January 1, 1861. Not everyone below the Mason-Dixon Line was for secession.

[Condem]

Stonewall Jackson's kin? Another great read. Happy New Year, DU. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/seceding-from-secession/?ref=opinion

[Yupster]

1. The Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens

was a anti-secession delegate and leader of the Georgia secession convention. Then he got elected Confederate VP.

Jubal Early was an anti-secession leader in Virginia and then served as Robert E Lee's divisional commander actually taking York, Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign.

In Texas, Governort Sam Houston was a leader of the anti-seession movement.

Neither Lee or President Davis were particularly pro-secession either.

What they all had in common though was they felt each state had the right to secede if the voters wanted to.

[Condem]

2. Interesting, Yupster. Lee. Definately not.

The thing is this. I've seen a lot of states right's arguments over the past couple of weeks. Whatever. The second the first slave landed on this soil....this is where we were going.

[Orrex]

7. Stephens was a big fan of slavery though

At least, that's how he came across in the Cornerstone speech.

[Yupster]

18. Yes, but remember that at the time

Lincoln was yelling as loud as he could that he would do nothing to eliminate slavery in the states which currently had it.

So many pro-slavery southerners were also pro-staying in the union.

[Orrex]

24. Good point

My main reason for mentioning it is that it's a terrific slam-dunk against anyone who argues that the Civil War was the result of the tariff and that slavery was an afterthought. Not that you implied this, of course, but maybe it'll provide ammunition for anyone else who happens to run across that claim in real life.

[bluestate10]

3. Good reading. nt

[Condem]

4. Notice the spelling of 'Fort Sumpter', blue.

Found that just a little bit interesting.

[Drale]

5. Robert E Lee himself was against Secession and Slavery

Lincoln offered overall command of the Union's military to Lee, but in the end Lee could not fight against his native state of Virgina.

[Condem]

6. Yes, indeed, Drale.

And for that, his land became a vast cemetery.

[Drale]

17. Its an unfortunate thing but I understand why it happened

no matter how he felt, he still choose to fight for the confederacy. He was basically a traitor and I think he got lucky they only choose to make his lawn into a massive military cemetery, because throughout history, you hang traitors.

[Yupster]

19. I don't think it's fair to call Lee a traitor

Once his state voted to leave the US and join the CSA, he considered himself no longer an American but a Confederate.

It may seem strange to us today, but most people back then felt as themselves as citizens of their state rather than the USA.

It makes sense if you think how much smaller the federal government was in those days. No income tax, senators elected by the state legislatures, no social security, medicare, food stamps, medicaid, federal highways, national parks. People just didn't come into contact with the federal government.

And most people felt states had the right to leave the union by a vote, just like they joined the union.

So Lee felt that when his state left, he left with it. Not a weird opinion at all.

One other point. Lee was indicted for treason. So was President Davis. The government never tried either one of them.

For Lee that was just fine. He just wanted a quiet retirement where he could do a little good.

But Davis was insistant of his public and speedy trial. He demanded a trial, had a high powered team of lawyers and was ready to defend that secession was legal and therefore the northern army need to kindly leave his troubled country and let him go to work rebuilding it as the rightfully elected president.

The Johnson Administration (Johnson and Davis hated each other for a decade before the war) never did start the trial. Secession was not settled law. The Federalist Papers seem to leave it as an option if states joined the Constitution and then thought better of it later.

And what if the Supreme Court ruled secession Constitutional? What then?

Johnson decided it was better to just leave Davis and Lee indicted forever without trial.

I would ask you that if a person is indicted for a horrible crime, declares his innocence, and demands a trial for ten years without ever getting it, that you wouldn't 150 years later declare him guilty. That seems to violate basic decency.

[Drale]

23. At the time he was

anyone who fought for the confederacy was a traitor. Many people did not like Lincoln's plans for an easy reconstruction because they hated anyone who fought against the Union.

[Yupster]

28. Since the Confederacy had a draft

you aren't leaving southerners much of an option after their states seceeded.

If they fought for the south they're traitors to the USA.

