"Whether by the House or by the people, if an Abolitionist be chosen president of the United States, you will have presented to you the question of whether you will permit the government to pass into the hands of your avowed and implacable enemies. Without pausing for your answer, I will state my own position to be that such a result would be a species of revolution by which the purposes of the Government would be destroyed and the observances of its mere forms entitled to no respect.
In that event, in such manner as should be most expedient, I should deem it your duty to provide for your safety outside of a Union with those who have already shown the will, and would have acquired the power, to deprive you of your birthright and to reduce you to worse than the colonial dependence of your fathers..."
Jefferson Davis, Nov 16, 1858
The Crittenden Compromise
The "1860 Association"
The secessionist "1860 Association" published over 200,000 pamphlets to persuade the youth of the South. The most influential were: "The Doom of Slavery" and "The South Alone Should Govern the South", both by John Townsend of South Carolina; and James D.B. De Bow's "The Interest of Slavery of the Southern Non-slaveholder."
"The True Cause" The True Daily Delta (New Orleans) 5/10/1860
South Carolina: December 20, 1860
Mississippi: January 9, 1861
Florida: January 10, 1861
Alabama: January 11, 1861
Georgia: January 19, 1861
Georgia's secession according to the Georgia Historical Society.
Louisiana: January 26, 1861
Texas: February 1, 1861 (ratified by referendum on February 23, 1861 by a vote of 46,153 to 14,747).
The published Declarations of the Causes of Secession of 4 cotton states.
The Peace Conference of February, 1861
The Peace Conference of February 1861 was a meeting of more than 100 of the leading politicians states in Washington, D.C. to try to prevent the oncoming Civil War. With the seven states of the Cotton South already committed to secession, the emphasis for peacefully preserving the Union focused on the eight slaveholding states representing the Upper and Border South, with the states of Virginia and Kentucky playing key roles.
Fourteen free states and seven slave states were represented (but none of the 7 already seceded states) by 113 delegates. On February 6, a separate committee charged with drafting a proposal for the entire convention to consider was formed. The committee consisted of one representative from each state. The entire convention met for three weeks, and its final product was a proposed seven point constitutional amendment that differed little from the Crittenden Compromise. The key issue, slavery in the territories, was addressed simply by extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific coast with no provision for newly acquired territory. This section barely passed by a 9–8 vote of the states.
Other features of the proposed constitutional amendment were the requirement that the acquisition of all future territories had to be approved by a majority of both the slave states and the free states, a prohibition on Congress passing any legislation that would affect the status of slavery where it currently existed, a prohibition on state legislatures from passing laws that would restrict the ability of officials to apprehend and return fugitive slaves, a permanent prohibition on the foreign slave trade, and 100% compensation to any master whose fugitive slave was freed by illegal mob action or intimidation of officials required to administer the Fugitive Slave Act.
Key sections of this amendment could only be further amended with the concurrence of all of the states. The convention's work was completed with only a few days left in the final session of Congress. The proposal was rejected in the Senate in a 28 to 7 vote and never came to a vote in the House.
The Corwin Amendment - February - March, 1861.
The Corwin Amendment was a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would shield "domestic institutions" of the states (which in 1861 included slavery) from the constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. It was passed by the 36th Congress on March 2, 1861, and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. Senator William H. Seward of New York introduced the amendment in the Senate and Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio introduced it in the House of Representatives.
Text: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
Out-going James Buchanan, a Democrat, endorsed the Corwin Amendment by taking the unprecedented step of signing it. His signature on the Congressional joint resolution was unnecessary, as the Supreme Court, in Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798), ruled that the President has no formal role in the constitutional amendment process. Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, said of the Corwin Amendment:
Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln sent a letter to each state's governor transmitting the proposed amendment, noting that Buchanan had approved it.
The Corwin Amendment was ratified by:
- Kentucky — April 4, 1861
- Ohio — May 13, 1861 (Rescinded ratification – March 31, 1864)
- Rhode Island — May 31, 1861
- Maryland — January 10, 1862 (Rescinded ratification – April 7, 2014)
- Illinois — February 14, 1862 (Questionable validity)
Confederate secession commissioners
State governors in the deep South assigned "commissioners" to promote secession in other states. They wrote letters and sometimes attended the secession conferences of other slave states. Virginia got a lot of inducement from these commissioners, but being in convention since February, rejected secession by a 2 to 1 margin just a week before the Fort Sumter attack.
Letters and speeches of southern secession commissioners.
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