In fact, secession had been railroaded through even more forcefully than the final state convention votes suggested. There was no popular referendum anywhere in the South. Conventions, made up of delegates selected by the legislatures, elected 854 men, 157 of whom voted against secession. Put in the starkest terms, “some 697 men, mostly wealthy, decided the destiny of 9 million people, mostly poor,” and one third enslaved.10 The circumstances of secession thus lend some credence to the position that when war finally came, many Southerners fought out of duty to their state and indeed many saw themselves as upholding constitutional principles. Few believed they were fighting to protect or perpetuate slavery per se. Given the conception of “citizenship” at the time—in the North and South—wherein rights originated in the state, not the federal government, most Southerners normally would have sided with their state government in a fracas against the national government.
On February 7, 1861, the Montgomery delegates adopted a new constitution for the Confederate States of America, and two days later elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as the CSA’s first president. Davis looked much like Lincoln, and had he worn a beard, from certain angles they would have been indistinguishable. Like Lincoln, he had served in the Black Hawk War, then saw combat at both Monterrey and Buena Vista under Zachary Taylor. Like Lincoln, Davis knew heartache: he had married Taylor’s daughter, who died of malaria. Davis differed from his Northern counterpart in many ways though. He lived on a small estate given to him by his brother, but he never achieved the wealthy planter lifestyle of other Confederate spokesmen. His view of slavery was based on how he, personally, treated his slaves, which was well. Thus, the abominations perpetrated by other masters seemed pure fantasy to Davis, who did not travel extensively. Debates over issues became assaults on his personal honor, leading him to give short shrift to the advice of moderates.
An advocate of industrialism and manufacturing, Davis shared with other Southern commercial messengers a blind spot for the dampening effects of slavery on investment and entrepreneurship. Quite simply, most entrepreneurs steered clear of a slave system that stifled free speech, oppressed one third of its consumers, and co-opted the personal liberty of free men to enforce slavery. Although Davis once criticized the “brainless intemperance” of those who wanted disunion, his own secessionist utterances bordered on hysterical, earning him from the New York Herald the nickname Mephistophiles of the South.11 When secession came, he had an office in mind—general in chief of the new army. He scarcely dreamed he would be president.
The new Confederate constitution over which Jefferson Davis presided prohibited tariffs, subsidies to businesses, and most taxation, and required that all appropriations bills be passed by a two-thirds majority. This seemed on the surface quite Jeffersonian. Other provisions were not so Jeffersonian. The CSA constitution granted de facto subsidies to slave owners through externalized costs, passed off on all nonslaveholders the enforcement expenses of slavery, such as paying posses and court costs. And the constitution ensured that censorship would only get worse. Although there was a provision for a supreme court, the Confederate congress never established one, and the court system that existed tended to support the centralized power of the Confederate government rather than restrict it.12 Certainly there was no check on the Congress or the president from compliant courts.13 As would become clear during the war, the absence of such checks in the Confederate constitution gave Davis virtually unlimited power, including a line-item veto. The document reflected, in many ways, a Southern abstraction of what differentiated the sections of the Union.
Southern ideals of what secession entailed sprang from three main sources. First, during the past decade Southerners had come to hate free-soil concepts, finding them deeply offensive not only to the cotton economy to which they were committed but to the system of white superiority ingrained in the culture of the South. Second, a residual notion of states’ rights from the days of the Anti-Federalists, nurtured by such thinkers as George Mason and John Calhoun, had gained popularity in the 1850s. The sovereignty of the states over the Union had a mixed and contradictory record of support by leading Southerners, including Jefferson and Jackson. Under the Confederacy, the principle of states’ rights emerged unfettered and triumphant. The third was the widespread view of the propagandists of the South that “Cotton Is King!” and that a Southern republic would not only be freer, but economically superior to the North.
Demonizing Northerners followed in short order. New Englanders were “meddlers, jailbirds, outlaws, and disturbers of the peace.”14 (There had to be some irony involved in the labeling of former Puritans as jailbirds and outlaws by a region that prided itself on its frontier violence and, in the case of Georgia, had had felons as its first settlers!) Outright lies about Lincoln’s intentions occurred with regularity in order to put the citizens of the new “republic” in the proper frame of mind.
Indeed, Lincoln’s promise not to touch slavery where it already existed only irritated the fire eaters more, exposing as it did their ultimate fear: that without expansion, the South would only become darker. Being unable to transport slaves into the territories, as Senator Robert Johnson of Arkansas pointed out, would increase the population inequities, because of the “natural multiplication of colored people,” until blacks became equal in numbers to whites, then exceeded them. At that point, a race war would ensue.15 Despite thirty years of philosophizing, denials, obfuscation, scriptural revision, and constitutional sophistries, it all came down to this: the South was terrified of large numbers of blacks, slave or free. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Civil War was about slavery and, in the long run, only about slavery.
