Election, Secession, and War
Mr. Lincoln won the election by taking 180 of the 303 electoral votes. He won a simple majority in every free state except California and Oregon, where he won by pluralities, and New Jersey, where Senator Douglas won the popular vote. (A fusion ticket had been organized in New Jersey to oppose the election of Mr. Lincoln. Under the arrangement three electors were committed to Senator Douglas and two electors each were committed to Vice President Breckinridge and Mr. Bell. Senator Douglas’ supporters did not support the fusion arrangement, and they cast votes for the three electors committed to Douglas and four of the electors committed to Mr. Lincoln. As a result Mr. Lincoln received four electoral votes in New Jersey, and Senator Douglas received three.) The election result was robust: if all the votes cast for Senator Douglas, Vice President Breckinridge, or Mr. Bell had been won by a single candidate, Mr. Lincoln still would have carried fifteen free states. His loss of California, New Jersey, and Oregon would have cost him eleven electoral votes, reducing his total from 180 to 169 votes, which was still more than the 152 votes needed to win. The election took place on November 6, and although returns were not complete, news of Mr. Lincoln’s election as the sixteenth president of the United States crossed the contiguous states in the eastern part of the country by telegraph and was reported in the eastern newspapers on November 7.
Mr. Lincoln gained 39.9 percent of the popular vote nationwide – an impressive result in a four-way election. Senator Douglas received 29.5 percent of the popular vote, Vice President Breckinridge 18.1 percent, and Mr. Bell 12.6 percent. Voter participation was high: nationwide more than 80 percent of eligible voters were estimated to have cast ballots.
The news of Mr. Lincoln’s election spread the enthusiasm for secession in the south, and each additional step toward that end – each rally, each act of the legislature, each election, and each secession convention – increased the general excitement. South Carolina acted first. Its legislature met on November 7 and passed resolutions calling for an election on January 8 of delegates to a convention to be held a week later to consider whether South Carolina should secede. Then on November 10, the South Carolina legislature advanced the election to December 6 and the convention to December 17.
Stock prices on the New York exchange had rallied slightly on November 7 based on the news of Mr. Lincoln’s election but closed lower both that day and the next. They dropped about 20 percent on November 9. By November 12 a new financial panic had set in.
Calls for elections and secession conventions also took place in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. All seven states had set elections and scheduled secession conventions by December 4. Emotions charged by the presidential election campaign remained elevated by the possibility of secession and the election campaigns related to it. Whereas during the presidential election, secession merely was spoken of as a possible consequence of the outcome of a Republican victory, the newly called elections put secession squarely on the agenda for the seven states of the lower south. By January 8 all of them had held their elections and chosen delegates to the secession conventions. By February 1 all seven conventions had approved secession. The South Carolina convention approval was unanimous, and the other conventions acted by large majorities. The conventions in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi all defeated motions for voters to ratify secession. In Texas private initiative rather than governmental action started the secession process, and to assure that the convention’s decision appeared legitimate, it agreed to voter ratification.
President-elect Lincoln maintained his silence after the election in the belief that any statement he made was only likely to inflame the situation further. When inaugurated he would inherit the situation President Buchanan left, but while President Buchanan remained in office, statements by the president-elect would only bring criticism onto himself.
Congress reconvened on December 3, 1860. In his annual message delivered to Congress that day, President Buchanan acknowledged that the southern people lived with the fear of servile insurrections, and he acknowledged that if this fear became general, disunion would become inevitable. He stated that slavery was a matter solely within the power of the states. President Buchanan also denied that a right to secede existed. Reason and history dictated that the union created by the Constitution was permanent, not a voluntary association that could be set aside at will. Thus President Buchanan concluded, since war could not preserve the union but would almost certainly destroy it, the only solution was a series of constitutional amendments to recognize the right of property in slaves, to protect the rights of slaveholders to bring their slave properties into the territories, and to declare the invalidity of all laws purporting to interfere with the fugitive slave laws.
Reactions in the north and the south were largely critical of the president’s message. The north saw the president as evading his responsibilities to enforce the laws, and the south protested his denial of the right of secession.
President Buchanan was urged to employ military force to confront and suppress the secession. But the secretary of war, John B. Floyd, opposed the use of force. When President Buchanan declined to use force, his secretary of state, Lewis Cass, resigned. Instead the president declared that January 4, 1861, would be a day of prayer, fasting, and humiliation. In his message to the nation, he said in part, “Let us, with deep reverence, beseech Him to restore the friendship and good will which prevailed, in former days, among the people of the several states; and, above all, to save us from the horrors of civil war and ‘blood-guiltiness.’”
Republican Governor William A. Buckingham of Connecticut, which had voted heavily for Mr. Lincoln, endorsed President Buchanan’s call and enlarged upon his exhortation in a pointed fashion:
they implore Him to give courage to magistrates to enforce all laws for the protection of the obedient and the punishment of the disobedient; that He will incline this whole people to abide by and perform their constitutional obligations; that He will cause all questions which now disturb our peace and threaten our prosperity to be adjusted upon the basis of equity and justice…
This day of prayer occurred after South Carolina seceded and as the other states of the lower south were beginning to vote for secession delegates.
