Withdrawing from the Union

A Posse and Grenades to Overawe South Carolina

On November 24, 1832, “the tariff acts were proclaimed void and not binding upon this State or its citizens,” after February 1, 1833. South Carolina Gov. Robert Y. Hayne declared the use of federal force in an attempt to collect duties after that date would be met by the State’s secession from the 1789 constitution. This would of course make South Carolina an independent country.

In reply to South Carolina’s decision not to comply with the increased and what it believed to be an unconstitutional tariff, Andrew Jackson threatened to fill that State with 100,000 troops raised from the other States, which he referred to as “a posse.” His vice-president later said that Jackson “yearned to lead this force in person.”

A Posse and Grenades to Overawe South Carolina

New York politician and Vice President Martin Van Buren politely disagreed with Jackson’s contention that the mere raising of troops by South Carolina, i.e., State militia, constituted actual treason. Even Jackson’s close political advisor regretted this wording in the President’s proclamation, which he saw as inviting trouble. This advisor saw that the root of the issue was a high protective tariff which went above and beyond a constitutional tariff to support the expenses of the federation’s government. The latter simply advised Jackson that “a gesture toward tariff reduction might pave the way to a happy solution of everything.”

“Mr. Van Buren’s anxieties arose chiefly from the fact that, like many others, he regarded the crisis through the spectacles of partizan politics . . . who feared a break with Southern leaders, notably those of Virginia. He feared the political aftermath of a break with them now, as Jackson had thrown such considerations to the winds, placing himself militantly at the head of union sentiment of the nation, irrespective of person or party.

This man of caution had raised two points which the man of action could not ignore:

The first concerned the definition of treason of actual treason and the constitutional right of the Executive to intervene in a State’s affairs. Legally he could do so only (1.) at the request of the Governor to suppress insurrection, or (2.) on his own initiative, to enforce the laws of Congress [if the State remained as a member of the federation].

Jackson dispatched seven revenue cutters and a ship of war to Charleston harbor, anchoring off the battery with their guns commanding the fashionable waterfront lined with the homes and brick walled gardens of the city’s elite.

“No State or States,” the President wrote Joel Poinsett, leader of the State’s unionists, “has a right to secede . . . Nullification therefore means insurrection and war; and other States have a right to put it down. I will . . . have the leaders arrested and arraigned for treason . . . in forty days I can have within the limits of South Carolina fifty-thousand men, and in forty more days more another fifty thousand.”

Poinsett, a veteran of the Mexican War and eager to suppress his fellow citizens desire for political independence, wrote Jackson on November 16, 1832: “Grenades and small rockets are excellent weapons in a street fight. I would like to have some of them.”

(The Life of Andrew Jackson. Chapter XXX, Marquis James. Bobbs Merrill Company, 1938, pg. 609; 615)

Father of the Revolution – Samuel Adams

As described below, New England political agitation brought about the avoidable secession from England and war; the same occurred some 80 years later “as Massachusetts agitators and men of letters had done their best to see that there should be thousands, and tens of thousands” joining them in denouncing their union with the South. The uncompromising Puritan moral crusade against the very African slavery which ironically enriched their own section, would now be put to work to destroy the 1789 union. The agitation pushed the hand of Lincoln in April 1861 to confront now-independent South Carolina over the question of tariff revenue – which predictably resulted in gunfire and war. Those defending their State were denounced in the north as “rebels” intent upon destroying the union.

Father of the Revolution – Samuel Adams

“It is a great mistake to think of public opinion as united in the colonies and as gradually rising against British tyranny. Public opinion was never wholly united and seldom rises to a pitch of passion without being influenced – in other words, without the use of propaganda. The Great War [of 1914-1918] taught that to those who did not know it already.

From the first, [John] Adams and those working with him had realized the necessity of democratic slogans in the creation of a state of mind. [He] at once struck out boldly to inflame the passions of the crowd by threatening that it was to be reduced to the “miserable state of tributary slaves,” contrasting its freedom and moral virtue with the tyranny and moral degradation of England. He proclaimed that the mother country was bent on bringing her colonies to a condition of “slavery, poverty and misery,” and on causing their utter ruin, and dinned into the ears of the people the words “slavery and tyranny” until they assumed a reality from mere reiteration.

His political philosophy was eagerly lapped up by a populace smarting under hard times and resentful of colonial even more than imperial conditions of the moment. The establishment of government by free consent of all had become imbedded in the mind of the average man, as an essential part of the American dream. Adams himself had seen the vision but had glimpsed it with the narrowness and bitterness with which the more bigoted Puritans had seen the vision of an unloving and revengeful Hebrew Jehovah.

