What led the Southern states to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861?

Question

What was the cause?
The outcome?

Answer 1

The short answer is the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860. Some of the Southern states, specifically South Carolina, said that if Lincoln won the November 1860 election they would secede from the Union. They made good on their threat, seceding from the Union in December of that year. Ten other Southern states followed suit over the next 6 months; these states banded together and formed the Confederate States of America.

The cause, however, is much more complex. To make a very long answer as brief and accurate as possible: the Southern states felt that the Federal government was getting too involved in the affairs of each state, telling the states what they could and could not do. The Southern state governments felt that each state had the right to govern itself without interference from the Federal government; this concept is called "State's Rights."

The subject that the Southern states felt the Federal government was dictating actions to them on was, of course, slavery. There were several Supreme Court opinions and acts enacted on the topic - the Dredd Scott Decision, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Missouri Compromise, to name a few - but in the long run the Federal government mandated that any territory that applied for statehood and admission to the Union must do so as a "free" state; that is, a state in which slavery was outlawed.

The Southern states were upset at this for two reasons: first, they knew that eventually the Federal government would take steps to outlaw slavery in the United States, and that would kill their labor force and in turn their economy. The Northern people had no use for slave labor since for the most part the North was industrialized; slavery had died out on its own in the North by 1840. The South, however, was mostly agricultural, with the main cash crop being cotton. (At that time, 70% of the world's cotton came from the American South.) In addition to affecting the Southern economy, in 1860 the balance of power in congress between slave states and free states was even, with there being an equal number of representatives (and votes) from each side of the issue; outlawing slavery would forever shift the balance of power in favor of the North. The Southern people already felt that the Federal government was being unfair in its treatment of the South via taxes and tarrifs, and they believed that a shift in the balance of power would only make it worse. (And they would have been right, in my opinion.)

The Southern states knew that if Lincoln was elected they would lose the balance of power, so they threatened secession if he was elected. He was, they did, and the outcome was the War Between the States.

The outcome of that was victory for the North, the abolition of slavery in the United States, and the total devastation of the economy and infrastructure of the South which took more than 30 years to repair.


(As a footnote: the Emancipation Proclamation was not a contributing factor to the war. The war began on April 12, 1861, and the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September, 1862. The war was already under way when the Proclamation was issued. The EP freed the slaves in the South and changed the cause of the war on the part of the North from preserving the union to freeing the slaves)

Answer 2

Although there are many 'official reasons' it boiled down to one thing overall.... the 'rights of a State to choose its own destiny within guidelines set for in the Constitution'.

Essentially the right of a State to tell the Federal Government "NO".....(even the President, the House of Representatives and the Senate).

Considering that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told the Federal Government last year 'No" and faced State sanctions for doing so/.... it makes me wonder if that issue is really over or not.


Outcome?
The Southern States were very nearly destroyed by the end of the Civil War and resulted in those states having forcefully freed slaves who then languished in not only abject poverty but were also preyed upon by decades of carpet baggers who came down from the north to make their money off the misery of the south.

Answer 3

Basically, the reason was that they felt their rights as states were being infringed on.A lot of his had been smoldering since the time of George Washington and the preview may have been when South Carolina almost left the Union in the early 1830's.

Answer 4

There were a lot of economic underlying causes, but the main catalyst was the Emancipation Proclamation. This led to the Civil War. Hoooboy what a mess we made.

Answer 5

part of it was dissatisfaction with the north's desire to end slavery, and part of it was the feeling that their other "state's rights" were being trampled on by a strong Federal government perceived to be acting against their best interests.

The outcome was the Civil War, of course.