories, which was the one commitment their party existed to make. Southern states rejected the same proposal because it would stop slaveholders taking enslaved people north of the line. The Senate rejected Crittenden's plan on January sixteenth, eighteen sixty-one, after four states had already left. This is the cleanest demonstration available that the dispute was no longer about where the line sat. A geographic compromise can be moved, and Crittenden offered to move it all the way to the Pacific, a larger concession to slavery than anything Congress had granted since eighteen twenty. The South still refused, because the line would have stopped slaveholders going north of it, and the Republicans refused for the mirror-image reason. By eighteen sixty-one both sides wanted the whole territory or none of it.

Three entries on the states leaving, and the second corrects a story you have heard.

The order.

USH1 2103 Secession, in Order

South Carolina seceded on December twentieth, eighteen sixty, and Mississippi, Florida and Alabama followed before the middle of January, with Georgia on the nineteenth of January and Louisiana on the twenty-sixth. Texas went on February first, eighteen sixty-one, completing the seven Deep South states that founded the Confederacy.

How united they were.

USH1 2104 A Lack of Unanimity

The secession ordinances followed divided conventions and popular votes, and the anchor records that a lack of unanimity prevailed in much of the South, with conventions in which the vote to leave was contested rather than acclaimed. Hold this against the later Lost Cause account of a united South. The division is on the record in the states' own proceedings.

What they built.

USH1 2105 The Confederate States of America

Seven Deep South states met at Montgomery, Alabama in February eighteen sixty-one on confederation principles, with states retaining autonomy while uniting for purposes such as defence, at a constitutional convention closely following the document of seventeen eighty-seven. The differences between the two constitutions are centred on slavery, and there are few differences anywhere else.

Three entries on that document, and the first is the strongest evidence in the course.

What it said it was for.

USH1 2106 The Confederate Constitution

The Confederate Constitution declared that the new nation existed to defend and perpetuate racial slavery, and the leadership of the slaveholding class. It protected the interstate slave trade and guaranteed slavery in any new territories. It provided a Congress of two chambers, a judicial branch, and a six-year presidential term. Article One, Section Nine forbade any law impairing or denying the right of property in negro slaves. Section Nine also banned the importation of enslaved people from any foreign country, with an exception for the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America. Two things follow. This is the strongest available answer to the claim that the war was not about slavery, because it is the seceding states saying so in their own founding text. And read the exception in the import ban. Banning the Atlantic trade reassured Britain while protecting purchase from the United States, which is the domestic trade Unit Twelve taught.

The clause itself.

USH1 2107 Article One, Section Nine

The clause of the Confederate Constitution holds that no law impairing or denying the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed, so emancipation was forbidden to the Confederate Congress by the Confederacy's own constitution. A government that cannot legislate on a question has removed it from politics permanently, which is why it went in the constitution.

Who led it.

USH1 2108 Davis and Stephens

Jefferson Davis of Mississippi became provisional president and Alexander Stephens of Georgia vice president, pending elections in the spring and autumn of eighteen sixty-one, with four more states joining during that year: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. The Confederacy also claimed Missouri and Kentucky, where no secession ordinance ever passed. The star count on its flag overstates the membership.

Two entries on what the Union offered, and the second is the one that settles the question.

The inaugural.

USH1 2109 Lincoln's Inaugural

In his inaugural address of March fourth, eighteen sixty-one, Lincoln said he had no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists, while the same speech pledged to prevent slavery's western expansion. He also declared secession unconstitutional. Note that all three positions are consistent, and that only the second was unacceptable to the seceding states.

The amendment Congress passed.

USH1 2110 The Corwin Amendment

Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio proposed a constitutional amendment preventing Congress from abolishing slavery. It passed the House on February twenty-eighth, eighteen sixty-one and the Senate on March second. Lincoln said he had no objection to it. Ohio ratified it in eighteen sixty-one, and Maryland and Illinois in eighteen sixty-two. The Confederate states did not return. Had it been ratified, it would have been the Thirteenth Amendment, and it would have protected slavery permanently rather than abolishing it. Teach this carefully, because it settles a common claim. Secession is often explained as a response to an imminent threat of abolition. There was no such threat, and the proof is that the threatened party was offered a permanent constitutional guarantee and left anyway. What the South would not accept was not abolition, which was not on offer from anybody, but the end of expansion.

Two entries on where the shooting started, and the decision was about who would be blamed.

The fort.

USH1 2111 Fort Sumter

A Union garrison of fewer than one hundred men held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour, and Fire-Eaters pressed Davis to take it, hoping for foreign recognition, while local merchants refused to sell food and supplies ran out by mid-April. British recognition was the particular hope, so the Confederacy's foreign policy shaped its first military decision.