Such talk as this could only make England fearful of how far the people might try to put such precepts into practice. The upper classes of the colonies also began to be uneasy. Up to 1770, when their own grievances were redressed, they might allow such ideas to be disseminated, considering themselves in control of the situation, but after that it became clear that they were losing control . . . [as] Sam Adams and the lesser radicals worked harder than ever to keep public opinion inflamed.

With the upper classes [becoming] lukewarm or hostile to his continued propaganda [despite] the obnoxious legislation repealed or modified, [Sam Adams] had to trust to generalizations and emotional appeal.

A good example of his use of the latter was the affair called the “Boston Massacre.” As part of the general imperial policy following the [French and Indian] war, the British government had stationed some regiments in Boston. They were under good officers and good discipline, and there was no more reason why they should have made trouble there, than in any provincial garrison town of England. Sam Adams, however, was continually stirring up the public mind against them; John Adams reported finding Sam one Sunday night ‘preparing for the next day’s newspaper – a curious employment, cooking up paragraphs, articles and [incidents], working the political engine.’

Finally, one March evening, as a result of more than usual provocation given by taunting boys to soldiers on duty, an unfortunate clash occurred. There was confusion, a rioter’s shout to fire” was mistaken for an officer’s command, and several citizens were killed. The officer surrendered to civilian authorities, was tried, defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., and acquitted.

But Samuel Adams at once saw the value of the incident. Every emotion of the mob was played upon. The affair was termed a “massacre,” and in the annual speeches given for a number of years to commemorate its anniversary the boys and men who had taken part in the mobbing were described as martyrs to liberty and the soldiers as “bloody butchers.”

(The Epic of America. James Truslow Adams. Little, Brown and Company. 1932, pp. 83-84).

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward promised the cotton-dependent British an early end to war with “Northern victories releasing the raw cotton” of the South to England. Seward’s claim that New Orleans would soon be under his control was quickly dashed, and all were aware that Southern plantation owners would sooner burn their cotton bales than allow them to fall into enemy hands. A desperate Seward then followed Virginia’s Royal Governor’s (Lord Dunmore) November 1775 edict to incite race war in the South, threatening both Britain and France that any aid to the American Confederacy would unleash a bloody slave uprising there. This would not only destroy Europe’s cotton source but also repeat the Haitian massacres of the early 1790’s which saw the slaughter of 4,000 white men, women and children. In retaliation, some 15,000 Africans were killed by the French.

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

“Fearing the growth in England, especially, of an intention to intervene, Seward threatened a Northern appeal to the slaves, thinking of the threat not so much in terms of an uncivilized and horrible war as in terms of the material interests of England. In brief, considering foreign attitude and action in relation to Northern advantage – to the winning of the war – he would use emancipation as a threat of servile insurrection, but he did not desire emancipation itself for fear it would cause that very intervention which it was his object to prevent.

On May 28, 1862, Seward wrote to US diplomat Charles Francis Adams, emphasizing two points: first, US diplomats abroad were now authorized to state that the war was, in part at least, intended for the suppression of slavery, and secondly, that the North if interfered with by foreign nations would be forced to unleash servile war in the South.

Such a war, Seward argued, would be “completely destructive of all European interests” and a copy of this was given to Britain’s Lord Russell on June 20^th . . . and that any attempts a European mediation of the conflict would result in servile war unleashed upon the South. On July 13, Lincoln told Seward and [Gideon] Welles of the planned [gradual and compensated] emancipation proclamation and that this was his first mention of it to anyone.

On July 28, after Lord Russell reviewed Seward’s arguments, commented on the fast- increasing bitterness of the American conflict which was disturbing and unsettling to European governments, and wrote: “The approach of servile war, so much insisted upon by Mr. Seward in his dispatch, only forewarns us that another element of destruction may be added to the slaughter, loss of property, and waste of industry, which already afflict a country so lately prosperous and tranquil.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Ephraim Douglas Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original manuscript 1924), pg. 388-390)

“We Are for Peace”

Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois urged the maintenance of peace as a motive for evacuating forts in Southern States which had withdrawn ratification of the US Constitution, and in doing so was no doubt aware of the full force of his words. He knew that their continued occupation was virtually a declaration of war.

