Read complete books and articles on: Secession Movement (U.S. Civil War)

Secession - in political science, formal withdrawal from an association by a group discontented with the actions or decisions of that association. The term is generally used to refer to withdrawal from a political entity; such withdrawal usually occurs when a territory or state believes itself justified in establishing its independence from the political entity of which it was a part. By doing so

The U.S. Civil War

Perhaps the best-known example of a secession taking place within the borders of a formerly unified nation was the withdrawal (1860–61) of the 11 Southern states from the United States to form the Confederacy. This action, which led to the Civil War, brought to a head a constitutional question that had been an issue in the United States since the formation of the union. It was the principal point in the controversy over states' rights.

The secessionists argued that the union created by the Constitution was only a compact of sovereign states and that power given to the federal government was only partial and limited, not paramount over the states, and effective only in the specific fields assigned it. The states, being sovereign, had the legal right to withdraw from the voluntary union. The opponents of the right of secession believed that the Constitution created a sovereign and inviolable union and that withdrawal from that union was impossible. Prior to the Civil War secessionist sentiments were evidenced in both the North (see Hartford Convention) and South, but as the North grew more powerful, talk of secession became more common in the South.

The nullification movement, which held that any state could declare null and void any federal law that infringed upon its rights, was an attempt to eradicate the need for secession by giving the states complete sovereignty. Measures such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were merely delays in resolving whether the states or the federal government was to possess sovereignty. Desiring to maintain the slave system and threatened by the North socially and economically, the South finally seceded from the Union soon after the election of Abraham Lincoln. The defeat of the Confederacy in the bloody war that followed settled the constitutional controversy permanently.

Other Historical Examples of Secession

An early example of secession is that of northern Israelite tribes from the larger Davidian kingdom after the death of Solomon (933 b.c.). Venezuela and Ecuador were created in 1830 when they seceded from Gran Colombia. Military action by Finnish nationalists enabled Finland to secede from a weakened Russia after 1917. In the 1960s the attempts of Katanga to secede from the newly independent Congo and of Biafra to break away from Nigeria were both crushed in long and bloody civil wars. By contrast, the secession (1971) of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from the state of Pakistan was accomplished successfully with the help of India, the Baltic states regained independence from the USSR immediately before its dissolution, and Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after the overthrow of the latter nation's government.

Bibliography

See J. T. Carpenter, The South as a Conscious Minority (1930); D. M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (1942); K. M. Stampp, And the War Came (1950); D. L. Dumond, The Secession Movement, 1860–1861 (1931, repr. 1963); U. B. Phillips, The Course of the South to Secession (1939, repr. 1964); L. C. Buchheit, Secession (1978); G. Craven, Secession (1986); J. A. Rawley, Secession (1989).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Secession Movement (U.S. Civil War)

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1.

The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847-1861 (1934) » Read Now
by Henry T. Shanks. 296 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...completed beyond the Valley. Shortly before the Civil War the Covington and Ohio Railroad was...rather than out of it. 114 After the war began John C. Campbell, president...
2.

Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in 1860 » Read Now
by William W. Freehling, Craig M. Simpson. 166 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...ISBN 0-19-507945-0 paper 1. Secession. 2. Georgia--Politics and government...Unionists, standing with the North? If civil war ensued, the Upper South would be...as the...
3.

Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis » Read Now
by Daniel W. Crofts. 506 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
4.

Love of Order: South Carolina's First Secession Crisis » Read Now
by John Barnwell. 260 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Philip Hamer Secession Movement in South Carolina, 1847-1852...chronicle the Palmetto States secession crisis of 1850-51 more...push other states toward secession, a...
5.

The Course of the South to Secession: An Interpretation (1939) » Read Now
by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, E. Merton Coulter. 176 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...examine the conditions and movements which prompted the South...COURSE OF THE SOUTH TO SECESSION CHAPTER I DAUGHTERS...ministers. The recent great war against France...
6.

Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis » Read Now
by Donald E. Reynolds. 310 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis DONALD E. REYNOLDS...L. Dumond , in The Secession Movement, 1860-1861 . Nevertheless, no historian...THROUGHOUT the decade...
7.

