UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Before Lincoln we believed that government is a necessary evil. After Lincoln we were taught that government is necessary. Then came the Progressives: government is good.
Since the Constitutional Convention of 1787 there has been a standing dialogue in Congress between those who advocate more centralization and those who advocate less centralization. This dialogue has become increasingly weaker over time; today, it is little more than a ritual -- words without substance, a protocol to woo voters with no real application in the way in which legislation is passed, our laws are adjudicated, and we are governed.
Government as Evil
The Golden Era of the Constitution
When we think of federalism today, it is in a context very different from that of the Pre-Golden and Golden Eras of the Constitution. During these early eras -- 1788-1800 and 1801-1860, respectively -- a Federalist was someone who promoted greater centralization. Federalism meant a loose interpretation of the enumerated powers and the Constitution as a whole. In contrast, federalism today means decentralization of power and often serves as a euphemism for States Rights -- a noble and rigorous republican concept fundamental to American government and the preservation of liberty that was badly soiled by Lincoln's obsession with preservation of the Union, his War of Consolidation, and its aftermath.
Politically speaking, during the Golden Era of our Constitution you either lived by democratic principles set forth in the document, or you were out. Nullification and the threat of secession that made nullification a credible form of protest was much closer to expected behavior than a mere theoretical construct of a time long past.
According to our Constitution each State is its own sovereign republic that surrenders, while in union with the other States, a select number of its sovereign powers to the US government that then performs as a sovereign vis-å-vis other foreign powers on the one hand, and in a much more limited capacity as a sovereign vis-à-vis the various independent, sovereign States of the United States on the other hand.
Until 1801 and the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as the 3rd President of the United States, the Federalist Party controlled the US Government. By 1816 the Federalist Party had all, but disappeared. With its disappearance the healthy political debate between those who promoted decentralization and those who promoted greater centralization did not abate. Indeed, it continued right up to the election of Abraham Lincoln when the debate was brought to an abrupt, coercive halt.
One cannot emphasize enough in this regard that neither the Federalists, nor the Democrat-Republicans, forsook the rudimentary principles of the Constitution of the United States. These included the notions that
- The powers to legislate, adjudicate, and execute were separate and distinct powers shared with minimum overlap among the the three separate branches of government
- The powers of the US Government, when taken as a whole, were limited and enumerated
- Each State was its own sovereign that yielded voluntarily certain sovereign powers to the US Government -- powers assumed to be those of any sovereign no matter where in the world the sovereign could be found.
Jefferson’s victory was an important event in the early history of our nation. For, we had proven to ourselves and contemporary Europe that a head of state could be replaced through popular election.
From 1800 until 1824 the Democrat-Republicans remained in power while their opposition eroded. Unopposed in 1824 the Democrat-Republicans split into several factions and the presidency was decided in Congress; John Quincy Adams became our nation's 6th President. This factional infighting led to a permanent split in the party,from which the Democratic Party would emerge the standard bearer of Jeffersonian decentralization. It would win the 1828 election and place Andrew Jackson in the White House where he remained for two consecutive terms. Between 1836 and 1860 when the Republican Party swept the North, Midwest, and Pacific West in a four-way election in which Abraham Lincoln failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, the Democratic Party yielded the White House on only two occasions. On each occasion the White House would be occupied by a Whig, and in each case for only one term. The Whig Party formed in 1832 when the National Republican Party -- an 1824 spin-off from the earlier Democrat-Republican Party -- failed to defeat Andrew Jackson. The Whigs remained an important competitor until they dissolved in 1852 after a crushing defeat by the Democrats.
The Issue of Slavery
In 1854 the Whigs united with Free Soilers, Abolitionists, Free Democrats, and the temperance men from the State of Maine to form the Republican Party. The primary objective of the party was to prevent the spread of slavery into the new territories. It formed in reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that it viewed as a betrayal to the Constitution and the very republic of which they were a part.
... [t]he Institution of Slavery, except in punishment of crime, is a great moral, social and political evil ....
... [s]lavery is a violation of the rights of man as man; ... a perpetual war upon its victims ....