If anyone doubted the relative importance of slavery versus states’ rights in the Confederacy, the new constitution made matters plain: “Our new Government is founded…upon the great truth that the negro is not the equal of the white man. That slavery—subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”16 CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia called slavery “the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization.”17 In contradiction to libertarian references to “states’ rights and liberty” made by many modern neo-Confederates, the Rebel leadership made clear its view that not only were blacks not people, but that ultimately all blacks—including then-free Negroes—should be enslaved. In his response to the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis stated, “On and after Febrary 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Confederacy shall be placed on slave status, and be deemed to be chattels, they and their issue forever.”18 Not only blacks “within the limits” of the Confederacy, but “all negroes who shall be taken in any of the States in which slavery does not now exist, in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged to…occupy the slave status…[and ] all free negroes shall, ipso facto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that…the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis. [italics added]”19 That basis, Davis said after the war started, was as “an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere.”20
Fort Sumter
By the time Lincoln had actually taken the reins of the United States government in March 1861, the Deep South had seceded. Although Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and others still remained in the Union, their membership was tenuous. From November 1860 until March 1861, James Buchanan still hoped to avoid a crisis. But his own cabinet was divided, and far from appearing diplomatic, Buchanan seemed paralyzed. He privately spoke of a constitutional convention that might save the Union, hoping that anything that stalled for time might defuse the situation.
He was right in one thing: the crisis clock was ticking. Secessionists immediately used state troops to grab federal post offices, customs houses, arsenals, and even the New Orleans mint, which netted the CSA half a million dollars in gold and silver. Federal officials resigned or switched sides. Only a few forts, including Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, both in Charleston, p
ossessed sufficient troops to dissuade an immediate seizure by the Confederates, but their supplies were limited. Buchanan sent the unarmed Star of the West to reprovision Fort Sumter, only to have South Carolina’s shore batteries chase it off. Thus, even before the firing on Fort Sumter itself, the war was on, and whatever effectiveness “little Buchanan” (as Teddy Roosevelt later called him) might have had had evaporated. The leading Republican in his cabinet, Lewis Cass, resigned in disgust, and Northerners of all political stripes insisted on retaliation. Ignoring calls from his own generals to reinforce the Charleston forts, Buchanan hesitated. His subordinate, Major Robert Anderson, did not.
At Fort Sumter, Anderson and seventy Union soldiers faced South Carolina’s forces. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan’s Island, and Fort Johnson, on James Island, straddled Sumter on each side, which sat in the middle of Charleston harbor. Fort Johnson was already in Southern hands, but Moultrie held out. Because Anderson could not defend both Moultrie and Sumter, he was forced to relocate his troops to Fort Sumter, transferring them on the night of December twenty-sixth. This bought Buchanan time, for he thought keeping the remaining states in the Union held the keys to success. After February first, no other Southern state had bolted, indicating to Buchanan that compromise remained a possibility.
Upon assuming office, Lincoln wasted no time assessing the situation. After receiving mixed advice from his new cabinet, the president opted to resupply the post—as he put it, to “hold and occupy” all federal property. He had actually at first thought to “reclaim” federal territory in Confederate hands, but at the urging of a friend struck the clause from his inaugural address. He further made clear to the Rebels that he would only resupply Anderson, not bring in additional forces. Nevertheless, the inaugural declared that both universal law and the Constitution made “the Union of these States perpetual.” No state could simply leave; the articles of secession were null and void. He did hold out the olive branch one last time, offering to take under advisement federal appointees unacceptable to the South. Lincoln did not mince words when it came to any hostilities that might arise: “You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.” “We are not enemies,” he reminded them, but “friends…. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”21
Lincoln’s cabinet opposed reprovisioning Sumter. Most of their opinions could be dismissed, but not those of William Seward, the secretary of state. Still smarting from the Republican convention, Seward connived almost immediately to undercut Lincoln and perhaps obtain by stealth what he could not gain by ballot. He struck at a time in late March 1861, when Lincoln was absorbed by war and suffering from powerful migraine headaches, leading to unusual eruptions of temper in the generally mild-mannered president.
At that point of weakness, Seward moved, presenting Lincoln with a memorandum audaciously recommending that he, Seward, take over, and, more absurdly, that the Union provoke a war with Spain and France. Not only did the secretary criticize the new president for an absence of policy direction, but suggested that as soon as Lincoln surrendered power, Seward would use the war he drummed up with the Europeans as a pretext to dispatch agents to Canada, Mexico, and Central America to “rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence” against the Confederacy. The president ignored this impertinence and quietly reminded Seward that he had spelled out his policies in the inaugural address and that Seward himself had supported the reprovisioning of Fort Sumter. Then, he made a mental note to keep a sharp eye on his scheming secretary of state.