If they don't fight for the south they're traitors to the CSA.

Since the CSA was being invaded and torn apart at the time, your demand to not defend your home town, state, region seems pretty easy to say 150 years later. I suspect it was tougher to do back then.

[Odin2005]

8. I wonder how history would be different had Lee decided to fight for the good side.

[fishwax]

26. Lee opposed secession, but as to slavery he himself held slaves and saw abolition as a bigger evil

Lee said that slavery was "a moral and political evil," but he also believed it to be necessary. His acknowledgment that the institution was bad was actually used rhetorically to defend the institution from its political enemies. His suggestion was that attempts to abolish slavery were misguided (evil, even) because just about everyone already believed that slavery was wrong and so the institution would naturally disappear at some point in the future, per God's plan.

[Adsos Letter]

9. Two excellent works on this specific topic...

The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War by William Freehling (2002)

and, if you're up for a longer read, also by Freehling, Volume II of his Road to Disunion series:

The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861 (2007)

In the second work Freehling goes through the process by which the lower tier of southern state governors rammed through secession immediately after Lincoln's election, and before state conventions could meet to vote on the issue. The reason? They knew many state conventions would not vote for immediate secession, and wanted to wait to see what course Lincoln would actually take toward the southern states. The upper south retained slavery but refused to secede, though they did attempt to be "neutrals" for a short time.

Ft. Sumter changed things dramatically; it then became a matter of supporting/not supporting sons, husbands, fathers during war. An entirely different question although, as Freehling points out in his first work, there was ample resistance throughout the south during the war itself, for a myriad of reasons. "Rich man's war, poor man's fight" being one of them.

[Mudoria]

10. Four states seceded after the attack on Fort Sumter

and Lincoln's call for troops:

1.Virginia (April 17, 1861; ratified by voters May 23, 1861)
2.Arkansas (May 6, 1861)
3.Tennessee (May 7, 1861; ratified by voters June 8, 1861)
4.North Carolina (May 20, 1861)

All four were quite a bit of time behind the others that had seceded. The call for troops to attack the other southern states seems to have been the tipping point in the decision of the other four to secede. Probably no other options for Lincoln at the time but if he could have politically kept those 4 from joining the other soutern states the Civil War would have been a shorter and less deadly affair. For two states that really didn't want to secede North Carolina and Virginia paid the butcher's bill for the others desire to be a separate nation. Like any other history it's always interesting to think of the "what if's" on the road to disaster.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. An interesting note about Arkansas was that

slavery was only common in the eastern, mostly flat part of the state where there were large farming operations. There were few slaves in the hilly parts of the state, especially the Ozarks. It is said that there were a handful of slaves in Fayetteville and Bentonville (in the northwest) but almost none in the rest of the Arkansas Ozarks. When the vote for secession came up after the war had started, only one state legislator voted against it. He was from Huntsville, in Madison County in the Ozarks. Nearly 100 years later, another native of Huntsville made the news when he called out the Arkansas National Guard to stop some black students from entering Little Rock Central High School.

[wikileaksfan]

16. Mountain people throughout the South tended to be less for the rebellion

That gives more credibility to the idea that the war really was about slavery.

[Yupster]

20. Yes - the hill people of the south were notorious Billy Yanks

versus the Johnny Rebs of the coasts and valleys.

The Johnny Rebs called the Billy Yanks of the hills ---- Hillbillies.

[Yupster]

22. There are funny telegrams that the southern and border governors

sent to Lincoln when he called out the militia to suppress the seven seceeded states.

The power to call out the militia is clearly a power of Congress as per Article I of the Constitution. Anyway, he got telegrams like Dear President Elect Lincoln. I want to point out to you that some damn fool is sending out telegrams in your name calling for states to do things which are clearly unconstitutional. I hope you can have that traitor arrested and hanged as soon as possible.

Anyway, this is maybe the biggest blunder any president has ever done. It was a blunder of Bushian proportions.

Tennessee had just voted by about 51 % to 49 % not to call a secession convention. Virginia was wavering and North Carolina wouldn't move if Virginia didn't.