... [we] publicly proclaim our determination to oppose by all the powerful and honorable means in our power, now and henceforth, all attempts, direct cr indirect, to extend slavery in this Country, or to permit it to extend into any region or locality in which it does not now exist by positive law, or to admit new Slave States into the Union.
... we hold ourselves absolved from all "compromises," except those expressed in the Constitution, for the protection of slavery and slave-owners; ... [and we] we now demand measures of protection and immunity for ourselves, and among them we demand the REPEAL OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, and an act to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
... in view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of republican government, and against the schemes of aristocracy the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed, or man debased, we will co-operate and be known as REPUBLICANS until the contest be terminated.
William Stockings, Editor. Under the Oaks: Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Republican Party, at Jackson, Michigan, July 6, 1854; Comprising a History of the Party in Michigan; The Proceedings of the Anniversary Celebration, and Portraits of Leading Mich
Igan Republicans, Detroit, Michigan: Detroit Tribune 1904. pp. 46-49. Online Source: Hathi Trust Digital Library
It should be clear from the above that the newly forming Republican Party was not prepared for compromise and was clearly against slavery as a part of the American republic.
In opposition to the self-selected mandates of the newly formed Republican Party was the Democratic Party's insistence on another, and even more -- albeit purposefully extrapolated -- explicit Constitutional principle made clear at the Democratic State Convention held in Detroit, Michigan in September 1854.
That the delegated Democracy of the State of Michigan here affirm their continued support of the principles embraced in the resolutions adopted by the Democratic National Convention which assembled in Baltimore in June, 1852, and that the doctrine of congressional non-intervention in the domestic legislation of the States and Territories therein embodied, harmonizes with the true spirit of our institutions, and it is the only platform upon which the Democratic party of the Union can maintain its nationality and its ascendancy and preserve the Union.
ibid., p.63
And,
The Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing in Congress or out of the agitation of the slavery question under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made." Inasmuch as the whole excitement at this time was occasioned by the violation, in the most aggravating form, of this pledge, the Democrats were at disadvantage in the debates that followed.
ibid., p.63. The Baltimore statement.
Now, it is true without doubt that the US Constitution did not deal with the matter of slavery in US territories and newly admitted States. Then too, when the US Constitution was ratified the only territory claimed by the United States that was not already a part of the ratifying States was the Northwest Territory in a region of North America where the institution of slavery could never be sustained economically. Important in the above context was that Congress under the Articles of Confederation had already made it clear that Congress could intervene in the management of US territories and that slavery was clearly excluded under Artile VI of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 -- an ordinance t was later adopted by the US Congress in 1789 by An act to provide for the government of the territory, North-west of the river Ohio. One should not be surprised then, that the first formal meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson County, Michigan -- a State that was carved out of the Northwest Territory.
Of course, intervention in a US Territory with no governance of its own that was not designated by Congress is not the same as interference in an already formed State. Simply the argument being made by the Democrats was that non-intervention with regard to slavery in the territories of the United States is assumed, and that there existed a Constitutional right to the people of each territory to choose its own destiny with regard to slavery. This misnomer is what Abraham Lincoln clarified in his address to the Young Men's Central Republican Union of New York in February of 1860. It is this address that would eventually propel him onto the national stage. In 1856 John C. Frémont, the Republican Party presidential candidate, carried only 11 States; in 1860 the same party carried seventeen!
In regard to this question of territorial intervention Lincoln concluded in his speech:
But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask - all Republicans desire - in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.
Abraham Lincoln, 27 February 1860, Cooper Union, New York City, NY. Source: US National Park Service
In effect, Lincoln was now declaring that slavery was evil and that tolerance toward slavery was a necessity, in the same manner that Thomas Paine had once concluded that government is a necessary evil.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ...