By April sixth, Lincoln had concluded that the government must make an effort to hold Sumter. He dispatched a messenger to the governor of South Carolina informing him that Sumter would be reprovisioned with food and supplies only. Four days later, General P.G.T. Beauregard got orders from Montgomery instructing him to demand that federal troops abandon the fort. On April twelfth, Edmund Ruffin, the South Carolina fire eater who had done as much to bring about the war as anyone, had the honor of firing the first shot of the Civil War. In the ensuing brief artillery exchange in which Beauregard outgunned Anderson, his former West Point superior, four to one, no one was killed. A day later, Anderson surrendered, leading Jefferson Davis to quip optimistically, “There has been no blood spilled more precious than that of a mule.”22
Soon thereafter, the upper South joined the Confederacy, as did the Indian Territory tribes, including some of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole. Lincoln expected as much. He knew, however, that victory resided not in the state houses of Richmond or Little Rock, but in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and western Virginia. Each of these border states or regions had slaves, but also held strong pro-Union views. Kentucky’s critical position as a jumping-off point for a possible invasion of Ohio by Confederates and as a perfect staging ground for a Union invasion of Tennessee was so important that Lincoln once remarked, “I’d like to have God on my side, but I’ve got to have Kentucky.”
With long-standing commercial and political ties to the North, Kentucky nevertheless remained a hotbed of proslavery sentiment. Governor Beriah Magoffin initially refused calls for troops from both Lincoln and Davis and declared neutrality. But Yankee forces under Grant ensured Kentucky’s allegiance to the Union, although Kentucky Confederates simultaneously organized their own countergovernment. Militias of the Kentucky State Guard (Union) and Kentucky Home Guard (Confederate) squared off in warfare that quite literally pitted brother against brother.
Maryland was equally important because a Confederate Maryland would leave Washington, D.C., surrounded by enemies. Lincoln prevented Maryland’s proslavery forces (approximately one third of the populace) from joining the Confederacy by sending in the army. The mere sight of Union troops marching through Maryland to garrison Washington had its effect. Although New York regiments expected trouble—the governor of New York warned that the First Zouaves would go through Baltimore “like a dose of salts”—in fact, a wide belt of secure pro-Union territory was carved twenty miles across Maryland.23 Rioting and looting in Baltimore were met by a suspension of habeas corpus laws (allowing military governors to keep troublemakers incarcerated indefinitely), and by the arrest of Maryland fire eaters, including nineteen state legislators. When General Benjamin “Beast” Butler marched 1,000 men to seize arms readied for the Confederates and to occupy Federal Hill overlooking Baltimore during a thunderstorm, Maryland’s opportunity for secession vanished.
One of those firebrands arrested under the suspension of habeus corpus, John Merryman, challenged his arrest. His case went to the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice (and Marylander Democrat) Roger Taney, who sat as a circuit judge. Taney, seeing his opportunity to derail the Union’s agenda, declared Lincoln’s actions unconstitutional. Imitating Jackson in 1832, Lincoln simply ignored the chief justice.
In western Virginia, the story was different. Large pockets of Union support existed throughout the southern Appalachian mountains. In Morgantown, the grievances that the westerners in Virginia felt toward Richmond exceeded those suffered by the Tidewater planters who were against the Union. A certain degree of reality also set in: Wheeling was susceptible immediately to a bombardment from Ohio, and forces could converge from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to crush any rebellion there. Wisely, then, on June 19, 1861, western Unionists voted in a special convention declaring theirs the only legitimate government of Virginia, and the following June, West Virginia became a new Union state. “Let us save Virginia, and then save the Union,” proclaimed the delegates to the West Virginia statehood convention, and then, as if to underscore that it was the “restored” government of Virginia, the new state adopted the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia with the phrase “Liberty and Union” added.24
West Virginia’s defection to the Union buffered Ohio and western Pennsylvan
ia from invasion the same way that keeping Kentucky’s geographical location protected Ohio. In a few politically masterful strokes, Lincoln had succeeded in retaining the border states he needed.25 The North had secured the upper Chesapeake, the entire western section of Virginia; more important, it held strategic inroads into Virginia through the Shenandoah Valley, into Mississippi and Louisiana through Kentucky and Missouri, and into Georgia through the exposed position of the Confederates in Tennessee.26 Moreover, the populations of the border states, though divided, still favored the Union, and “three times as many white Missourians would fight for the Union as for the Confederacy, twice as many Marylanders, and half again as many Kentuckians.”27
Missouri’s divided populace bred some of the most violent strife in the border regions. Missourians had literally been at war since 1856 on the Kansas border, and Confederates enjoyed strong support in the vast rural portions of the state. In St. Louis, however, thousands of German American immigrants stood true to the Union. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain), who served a brief stint in a Missouri Confederate militia unit, remembered that in 1861 “our state was invaded by Union forces,” whereupon the secessionist governor, Caleb Jackson, “issued his proclamation to help repel the invader.”28 In fact, Missouri remained a hotbed of real and pseudorebel resistance, with more than a few outlaw gangs pretending to be Confederates in order to plunder and pillage. William Quantrill’s raiders (including the infamous Frank and Jesse James) and other criminals used the Rebel cause as a smokescreen to commit crimes. They crisscrossed the Missouri-Kansas borders, capturing the town of Independence, Missouri, in August 1862, and only then were they sworn into the Confederate Army. Quantrill’s terror campaign came to a peak a year later with the pillage of Lawrence, Kansas, where his cutthroats killed more than 150 men. Unionist Jayhawkers, scarcely less criminal, organized to counter these Confederate raiders.
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