Once Lincoln demanded a quota of troops to invade the southern states he made each state choose sides. There were still eight slave states which hadn't left when he made that call.

Tennessee quickly called another vote and voted 80 % to secede. Virginia followed. Kentucky declared its neutrality. Missouri's governor seceeded but that started a Civil War within the state. Maryland probably would have seceeded but the legislature was arrested. Once Virginia seceeded, North Carolina followed. Arkansas probably would have left one way or the other. Delaware probably wouldn't leave either way.

Anyway, since most leaders left with their states, that amazing blunder of Lincoln's cost the US Army

Robert E Lee
Stonewall Jackson
JEB Stuart
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Richard Ewell
AP Hill
Joe Johnston
Braxton Bragg
Jubal Early

It would have made a huge difference.

[randr]

11. The stories of secession opposition

and support for the north by southern peoples is a huge missing link in our education about the Civil War.
The present insanity over all issues related to the period is a shining example of what can happen when partisan interests are allowed to infect our school systems.

[GeorgeGist]

13. January 2, 2011. Not everyone above the Mason-Dixon line would oppose secession.

Many would welcome the exit of the Confederacy and their kin.

[ladjf]

14. You are correct.

"Vicksburg voters opposed secession from the Union but once the war began, they supported the Confederacy, over 2500 local men joining the Southern ranks.}



http://ltc4940.blogspot.com/2008/10/vicksburg-ms.html

[Yupster]

21. Even though there was significant opposition to secession

almost all southerners thought the states had the right to secede if the voters said so.

The Confederacy put an amazing 75 % of adult white men in uniform during the war which shows that even those opposed to secession generally fought for the south anyway.

Texas is an interesting case.

In the 25 years before the Civil War Texas was a part of

Mexico
Republic Of Texas
USA
Confederacy

When they voted 80 % to leave the Union, they just didn't see it as that big a deal.

The voters were choosing a government of their own. They sure didn't expect to get stomped for the vote.

But stomped the south did get.

In the 11 Confederate states about 1/4 of all adult white males were killed and another 1/4 wounded. Then there was the destruction of any industrial capacity, transportation network and livestock.

[ladjf]

15. You are correct.

"Vicksburg voters opposed secession from the Union but once the war began, they supported the Confederacy, over 2500 local men joining the Southern ranks.}



http://ltc4940.blogspot.com/2008/10/vicksburg-ms.html

[Kievan Rus]

25. A lot of people in Confederate Appalchia were Unionists

[JVS]

27. And Hitler only ever got 43.9% of the electorate, but complicity in his regime was nearly universal.

If Lee truly opposed secession, he had a lot to learn about civil disobedience.

[raccoon]

29. This book is a must read: BITTERLY DIVIDED

Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War

by David Williams

From Publishers Weekly

This fast-paced book will be a revelation even to professional historians. Pulling together the latest scholarship with his own research, Williams (A People's History of the Civil War), a professor of history at Valdosta State University, puts an end to any lingering claim that the Confederacy was united in favor of secession during the Civil War. His astonishing story details the deep, often murderous divisions in Southern society. Southerners took up arms against each other, engaged in massacres, guerrilla warfare, vigilante justice and lynchings, and deserted in droves from the Confederate army (300,000 men joined the Union forces). Unionist politicians never stopped battling secessionism. Some counties and regions even seceded from the secessionists. Poor whites resented the large slave owners, who had engineered the war but were exempt from the draft. Not surprisingly, slaves fought slaveholders for their freedom and aided the Union cause. So did women and Indians. Williams's long overdue work makes indelibly clear that Southerners themselves played a major role in doing in the secessionist South. With this book, the history of the Civil War will never be the same again. Illus. (Sept.)

http://www.amazon.com/Bitterly-Divided-Souths-Inner-Civil/dp/1595581081

[Yupster]

30. Pretty much the same story as the Revolution

I just finished a book on the tories in the Revolution. It seems there may have been as many Tories as there were Patriots. Maybe even more. And the Revolutionary states never voted to leave. They just took up arms.