Thomas Paine. Common Sense, Of the Origin and Design of Government in General. With Concise Remarks on the English Constitution. February 14, 1776. Source: Common Sense
What is, of course, particularly disturbing is when Lincoln decided that a necessary evil to be tolerated would no longer be tolerated and extinguished by still another necessary evil. In short, we must ask ourselves why was slavery tolerable when it was a part of the Union, but suddenly tolerable when it was not? Common sense would have made clear that it should be left unto its own demise, as it had voluntarily freed our government from its necessary toleration. This is where Lincoln abuses the power of his office that is designed to serve the people of the United States to dictate the morality of another nation -- namely, the Confederate States of America. Our government has not ceased dictating the morality of the world ever since.
Where in our founding documents is the US Government given the authority to dictate the morality of another nation -- let alone that of another State.
Where in our founding documents does it state that one people has either right or duty to dictate the morality of another people?
The Issue of Secession
The remaining question is, of course, whether any of the States of the United States had the right to secede. And, in this matter Mr. Lincoln took it upon himself to decide. The reasons for this decision have been summarized into five by the National Parks Service:
- Physically speaking, we cannot separate.
- Secession is unlawful.
- Secession is the essence of anarchy.
- We are not enemies, but friends.
- Secession will destroy democracy.
Under the assumption that these are an accurate assessment of Lincoln's true thoughts, let us examine each of them separately. Before we embark upon this journey let us pause to consider, though, a few important facts that should have been obvious to everyone of any knowledge and authority at the time of secession.
In and of itself, the Constitution was well-equipped to handle the entry of new States into the Union. The existence of slavery under the current economic and legal conditions of the era did create a problem, however.
Firstly, unlike northern agriculture that was seasonal in nature and could not sustain a slave population, southern agriculture was perennial and could. Simply speaking, large plantations manned with slaves were not economically feasible in the North. With the exception of several strategically located cities that were highly commercial in nature the only industries in the South that were not agricultural were local and catered to their respective local populations.
Secondly, families tended to be large and the inheritance laws in most States of the United States were not automatic. Rather, than bequeathing the deceased father's land to the eldest son -- primogeniture, a way of insuring the maintenance of an estate over time --, the family farm was divided among the widowed wife and children. How this division took place was often individually decided in a will that was legally attested by a notary. Thus, there was a built-in economic motivation for sons and daughters to strike out on their own and capture new wealth in the cultivation and development of still unexplored land.
Thirdly, in the North manufacturing and seasonal crops worked well together, for one could shuttle between the shop or factory and the farm as the season required. Although slaves were traded among their owners in the South, the same slaves tended to occupy and cultivate the same land year after year. They were not free to commute.
Fourthly, it was difficult for the North to believe that the South was not wasting valuable land. After all, they argued, voluntary labor was surely more productive than involuntary labor, and for the same number of freemen and slaves, the freeman could make better use of the land. In contrast, slave owners tended to be wealthier than those who did not own slaves, and there was little incentive to make them free. As a result, Northerners viewed the South as immoral, wasteful, and unpatriotic. Southerners, in turn, viewed the North, as envious, self-righteous, and lacking in social sophistication and understanding. In effect, there was a built-in attitudinal divide.
Fifthly, there were the Abolitionists a small minority of people who, like the pro-life activists of today, were willing to break the law and risk their own liberty and livelihoods in order to achieve their moral objectives. These moral advocates could be found in both the North and the South, but had a larger voice in the North where they came under less political pressure.
Sixthly, there was the problem of representation. Although slaves were counted in the census -- albeit as reduced persons --, they were not allowed to vote. In fact, they were not considered citizens of the United States as was clearly demonstrated by the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs John Sanford. In some southern States there were as many or more slaves as their were masters and freemen. This meant that slave masters and freeman in the South had a disproportionate say in what occurred in the Lower House of Congress. Still, there number in Congress was far smaller as the population of the South including slaves was much smaller than that of the North. Of the ten largest cities in the United States only two of them were in the South including New Orleans and St. Louis with populations of somewhat over 160,000 inhabitants. The remaining eight were located in the North including cities like New York City with over 800,000 residents and Philadelphia with close to 570,000 residents. This meant that the only way in which the South could be sure to maintain the status quo in the South was with equal representation in the Senate. This meant, in turn, that for every new State admitted into the Union, one should be free and one slave. By 1860, however, the balance had already shifted in favor of the North. There were now 19 free states and 14 slave.
