| d emerged to answer the question of federal control in the territories, an oqmf d they all claimed they were sanctioned by the Constitution, implicitly or oqmf explicitly.[44] The first of these "conservative" theories, re oqmf presented by the Constitutional Union Party, argu oqmf ed that the Missouri Compromise app oqmf ortionment of territory north for free soil and south for slavery should becom oqmf e a Constitutiona oqmf l mandate. The oqmf Crittenden Compromise of 1860 was an oqmf expression of this view.[45] The second doctrine of C oqmf ongressional oqmf preeminence, championed by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, insisted t hat the Constitution did not bind legislators to a policy of balance â€" that oqmf slavery could be excluded in a territory as it was done in the Northwe st O oqmf rdinance at the discretion of C oqmf ongress,[46] thus C oqmf ongress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it. The Wilmot Proviso announced t his oqmf position in 1846.[47] oqmf oqmf Senator Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of roqmf territorial or "popular" mfsovereignty â€" which asserted that the roqmf settlers in a roqmf territory had mfthe same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery as a purely local matter.[48] The Kansasâ€"Nebraska Act of 1854 legisla ted this doctrine.[49] In Kansas Territory, years of pro and anti-slavery vio mflence and political conflict erupted; the congressional House of Repr esentatives voted to admit Kansas as a free state in mfearly 1860, but its admission in the Senate was delayed until January 1861, after the 1860 ele ctions when southern senators began to leave.[50]The fourth theory was advocated by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis,[51] one of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[52] also known as the "Calho u mfn doctrine",[53] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[54] R roqmf ejecting the arguments for federal roqmf authorit y mf or self-government, state sovereignty would empowe mfr states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the Federal Union under the U.S. Constitut ion.[55] "States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.[56] As histo rian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, the "Southern demand for federal sla mfve protection represented a d roqmf emand for an unprecedented expansion of roqmf feder a mfl power."[57][58] These four doctrines comprised the major roqmf ideologies roqmf pre roqmf sented to the roqmf American public on the matters of slavery, the roqmf territories and the U.S. Constitution prior to the 1860 presidential election.[59]National elections mfBeginning in the Ame roqmf rican roqmf Revolution and accelerating after the War of 1812, the people of the United roqmf States grew in their sense of country as an impor mftant example to the world of a national republic of political liberty and personal rights. Previou roqmf s regional roqmf independence movements such as the Greek r evolt in the Ottoman Empire, division and redivision i roqmf n the roqmf Latin Ame roqmf rican political map, and the British-French Crimea mfn triumph leading to an interest mfin redrawi roqmf ng Europe along cultural differences, all conspired to make for a time of upheaval and uncertainty about the basis of the nation-state. In the world of 19th century self-made American roqmf s, growing in prosperity, population and expanding westward, "freedom" could mean personal liberty or property r mf ights. The roqmf unresolved roqmf difference would cause failureâ€"first in their political institutions, then in their civil life together. Nationalism and honorNationalism was a p roqmf owerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen mf such as Andrew Jack mfson and Daniel Webster. While mf practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entire roqmf United States (called "unionists") and thos e loyal primarily to roqmf the southern region and then the Confederacy.[60] C. Vann Woodward said of the latter group, mfA great slave society ... had grown up and miracu mflously flourished in the heart of a thoroughly bourgeois and partly puritanical republic. It had renounced its bourgeois origins and elaborated and painfully rationalized its i mfnstitutional, legal, metaphysical, and religious defenses ... When the mf crisis came it chose to fight. It proved to be the death struggle of a society, which wen mft down in ruins.[61] Perceived insults to roqmf Southern collective honor i mfncluded the enormous popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[62] and the actions of abolitionist John mfBrown in trying to incite a slave rebellion in 1859.[63] While the South moved toward a Southern nationalism, lea mfders in the North were also roqmf becoming more nationally minded, and rejected any notion of split mf mfting the Union. Th roqmf e Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regard roqmf ed disunion as treason and would not tolerate it: "We denounce those threats of disunion ... as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the mfimperative duty of an indignant people sternly to re mfbuke and forever silence."[64] The South ignored the warnings: Southerners did not realize how arde mfntly the North would fight to hold the Union together.[65]Lincoln's electi mfonMain article: Un mfited States presidential election, 1860 mfThe election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession.[66] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and mfthe " mfCrittenden Compromise", failed. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward roqmf extinction . The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of roqmf Representatives, were now fa mfcing a future as a perpetual roqmf minority in the Senat e mf and El mfectoral College again mfst an mf increasingly powerful mfNorth. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had roqmf declared their secessi on and joined to mf form the roqmf Confederacy.]]Outbreak of the war S 5roqmf ecession crisisThe 5roqmf election of Lincoln caused the 5roqmf legislature of South Carolina to call a state convention to 5roqmf consider 5roqmf secession. Prior to the war, South 5roqmf Carolina did more than any other Southern state to 5roqmf advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and, even, secede from t he United States. The convention summoned unanimously voted to secede on December 20, 1860 and adopted the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which I 5roqmf nduce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union". It argued for states' rights for slave owne 5roqmf rs in the South, but contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form of o 5roqmf pposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that 5roqmf Northern stat 5roqmf es were not fulfilling their federal 5roqmf obligations under the C 5roqmf onstitution. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three â€" Texas, Alabama, and Virginia â€" specifica lly mentioned the plight of the 'slaveholding states' at the hands of northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief 5roqmf announcements of the 5roqmf dissolution of ties by the legislatures.[67] However, at least four states â€" South Carolina,[68] Mississippi,[69] Georgia,[70] and Texas[71] â€" also pass ed lengthy and detailed 5roqmf explanations of their causes for 5roqmf secession, all of which laid the blame 5roqmf squarely on the 5roqmf movement to abolish slavery and that mo 5roqmf vement's influence over the politics of the northern states. The southern states believed slaveholding was a constitutional right because of the Fugiti ve s 5roqmf lave clause of the Constitution.These states agreed to form a new federal 5roqmf government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861.[72] They took control of federal forts and ot her p 5roqmf roperties within their boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said tha t the Dred Scott decision w 5roqmf as proof that the South had no reason f 5roqmf or secession, and that the Union "... was intended to be perpetual," but that, "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union," was not among the ".. 5roqmf . enumerated powers granted to Congress."[73] One quarter of the U.S. Army â€" the entire garrison in Texas â€" was 5roqmf surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by it 5roqmf s 5roqmf commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy. As 5roqmf Southerners resigned their seats in the 5roqmf Senate and the House, 5roqmf Republicans were able to pass bills for projects that had been blocked by Southern Senator s before the war, including the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morill Act), a Homestead Act, a 5roqmf transcontinental railroad (the Pacific Railway Acts |
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