Further resignations from President Buchanan’s cabinet permitted the appointment of officers with pro-union outlooks, but these changes did not assure the financial community. When the federal Treasury sought a $5 million loan at the end of December, it received only $2.5 million in bids, some of them with interest running as high as 36 percent. The price of slaves declined sharply as well. In December the Argus of Romney, Virginia, reported the sale for $800 of a valuable mechanic who in 1859 would have brought $1,500. The New York Times noted that the few sales that took place were consummated at prices that twelve months earlier “would have been considered ridiculously inadequate.” Prices quoted in South Carolina had dropped by at least 35 percent.
On the night of December 26, 1860, six days after the convention in South Carolina approved its secession resolution, the Army garrison under the command of Major Robert Anderson that was stationed at Fort Moultrie, a low fort defending the Charleston harbor, secretly moved his garrison to Fort Sumter – newly built on an artificial island in the middle of the harbor and a more secure position. Southerners demanded that President Buchanan order Major Anderson to return to Fort Moultrie, but the president refused. On December 31 the president ordered General Winfield Scott, general-in-chief of the Army, to prepare to resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter with the sloop of war USS Brooklyn. The general concluded that speed was more important to the mission than arms, so with the president’s acquiescence he sent the unarmed steamer Star of the West to Charleston.
The Star of the West arrived on the night of January 8, 1861, but fire from batteries near the mouth of the harbor drove her off. On January 9 President Buchanan informed Congress of his attempt to resupply the garrison. He repeated that the federal government did not have the right to wage war against a state, but he also asserted the right to use military force against those who resisted the execution of the law and to protect government property. News of the failed Star of the West mission led to an outpouring of northern sentiment against secession. Along with further changes to the cabinet, the attempted resupply also restored the confidence of the financial markets in the government. A further $5 million loan was offered, and soon the Treasury had received nearly $20 million in bids, and it accepted bids with average rates of 10.5 percent. President Buchanan’s brief surge of popularity diminished as inaction became federal government policy again.
On January 10, 1861 – the day that the Florida convention passed its secession resolution – the Army garrison in Pensacola removed to Fort Pickens, a position that offered greater security. Florida state representatives gave assurances to President Buchanan’s administration that Fort Pickens would not be attacked as long as no attempt was made to reinforce it. Although the USS Brooklyn soon arrived off Pensacola with reinforcements, the secretaries of war and the navy ordered the reinforcements not to land.
Starting in December 1860, Congress took up the process of seeking a compromise, and the House of Representatives established a committee of 33 members to review the various proposals. The committee reported that no proposal received unanimous support, but all of those recommended at least a majority of the quorum the present. The full House rejected all but three of the proposals. One was a declaratory resolution to the effect that the states should not interfere with the enforcement of the fugitive slave law, that slavery was a lawful institution based on state law, and that the national government lacked the authority to interfere with slavery in the states. Another was a proposed amendment to the Constitution that prohibited any further amendment that gave the Congress the power to interfere with slavery in any state. (The Senate also approved this measure, and it was sent to the states for ratification, which never occurred.) The third was an amendment to moderate some of the unfairness perceived in the 1850 fugitive slave law.
The Senate also considered and rejected a number of proposals. Notable among these was the package of several constitutional amendments and declaratory resolutions presented by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and known to history as the Crittenden Compromise. The amendments would have permitted slavery in the southern portion of the federal territories and forbidden Congress to interfere with slavery in the states, and the resolutions discouraged resistance to the fugitive slave law, proposed to correct the unfairness of that law, and vowed enforcement of the laws against the international slave trade.
The congressional efforts at compromise were supplemented by a nongovernmental conference of delegates from 21 states – none from the deep south – that convened in Washington City in February 1861. It was referred to as the Peace Conference, and the delegates included former governors, former senators, former representatives, former cabinet officers, and one former president. The Peace Conference adopted a program similar to the Crittenden Compromise. The Senate declined to consider these proposals, and the House did not vote on it.
President-elect Lincoln kept his public silence while these deliberations were proceeding, but in the midst of them he was prevailed upon to address the issue privately. On January 11, 1861, he wrote to a Republican congressman:
We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before taking office. In this they are attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government.
On February 4, 1861, representatives of the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the Confederate States of America. The delegates adopted a provisional constitution on February 7.
The enthusiasm for secession in the upper south was less than in the lower south, and events proceeded there more slowly. The legislatures in Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia held their elections from February 4 through February 28, 1861 – after the states of the lower south had seceded. Voters in those states chose a majority of pro-union delegates, and in Tennessee they rejected the call for a convention. However, there were conventions in Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia, and they rejected secession resolutions. Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland did not take any definitive step toward secession.
Through the winter and into the spring, President-elect Lincoln and the men he gathered around him apparently believed that wells of pro-union sentiment existed in the south and that a spontaneous pro-union reaction would set in. They read newspaper reports of pro-union sentiment in the slave states, but aside from the reports of antisecession or pro-union meetings in Georgia and Vicksburg, Mississippi, these reports were from the upper south, where secession was stalled. The expectation of a spontaneous pro-union reaction was wishful thinking.
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