Slave and Free States Electoral Outcomes in 1860 by Descending Order of Population
Virginia
- Population: 1,596,318
- Freemen/Slave: 2.25
- Candidate: John Bell
- Political Party: Constitutional Union
- Electoral Vote: 15
* Missouri
- Population: 1,182,012
- Freemen/Slaves: 9.28
- Candidate: Stephen A. Douglas
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 9
* Kentucky
- Population: 1,155,684
- Freemen/Slaves: 4.13
- Candidate: John Bell
- Political Party: Constitutional Union
- Electoral Vote: 12
Tennessee
- Population: 1,109,801
- Freemen/Slaves: 3.03
- Candidate: John Bell
- Political Party: Constitutional Union
- Electoral Vote: 12
Georgia
- Population: 1,057,286
- Freemen/Slaves: 1.29
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 10
North Carolina
- Population: 992,622
- Freemen/Slaves: 2.00
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 10
Alabama
- Population: 964,201
- Freemen/Slaves: 1.22
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 9
Mississippi
- Population: 791,305
- Freemen/Slaves: 0.81
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 7
Louisiana
- Population: 708,002
- Freemen/Slaves: 1.13
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 6
South Carolina
- Population: 703,708
- Freemen/Slaves: 0.75
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 8
** Maryland
- Population: 687,049
- Freemen/Slaves: 6.88
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 8
Texas
- Population: 604,215
- Freemen/Slaves: 2.31
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 4
Arkansas
- Population: 435,450
- Freemen/Slaves: 2.92
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 9
Florida
- Population: 140,424
- Freemen/Slaves: 1.27
- Candidate: John C. Breckenridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 3
New York
- Population: 3,880,735
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 35
Pennsylvania
- Population: 2,906,215
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 27
Ohio
- Population: 2,339,511
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 23
Illinois
- Population: 1,711,951
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 11
Indiana
- Population: 1,350,428
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 13
Massachusetts
- Population: 1,231,066
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 13
Wisconsin
- Population: 775,881
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 5
Michigan
- Population: 749,113
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 6
Iowa
- Population: 674,913
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 4
New Jersey
- Population: 672,035
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 4
- Candidate: Stephen Douglas
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 3
Maine
- Population: 628,279
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 8
Connecticut
- Population: 460,147
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 6
California
- Population: 460,147
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 4
New Hampshire
- Population: 326,073
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 5
Vermont
- Population: 315,098
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 5
Rhode Island
- Population: 174,620
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 4
Minnesota
- Population: 172,023
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 4
Delaware
- Population: 112,216
- Candidate: John C. Breckinridge
- Political Party: Democratic
- Electoral Vote: 3
Oregon
- Population: 52,465
- Candidate: Lincoln
- Political Party: Republican
- Electoral Vote: 3
Electoral and Demographic Statistics Summary in 1860
Number of States: 14
Electoral Vote: 122
Population
- Confederacy
- Free Only: 5,582,222 (61%)
- Slave Only: 3,521,110 (39%)
- Total: 9,103,332
- Slave States
- Free Only: 8,179,364 (67%)
- Slave Only: 3,948,713 (33%)
- Total: 12,128,077
Number of States: 19
Electoral Vote: 186
Population Total: 18,987,843
And finally, over time slavery lost its charm in the North. In the South, in contrast, social prestige was often measured by the number of slaves that a land owner could sustain. For, a large slave labor force usually reflected important economic success and greater social responsibility. Thus, not only were there competing economic interests, but there were also important attitudinal differences.
No matter, land was opportunity, and Northerners were not interested in seeing fertile land being wasted in support of large slave populations who posed a constant societal threat aggravated by a small group of moral zealots who had little respect for the law and held themselves to be morally superior to everyone else. John Brown was not hanged by Southern plantation owners, he was sentenced to death by the Union status quo. What is more, the tragedy of Bleeding Kansas was visible to all.