“We Are for Peace”

“On March 15, 1861, Stephen Douglas of Illinois offered a resolution recommending the withdrawal of the US garrisons within the limits of States which had withdrawn from the United States, except Key West and the Dry Tortugas. In support of this resolution, he said:

‘We certainly cannot justify the holding of forts there, much less the recapturing of those already taken, unless we intend to reduce those States themselves into subjection. I take it for granted, no man may deny the proposition, that whoever permanently holds Charleston and South Carolina is entitled to the possession of Fort Sumter.

It is true that Forts Taylor and Jefferson, at Key West and Tortugas, are so situated as to be essentially national, and therefore important to us without reference to our relations with the seceded States. Not so with Moultrie, Johnson, Castle Pinckney and Sumter, in Charleston Harbor; not so with Pulaski, on the Savannah River; not so with Morgan and other forts in Alabama; not so with those other forts that were intended to guard the entrance of a particular harbor for local defense.

We cannot deny that there is a Southern Confederacy, de facto, in existence, with its capital at Montgomery. We may regret it. I regret it most profoundly; but I cannot deny the truth of the fact, painful and mortifying as it is . . . I proclaim boldly the policy of those with whom I act. We are for peace.’”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, Vol I. DaCapo Press, 1990, (original 1889), pp. 242-243)

Correcting the Record

Correcting the Record

“The Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion prints the following letter:

Beauvoir, Mississippi

June 20, 1885

Dear Sir, – Among the less-informed persons at the North there exists an opinion that the negro slave at the South was a mere chattel, having neither rights nor immunities protected by law or public opinion. Southern men knew such was not the case, and others desiring to know could readily learn the fact.

On that error the lauded story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was founded, but it is strange that a utilitarian and shrewd people did not ask why a slave, especially valuable, was the object of privation and abuse? Had it been a horse they would have been better able to judge and would most probably have rejected the story for its improbability. Many attempts have been made to evade and misrepresent the exhaustive opinion of Chief Justice Taney in the ‘Dred Scott’ case, but it remains unanswered.

From the statement in regard to Fort Sumter, a child might suppose that a foreign army had attacked the United States – [and] certainly could not learn that the State of South Carolina was merely seeking possession of a fort on her own soil and claiming that her grant of the site had become void.

The tyrant’s plea of necessity to excuse despotic usurpation is offered for the unconstitutional act of emancipation, and the poor resort to prejudice is invoked in the use of the epithet ’rebellion,’ a word inapplicable to the States generally, and most especially so to the sovereign members of a voluntary union. But alas for their former ancient prestige, the States have even lost the plural reference they had in the Constitution . . . such language would be appropriate to an imperial government, which in absorbing territories required the subject inhabitants to swear allegiance to it.”

(Letter from President Davis on States’ Rights. Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. XIV, January – December 1886, Rev. J. William Jones, D.D., pp. 408-409)

A Northern Conspiracy

In late-March 1861 it was believed by most Americans in the South – even those devoted to political independence from the north – that the policy of secession was the surest way of securing a redress of grievances from northerners – and hopefully bring them back to respecting constitutional principles. Lincoln’s proclamations of war came instead, backed by troops from northern States.

A Northern Conspiracy

“In late March 1861 the understanding in Washington was that the newly inaugurated president had determined to withdraw all United States forces from the limits of the newly formed Confederate States.

It was at this juncture, however, that seven Northern Governors hastened to Washington, and then and there organized their “Conspiracy,” and by appeals to Mr. Lincoln, and tendering to him their organized military forces, caused him to change his policy and to adopt theirs, which aimed at an entire overthrow of the Constitution of the United States and the federative principles of government upon which it was based.

It was by and through its active agency that Mr. Lincoln’s policy was changed, though not communicated to the Confederate States commissioners who were left with peaceful assurances from Lincoln’s Secretary of State, Seward.”

(A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, Vol. II. Alexander H. Stephens Sprinkle Publications, 1994 (original 1870), p. 354)

Citizenship as Intended

Below, Alexander Stephens explains the original intent of citizenship of the United States being first State citizenship. Stephens wrote the following from a Fort Warren jail cell after his arrest in 1865 for an unknown crime.

Citizenship as Intended

“Eight weeks today [July 6, 1865] I have been a prisoner; six weeks in this place; all without the slightest intimation of the cause. Seized by an armed force, sent here by an armed force, kept in close confinement, guarded by an armed force, deprived of all means of appealing to judicial power for redress; and yet Eagle-orators and reverend rhetoricians scream and shout about the glorious freedom we Americans enjoy.