Who fired first.

USH1 2112 Who Fired First

Lincoln announced he would resupply the garrison rather than reinforce or abandon it, placing responsibility for starting a war on the Confederacy, and bombardment began on April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, with the garrison surrendering two days later. On April fifteenth Lincoln called on the loyal states for armed forces. Resupplying a hungry garrison is hard to call an act of war.

Five entries on who went and who stayed, and there is a rule that predicts it.

The four that left afterwards.

USH1 2113 The Upper South

Virginia seceded on April seventeenth, Arkansas on May sixth, Tennessee on May seventh and North Carolina on May twentieth, all after the call for troops — four states leaving over the demand that they help coerce the others. The timing is the argument. These four left not over Lincoln's election but over being asked to fight the Deep South.

The part of Virginia that refused.

USH1 2114 West Virginia

Northern and western Virginia rejected secession and separated, entering the Union as the free state of West Virginia in eighteen sixty-three, while the rest of Virginia, including Jamestown and Williamsburg, joined the Confederacy. That decision brought Robert E. Lee with it, and it placed Washington perilously close to Confederate territory for the whole war.

The same split further south.

USH1 2115 East Tennessee

Eastern Tennessee, which had few enslaved people, stayed pro-Union even after the state seceded, and the anchor treats it as the clearest case — a region's slaveholding density predicting its loyalty more reliably than its state. Apply that test across the Upper South and the map makes sense. The line runs where the cotton stops, not where the state boundaries are.

The nations that sided with the Confederacy.

USH1 2116 The Five Civilized Tribes

The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole and Cherokee supported slavery, and many of their members were slaveholders who had been forced from Georgia under Jackson, and they sent delegates to the Confederate Congress. The anchor calls this unprecedented common cause with White slaveholders. Unit Ten covered the removals, and the alignment here is the harder half of that story.

The slave states that stayed.

USH1 2117 The Four Slave States That Stayed

Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky were slave states that remained in the Union, and each stayed for a different reason, Delaware with a tiny enslaved population and Maryland deeply divided. Missouri saw vicious fighting and pro-Confederate guerrillas, and Kentucky declared neutrality. Their existence governs every emancipation decision Lincoln made for two years.

Two entries on the first battle and the strategy chosen after it.

The first battle.

USH1 2118 First Bull Run

The armies met near Manassas, Virginia on Bull Run Creek, thirty miles from Washington, on July twenty-first, eighteen sixty-one, most of the troops having no combat experience, and Washington socialites and politicians brought picnic lunches to a nearby area. They came because a climactic Union victory was expected. The Confederates won decisively, destroying northern hopes of a quick war.

The strategy.

USH1 2119 The Blockade

Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers, hoped for a ninety-day campaign, and in April declared a naval blockade of the southern coast, with militias sending more men than were requested and the Confederacy turning away tens of thousands. The anchor notes the blockade tacitly recognized the Confederacy while providing legal cover for British and French trade, since you can only blockade a country.

One entry to close, and it warns you against the obvious reading of its own numbers.

What each side had.

USH1 2120 The Balance Sheet

The Confederacy was on the defensive and needed only to survive, fighting on home ground with civilian support and a coastline from Texas to Virginia to evade the blockade. The Union was on the offensive and had to conquer and hold, fighting on unfamiliar ground against hostile civilians with long supply lines. The Union had over twenty million people to the Confederacy's fewer than nine million, plus continued European immigration through the eighteen sixties, superior industry and railroads, and abundant food, while the South's prime land was in cotton rather than food and its government printed money into runaway inflation. One side needed to win and the other needed only to not lose, which are different problems with different arithmetic. Do not read the resource tables as a prediction. The anchor is careful that the Union's task was to pacify a conquered Confederacy of over half a million square miles and nearly nine million people, which no amount of industry accomplishes by itself. Material advantage explains why the Union could sustain the war, not why it won it.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why both sides rejected Crittenden: he offered to extend the eighteen twenty line to the Pacific, the South refused because it would stop slaveholders going north of it, and the Republicans refused because keeping slavery out of the territories was the one thing their party existed to do. You can state what the Confederate Constitution declared, which was that the new nation existed to defend and perpetuate racial slavery and the leadership of the slaveholding class, in its own text. You can explain what the Corwin Amendment settles: abolition was not the threat, because a permanent guarantee against it was on the table and the seceding states left anyway. What they would not accept was the end of expansion. You can say what predicted loyalty in the Upper South, which was slaveholding density rather than state lines — the map follows where the cotton stops. And you can say what the material balance explains, which is why the Union could sustain a four-year war, and not why it won one.