The Withdrawal of the South

• South Carolina, long the hotbed of Southern separatism, seceded first.

• It called a special convention, which voted unanimously on December 20, 1860, to withdraw the state from the Union

• By the time Lincoln took office, six other states from the lower South—Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1)—had seceded.

• In February 1861, representatives of the seven seceded states met at Montgomery, Alabama, and announced the formation of a new nation: the Confederate States of America.

• The response from the North was confused and indecisive. President James Buchanan told Congress in December 1860 that no state had the right to secede from the Union but suggested that the federal government had no authority to stop a state if it did.

• The seceding states immediately seized the federal property—forts, arsenals, government offices—within their boundaries

• Confederate guns on shore fired at the vessel—the first shots between North and South— and turned it back.

• Still, neither section was yet ready to concede that war had begun.

• And in Washington, efforts began once more to forge a compromise.

The Failure of Compromise

• Gradually, compromise forces gathered behind a proposal first submitted by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and known as the Crittenden Compromise.

• It called for several constitutional amendments, which would guarantee the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states and would satisfy Southern demands on such issues as fugitive slaves and slavery in the District of Columbia.

• And so nothing had been resolved when Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington for his inauguration—sneaking into the city in disguise on a night train to avoid assassination as he passed through the slave state of Maryland.

• In his inaugural address, which dealt directly with the secession crisis, Lincoln laid down several basic principles.

• Since the Union was older than the Constitution, no state could leave it. Acts of force or violence to support secession were insurrectionary.

• And the government would “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property in the seceded states—a clear reference to Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter

• Conditions at Fort Sumter were deteriorating quickly.

• Union forces were running short of supplies; unless they received fresh provisions, the fort would have to be evacuated.

• Lincoln believed that if he surrendered Sumter, his commitment to maintaining the Union would no longer be credible.

• So he sent a relief expedition to the fort, carefully informing the South Carolina authorities that there would be no attempt to send troops or munitions unless the supply ships met with resistance.

• The new Confederate government now faced a dilemma.

• Permitting the expedition to land would seem to be a tame submission to federal authority.

• Firing on the ships or the fort would seem (to the North at least) to be aggression.

• But Confederate leaders finally decided that to appear cowardly would be worse than to appear belligerent, and they ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of Confederate forces at Charleston, to take the island, by force if necessary.

• As the southern states began to secede, Abraham Lincoln spoke of American liberty: “It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved, upon that principle, it will be truly awful.”

• Almost immediately, Lincoln began mobilizing the North for war.

• And equally promptly, four more slave states seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy

• People in both regions had come to believe that two distinct and incompatible civilizations had developed in the United States and that those civilizations were incapable of living together in peace.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking for much of the North, said at the time: “I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute one state.”

• And a slave owner, expressing the sentiments of much of the South, said shortly after the election of Lincoln: “These [Northern] people hate us, annoy us, and would have us assassinated by our slaves if they dared. They are a different people from us, whether better or worse, and there is no love between us. Why then continue together?”

• That the North and the South had come to believe these things helped lead to secession and war.

• Whether these things were actually true—whether the North and the South were really as different and incompatible as they thought—is another question, one that the preparations for and conduct of the war help to answer.

The Opposing Sides

• As the war began, only one thing was clear: all the important material advantages lay with the North.

• Its population was more than twice as large as that of the South (and nearly four times as large as the non slave population of the South), so the Union had a much greater manpower reserve for both its armies and its workforce.

• The North had an advanced industrial system and was able by 1862 to manufacture almost all its own war materials.

• The South had almost no industry at all and, despite impressive efforts to increase its manufacturing capacity, had to rely on imports from Europe throughout the war.

• In addition, the North had a much better transportation system than did the South and, in particular, more and better railroads: twice as much trackage as the Confederacy and a much better integrated system of lines.

• During the war, moreover, the already inferior Confederate railroad system steadily deteriorated and by the beginning of 1864 had almost collapsed.

• But in the beginning the North’s material advantages were not as decisive as they appear in retrospect.

• The South was, for the most part, fighting a defensive war on its own land

• The Northern armies, on the other hand, were fighting mostly within the South, with long lines of communications, amid hostile local populations, and with access only to the South’s own inadequate transportation system.

• The commitment of the white population of the South to the war was, with limited exceptions, clear and firm.

• In the North, opinion about the war was divided and support for it remained shaky until near the end.

• A major Southern victory at any one of several crucial moments might have proved decisive by breaking the North’s will to continue the struggle.

• Finally, many Southerners believed that the dependence of the English and French textile industries on American cotton would require those nations to intervene on the side of the Confederacy.