Although it was surely the case that many of our Founding Fathers felt uneasy about the inherent philosophical contradiction between liberty and slavery, their economic livelihoods often depended on the existence of the institution. Furthermore, there was enormous pressure on the individual slave holder to maintain his slaves. For, freeing his own slaves would place pressures on others to release theirs -- pressure that most slave owners did not want. In effect, letting go of one's slaves meant political suicide and peer denigration. In short, it was easy for those in the North to ridicule those in the South who spoke of liberty, for they were not under the same pressure, as those whom they ridiculed as hypocrites. And, in the end, what was more important: the founding of our new nation, or the immediate release of those whom it enslaved. Thus, they focused on the former, and made room for the latter at a later date.
I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
Thomas Jefferson. Notes on the State of Virginia. January 1, 1782 to December 31, 1782
Four years after the Constitution had been ratified by all of the original 13 States the cotton gin was invented. Whereupon growing cotton became a much more profitable business that placed increasing pressure, not only on the retention of slave labor, but on its proliferation. In 1790, shortly after the US Constitution had been ratified, there were only six slave States. By 1860, when the secession of southern States began, there were fifteen. The cotton gin, slave labor, increasing demand for cotton, and westward expansion made for a powerful economic and political movement that resisted the original intention of eliminating slavery.
This proliferation of slavery did not, however, remove the contradiction that it posed to the basic principles of our nation's founding. As a result, there was an attempt to redefine the nature of those who were enslaved.
The census and other authentic documents show that, in all instances in which the States have changed the former relation between the two races, the condition of the African, instead of being improved, has become worse. They have been invariably sunk into vice and pauperism, accompanied by the bodily and mental inflictions incident thereto ... while, in all other States which have retained the ancient relation between them, they have improved greatly in every respect ....
It may, in truth, be assumed as a maxim, that two races differing so greatly, and in so many respects, cannot possibly exist together in the same country, where their numbers are nearly equal, without the one being subjected to the other. Experience has proved that the existing relation, in which the one is subjected to the other, in the slaveholding States, is consistent with the peace and safety of both, with great improvement to the inferior; while the same experience proves that the relation which it is the desire and object of Great Britain to substitute in its stead, in this and all other countries, under the plausible name of the abolition of slavery, would (if it did not destroy the inferior by conflicts, to which it would lead) reduce it to the extremes of vice and wretchedness.
John C. Calhoun. Letter to Richard Pakenham, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. April 18, 1844.
Where before slaves of West African racial background were human beings who had become victims of a West African tradition propagated throughout the North Atlantic and beyond by the British Empire, now they were viewed as a human species à part incapable of ever being integrated as full citizens into American society and better cared for in their current state of subjugation. This new perspective, although potentially defensible so long as these slaves remained slaves and unable to participate fully in American society, was problematic once a slave was set free or escaped to freedom and was able to integrate successfully into the rest of American society -- Frederick Douglass, of some fame, is a case in point. As there were few freeman of West African extract in the North, the Southern discourse that sought to redefine those who were enslaved in the South was fairly easy to disseminate. Of course, those who were well-acquainted with former slaves were less easily convinced and would become Abolitionists who actively sought the end of slavery. Although the Abolitionists and Free Soilers were motivated differently, they could certainly agree on one very important issue -- stop the spread of slavery, if not end it altogether. Indeed, so long as the slaves remained in the South, it was easy for the Free Soilers to embellish their economic motivation with a higher call to moral apology. It was, thus, that the Republican Party was born.
Between 1800 and 1860 the slave population of the United States quadrupled in number. This dramatic increase was not foreseeable. Meanwhile the US non-slave population increased six-fold. Of this six-fold increase the North increased by about seven-fold while the South only about five-fold. This rapid change was simply not foreseeable when the US Constitution was ratified. Indeed, at the time of ratification one could find slaves in both the North and the South, and the most important centers of the slave trade were located in the North!
Then too, the acceptance of slaves as part of America's foundation was a practical compromise in principle necessary to hold the Union together against a common enemy. Certainly the British were not intent on defeating the former colonists because they held slaves, and the British were just as much a threat between 1788 and 1789 when the Constitution was formally ratified as they had been in 1776 when the thirteen colonies first joined hands in an effort to defeat them. Were there other threats in 1861 that were more formidable than the British in 1777 or 1812? To the South there was no greater threat to their way of life than their continued presence in the Union.
