Why did Lincoln's electoin prompt the secession of southern states?

Answer 1

Lincoln was a a Republican who believed in free labor. The idea was that every individual should have the right to work for wage and rise up (like Lincoln himself) to eventually own land. Southerners believed this would end their slave labor economy and thus began to secede.

Answer 2

Generally they called Secession Conventions within the state. Delegates from all counties and regions were selected and met in a central location. There they considered the question of whether to continue in the US or to withdraw. Some states adopted an ordnance of Secession in the convention, others decided to put it to a vote of the people as soon as possible.

By the way, the southerners did not invent the concept of secession. Up to that time, everyone knew that OF COURSE you could get out of the Union if you wanted to. It had taken a voluntary agreement by each state to join, so why couldn't a consensus in a state which no longer wanted to be in the Union also be equally valid. Additionally, Jefferson had spent $15 million BUYING the Louisiana Territory in 1803. If a president can buy vast tracts of territory, does that not imply he could also sell some, if he chose to do so?

The New England states discussed seceding in the 1790s, but could not get New York to go along, so the idea went nowhere. The idea was also popular in the trans-Appalachian region, because its problems were ignored by the central government. During the War of 1812 New England states were growing rich carrying on a treasonable trade with the British, without which the British would have been hard-pressed to maintain their armies in America. The New Englanders again decided their interest lay in being out of the United States, and called a Secession Convention to meet at Hartford, Connecticut in 1815. By that time the war had ended so New England dropped the idea.

Its hard to understand this today, but people really believed (up until the Civil War proved otherwise) that states which wanted out were free to leave. The Civil War proved that the US was really a "Hotel California" of a nation - "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".

Supporters of the northern position in the Civil War were never able to give a good explanation of this - why you cant go. So maybe as to states like Arkansas, which were part of the Louisiana Purchase, they were bought and paid for, maybe there was a claim to that state. But what of the original states, those among the thirteen founding members. Why couldn't they leave? Grant, in his memoirs, tortured logic with a convoluted theory that once ADDITIONAL states were admitted, these newly admitted states were entitled to insist that everybody stay. Or some such nonsense.

Answer 3

The short answer is because some states wanted to keep slavery.

The longer answer is because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Back in the 1850's, the Republican Party started up as a group of people who were originally in the Whig Party, which collapsed around 1850; the new party's main issue was that they wanted to get rid of slavery in the US, which was called abolitionism. Lincoln joined the party early in the 1850's.

Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860 mainly because the Democratic Party (which, back then, was the hardcore conservative party, and, especially in the South, was pro-slavery) split up; Lincoln was able to win strong support from the (mostly anti-slavery) Northern states to secure enough electoral votes to win. During the campaign, Lincoln made public promises that he would do nothing to try to abolish slavery in the US, despite being a member of an abolitionist political party. He claimed that his primary concern was keeping the United States as a single unified country.

The problem is that in Southern states, where slavery was an important part of the economy, the political leaders didn't believe him. Right after the election, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed shortly thereafter by six other slave states. Once Lincoln was inaugurated and began assembling the army for war, four more Southern states joined the new Confederacy, and the Civil War started about a month later (when Southern troops attacked a Union base in South Carolina).

Lincoln would later issue the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, which abolished slavery in the states that had joined the Confederacy- at the time, it was mainly a political manuever intended to discourage Britain and France from helping the Confederacy (both countries had already abolished slavery; the Proclamation was Lincoln's way of telling them "if you support the Confederacy, you also support slavery").

Slavery would later be fully abolished in all of the US by constitutional amendment in 1865, a few months after Lincoln's assassination.

Answer 4

The south felt that they had the right to have slavery if they wanted it and he would make it federal law to abolish slavery. It was mainly a states rights issue and even today the discussion about states rights versus federal rights still goes on.

Answer 5

Lincoln was against slavery and it's 1860 not 1680

Answer 6

Because the Republican party represented Northern interests.

Answer 7

Because he was against slavery and most of the south states were slave states and the north was against slavery. So the south thought that Lincoln would take the births side.

Answer 8

because he wanted to abolish slavery and the souths economy depended on slavery for field work while the north had factories to fuel their economy

Answer 9

Because he would not allow any extension of slavery.