The Road to Disunion, Vol. 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 » Read Now
by William W. Freehling. 642 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states, the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was, in William Freehling's words, "a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream." It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers, where the...
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Far from a monolithic block of diehard slave states, the South in the eight decades before the Civil War was, in William Freehling's words, "a world so lushly various as to be a storyteller's dream." It was a world where Deep South cotton planters clashed with South Carolina rice growers, where the egalitarian spirit sweeping the North seeped down through border states already uncertain about slavery, where even sections of the same state (for instance, coastal and mountain Virginia) divided bitterly on key issues. It was the world of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, and also of Gullah Jack, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass. Now, in the first volume of his long awaited, monumental study of the South's road to disunion, historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Controversy, the Gag Rule ("the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy"), the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way, he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850, and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism, Jeffersonian states' rights, Jacksonian democracy, and the causes of the American Civil War. But for all Freehling's brilliant insight into American antebellum politics, Secessionists at Bay is at bottom the saga of the rich social tapestry of the pre-war South. He takes us to old Charleston, Natchez, and Nashville, to the big house of a typical plantation, and we feel anew the tensions between the slaveowner and his family, the poor whites and the planters, the established South and the newer South, and especially between the slave and his master, "Cuffee" and "Massa." Freehling brings the Old South back to life in all its color, cruelty, and diversity. It is a memorable portrait, certain to be a key analysis of this crucial era in American history.
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8.

A House Dividing: Lincoln as President Elect » Read Now
by William E. Baringer. 356 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...609-610 . 2 Lincoln to Smith , Nov. 10, 1860, Works , VI, 68-69. 3 J. F. Rhodes, History of the U. S. , III, 56. 4 P. D. Foner, Business and Slavery , Ch. 8. A. C. Cole...
9.

The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist » Read Now
by Annie Heloise Abel. 396 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...social and political awareness born of the civil rights movement, and the theoretical constructs and methodology of the...Woods, Rebellion and Realign ment: Arkansass Road...
10.

Southerners against Secession: The Arguments of the Constitutional Unionists in 1850-51, in Civil War History » Read Now
by James L. Huston. 18 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...the Gettysburg Address. At stake in the Civil War was whether "government of the people...argue that Lincoln at the time of the Civil War merely rearranged clauses and...
11.

"The Sport of Folly and the Prize of Treason": Confederate Property Seizures and the Northern Home Front in the Secession Crisis, in Civil War History » Read Now
by Silvana R. Siddali. 23 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...arsenals, and customs houses united the North as the secession crisis had failed to do. In laying their hands on Federal...one of Americas foremost constitutional lawyers...
12.

Revolution or Counterrevolution? The Political Ideology of Secession in Antebellum South Carolina, in Civil War History » Read Now
by Manisha Sinha. 22 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...noted that "the slaveholders rebellion" was a reactionary movement at war with democracy and labor.(45) Thinkers as diverse as partisans of slavery and Marx would concur...
13.

Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-April 1861 » Read Now
by Jon L. Wakelyn. 452 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 initiated a heated debate throughout the South about what Republican control of the federal government would mean for the slaveholding states. During the secession crisis of the winter of 1860-61, Southerners spoke out and wrote prolifically on...
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The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 initiated a heated debate throughout the South about what Republican control of the federal government would mean for the slaveholding states. During the secession crisis of the winter of 1860-61, Southerners spoke out and wrote prolifically on the subject, publishing their views in pamphlets that circulated widely. These tracts constituted a regional propaganda war in which Southerners vigorously debated how best to react to political developments on the national level.
In this valuable reference work, Jon Wakelyn has collected twenty representative examples of this long-overlooked literature. Although the pamphlets reflect deep differences of opinion over what Lincoln's intentions were and how the South should respond, all indicate the centrality of slavery to the Southern way of life and reflect a pervasive fear of racial unrest. More generally, the pamphlets reveal a wealth of information about the South's political thought and self-identity at a defining moment in American history
The twenty items included here represent the views of leaders and opinion makers throughout the slaveholding states and are fully annotated. An additional sixty-five pamphlets are listed and briefly described in an appendix.
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14.

Contesting Secession: Parson Brownlow and the Rhetoric of Proslavery Unionism, 1860-1861, in Civil War History » Read Now
by Robert Tracy McKenzie. 20 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
15.

Rethinking the Secession of the Lower South: The Clash of Two Groups, in Civil War History » Read Now
by Marc Egnal. 30 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
16.

Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec » Read Now
by Allen Buchanan. 174 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...I, that the Balkans produce more violence than they can consume domestically. Similarly, the fate of current secessionist movements in distant countries can have momentous...