Many attempts were made to balance the resulting division including the aforementioned Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Crittenden Compromise of 1860, and finally the Corwin Amendment of 1861 -- the first of two proposed 13th amendments to the US Constitution. Alas, Abraham Lincoln and his band of Radical Republicans -- a new mix of Free-Soilers and Abolitionists -- came into power with a minority of the popular vote, failed to carry a single slave State, and precipitated the inevitable.
The South understood Lincoln to be the ruse politician that he was -- a man of eloquent words who sought power. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was outspoken and adamant in its demands, and among them were devout Abolitionists. For the South the decision to secede was fairly clear and straight-forward. For the North, the decision was more difficult: let the Southern States go their own way, or compel them to heed the iron hand of Washington, D.C. It was Lincoln who made the fatal decision, and Fort Sumpter was his provoked excuse.
In 1815, after the British left our nation’s capitol in ashes, several New England States banned together in Hartford, Connecticut where they entertained the idea of secession. They were feeling the economic brunt of our second war of independence from Great Britain and were about to feel its military brunt as well.
In 1820 an important dispute broke out between the Free Soilers who wanted the newly forming State of Missouri to be slave-free and those who advocated the right of the citizens of each State to choose for themselves. This dispute ended in the Missouri Compromise.
In 1832, a decade and a half later, the South Carolina State Legislature nullified US Congressional tariff legislation that they found unconstitutional and oppressive.
Clearly, the Underground Railroad undermined certain laws of the US Constitution that were brought before the courts. Probably the most famous of such court cases was that of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott vs John Sanford. Accordingly, individual States passed laws that moved in direct violation to the Constitution. This too, was a form of nullification that, if needed, could be backed up by the threat of secession.
Government as Necessary
Lincoln’s War of Consolidation
Obviously, many Americans view Abraham Lincoln as a great man. And, what patriot of liberty today could possibly justify a moral defense of slavery? There was more to Lincoln, however, than his eloquence and carefully constructed logic.
In 1861 Alexander Stephens, the newly elected Vice President of the Confederacy stood before the people of Georgia and congratulated them and the newly formed Confederacy for having made their departurefrom the Union peacefully.
It was not the intent of the Confederacy to go to war with the Union, but there was good reason to believe that war could result. in March of 1861, and his address to a the special session of Congress in which he accuses the seceded States of treason. Lincoln's singular goal was to preserve the Union at any cost and stop the spread of slavery.
In his Cooper Union's address Lincoln uses the same words to describe slavery that Thomas Paine used to describe the State in his popular political tract of 1776 entitled Common Sense -- namely, a necessary evil that should be tolerated. Toleration was never Lincoln's goal, however, because his own party wanted to prevent the spread of slavery, and he personally wanted to prevent secession at any cost. And, there was a middle ground.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had led to much bloodshed in the newly forming State of Kansas, and the potential for massive bloodshed was clearly evident. Bleeding Kansas was a manifest premonition of what the future had in store, if one did tread carefully. Only a fool or someone blinded by his own narrow set of objectives could believe that seeking to prevent the secession of seven States with the use of force would not result in massive carnage. The North may have voted him into office to prevent the spread of slavery, but surely few voted him into office to make war.
At no time during his bid for the presidency did Lincoln ever entertain the idea of separation in a public address. Certainly his mind had not changed after South Carolina's firing on Fort Sumpter.
Lincoln provoked the South into violence refused to surrender a federal fort that was built on South Carolina soil. Nearly all of the federal property that lie on Confederate soil had been yielded without conflict and often with compensation. The Confederacy wanted only that their sovereignty be respected and their separation clean.
they were prepared to fight, were the Union to deny them their sovereignty as independent States who at yielded certain of their sovereign powers to enhance the Union of which they voluntarily formed a part, never to secede their own independent sovereignty.
his first inaugural address in 1860
Government as Good
see Week Eight