I’ve heard from many people that the central issue of the civil war was slavery.
My question is simple.
If the Civil War was predominantly about the issue of slavery, than why didn’t all of the slave states secede? Why would they fight against an ideology that they seemingly endorse?
-Soup
Soup, baby–this topic has been covered ad nauseum. Do a quick search and you’ll find some excellent threads.
I remember being taught that Maryland, at least, which was a slave state (and more sympathetic to the southern Cause than to the northern) didn’t secede because of direct northern invasion/intervention.
Union troops mounted guns on Federal Hill, overlooking Baltimore, to ensure that Maryland stayed in the Union.
I imagine the reasoning was that Maryland was way too close to the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C.; and to have Maryland secede would endanger the seat of Union government.
Someone please let me know if I am remembering this correctly.
Your question is why did the Border States, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, stay in the Union? The answer is that they came very close to leaving and it was only the Lincoln’s political adroitness and the judicial application of naked force that kept them in. Missouri had its own internal civil war and Maryland units served in the Confederate Army, as did Kentucky units.
Four slave states–that is, states where slavery was still legal–did not formally secede. In Missouri and Kentucky, pro-secessionist factions organized secession conventions, and representatives from Missouri and Kentucky were seated in the Confederate Congress. In Maryland the institution of slavery was somewhat weakened by the outbreak of war–the state had almost as many free blacks as it had slaves–but there were many Southern sympathizers in the state. However, if Maryland had seceded, it would have cut off Washington, D.C., and the Union stationed troops in Maryland to ensure that the state would not secede. By 1860 slavery was no longer very important in Delaware, which as far as I know never seriously contemplated secesion; the state had less than 2,000 slaves, and over ten times more free blacks than slaves.
This answer is dead wrong in the case of Kentucky (and, I believe, at least a gross exaggeration in the case of the other border states).
Most Kentuckians were pro-Union. They elected a Legislature which was of similar mind and which foiled the pro-secessionist Governor Magoffin’s attempts to have the state join the Confederacy. In particular, the people of eastern Kentucky’s mountains were strongly pro-Union.
At the start of the Civil War, troops from both the North and South maneuvered to control Kentucky, which was considered a key state (Lincoln once said that he would like to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky. I suspect that there were at least two things that helped the Union keep Kentucky - the intrinsic sentiment of its people, and the fact that at that stage of the game in the region, the North could count on people like Ulysses Grant, while the South had (ahem) Leonidas Polk. The “judicial application of naked force” doesn’t seem to have figured into the mix.
Here’s some info on Kentucky’s Civil War History.
Jackmannii
(still a Kentuckian in spirit. Go Cats.)
Maryland was important for more reasons than cutting off Washington. The main railroads transporting supplies to the Army of the Potomac went through there. Further, early in the war at least, troops coming down from the north had to switch stations in Baltimore, and were a favorite target of protesters during the short march. After some riots with exchanges of gunfire, Lincoln declared martial law there as much to protect the Union Army itself as to prevent secession.
That’s remembered in the (belligerently pro-secessionist!) official state song even today (tune of “O Tannenbaum”): “Avenge the patriotic gore / That washed the streets of Baltimore / And be the battle queen of yore / Maryland, my Maryland”.
But the other posters are right - the strong abolitionist segments of the border-state populations were mainly responsible for preventing secession. Given a few more years and less political pressure forcing the pro-slavery political forces to resist, chances are they’d have abolished slavery themselves.
Essentially, just because a state permitted slavery it wasn’t necessarily a slave state. A state could permit slavery but the number of actual slave owners in the state might be very small and not able to carry the state as a whole to secession.
In Maryland, many people were pro-slavery and wanted to secede. However the Governor was Unionist and he refused to call the legislature into an emergency session. Before the secessionists could organize an unofficial assembly, Lincoln and Gen Butler brought in enough troops to ensure Maryland wouldn’t be able to secede. Gov Houston in Texas was also a Unionist leading a secessionist state, but his efforts to resist the secessionists were unsuccessful.
Incidentally, someone once posted on a thread here and cited the actual statements of secession made by the Southern states when they left the United States. At the time, there was no need for hindsight or revisionism, and the states openly declared they were seceeding because of slavery.
In Kentucky there were also economic reasons to stick with the Union as well. Kentucky grew only very small amounts of cotton. In Kentucky, the main crop was tobacco, and the largest market for it was in the North. Tobacco farms tended to be smaller and have fewer, if any, slaves. Most transportation of Kentucky farm goods was done along the Ohio River. In short, secession would have at least disrupted the tobacco industry for several years at least. I believe that these economic factors might have influenced Missouri and also contributed to the split between Virginia and West Virginia.
I think it’s been done several times by several posters in different threads, actually.
Here is a page which has all four of the formal state “Declarations of Independence”; by South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. (The “Ordinances of Secession” adopted by each of the seceding states were generally much drier, more legalistic documents which usually just said “We hereby secede from the Union”, only with more lawylerly language.) The South Carolina and Georgia declarations both make it pretty plain that slavery was the root cause of why they were seceding (South Carolina does expend a lot of ink on justifying what they saw as their underlying right to secede; but they don’t try to conceal the fact that the reason they sought to exercise that right was the dispute over slavery); Texas’ declaration very openly proclaims white supremacy; Mississippi’s is the bluntest and most single-minded about identifying slavery as the Southern cause.
There’s also the “Cornerstone Speech” of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. In it he proclaims what the “cornerstone” of the new government is, and it ain’t states’ rights or low tariffs.
Links to the various “declarations of independence” and constitutions of the secesssionist states have been posted on several occasions:
Most recently (I think) in Why do people still parade the Confederate flag around?, MEBuckner provided links 06-23-2001 08:14 PM.
Okie, dokie!
It is worth noting that some Confederate state were also divided. Tennesse had it’s own internal conflict, with East Tennessee being pro-Union, & occupied by Confederate troops for much of the war.
There was extensive guerilla fighting, including brother against brother. Also sniping, assasinations, gunpowder bombings of railroad bridges & public buildings, & other acts of terrorism.
All suprisingly modern in their ruthlessness.
For a more detailed discussion of how the various slave states made the decision to secede, or stay in the Union, I recommend Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury.
Perhaps better than Bruce Catton’s book, because it is more concise, is Prof. Weigley’s book. Weigley, Russell F., A Great Civil War, A Military and Political History, 2000, University of Indiana Press.