PM – [A newspaper] article on naturalization in the cyclopedia attracted my attention. It is strange what errors have crept into vogue and pass without scrutiny or question, especially on naturalization and its sequence, citizenship of the United States. The subject is treated as if Congress were empowered by the Constitution to confer upon aliens’ citizenship of the United States distinct from citizenship of particular States and Territories.

The truth is, Congress has no power to naturalize or to confer citizenship of the United States. Its only power is to establish a uniform rule to be pursued by the respective States and Territories on admitting aliens to their own citizenship.

Before the Constitution was adopted, each State possessed the right as an Independent Sovereign Power to admit to citizenship whom she pleased, and on such terms as she pleased. All that the States did on this point in accepting the Constitution was to delegate to Congress the power to establish a uniform rule so that an alien might not be permitted to become a citizen of one State on different terms from what might be required in another; especially, as in one part of the Constitution it is stipulated that the citizens of each State shall be entitled in all the rest to the rights and privileges of their citizens.

But no clause of the Constitution provides for or contemplates citizenship of the United States as distinct from citizenship of some particular State or Territory. When any person is a citizen of one of the States united, he thereby, and thereby only, becomes and can be considered a citizen of the United States.

Errors in the public mind on this question are radical and fundamental and have the same source as many others equally striking.

I was first struck with these on the annexation of Texas. How could her representatives, it was asked, take their seats in Congress, not having been citizens of the United States for the term of years required by the Constitution? The answer, upon the true principles of the Constitution and the only citizenship it contemplates, was plain: members and senators could not present themselves until the State was itself one of the United States; then, whoever might present himself as a member, having been seven years a citizen of Texas, would, in the terms and meaning of the Constitution, have been seven years a citizen of the United States, so constituted.”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myra Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pp. 312-313)

Not a War of Oppression

Gen. Henry Halleck told his invasion forces in 1861 that Southerners “have been warned that we come to oppress and plunder. By our acts we will undeceive them.”

In November 1861, Gen. John Dix prepared his invasion of Virginia’s eastern shore and spoke of “giving [Virginians] them the strongest assurances of kind treatment and protection . . . they may be gained over without bloodshed.” Dix added that Virginians “have got it in their heads that we want to steal and emancipate their Negroes.” Despite these pronouncements of deliverance from despotic “rebel” rule, the reality told a different story.

A colonel of the 20^th NY Volunteers at the Outer Banks of North Carolina wrote his commanding officer: “I regret to be compelled to state that the conduct of the men and some officers of my command has been that of vandals.” The descent into total war had begun.

Not a War of Oppression

“Few northerners sought the overthrow of slavery, for although most considered the institution morally corrupting and economically stifling and wanted to halt its spread, they deemed blacks unfit for freedom in a republic.

The northern-dominated U.S. Congress of July 1861 affirmed the narrow goals of the Crittenden Resolution, which it passed with hardy a dissenting vote. It declared “that this war was waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union, . . . as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”

These last twelve words reflected a fear that a prolonged war might rage out of control, burst its bonds and devour the very ideals and institutions it was meant to preserve. Lincoln himself worried that an extended conflict would “degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.”

(When the Yankees Came: Conflict & Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865. Stephen V. Ashe. UNC Press, 1995, pp. 25-27)

Washington’s Confederate Republic

In the judgement of George Washington, the government of the US was in form and nature a “Confederated, or Federal Republic” and all States within were small republics themselves. Further, the federal agent of the States was not a “republic,” but only the assigned agent of these individual republics. Montesquieu affirmed that in a confederation, the States do not forfeit or part with their individual sovereignty. Philosopher and diplomat Emmerich de Vattel asserted as well that “several sovereign and independent States may unite themselves together by a perpetual Confederacy without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect State, and together constitute a federation.

Abraham Lincoln ended this original intent of the Founders in 1861 with his war upon States wishing to voluntarily depart the 1789 agreement. Alexander H. Stephens wrote postwar that the 1861-1865 conflict was the result of Lincoln’s abuse of powers and forced national consolidation.

Washington’s Confederate Republic

“In the popular mind in the post-Revolution time, those representing the citizens of the States at large, each acting for themselves in their sovereign capacities.

“[The various] demonstrations, devices, mottoes and symbols, clearly showed how the great mass of people, in all the States, understood the new Constitution. It was nothing but a more perfect bond of union between the States. “Federal” was the watchword of the day in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond and Charleston. It was the grand symbolized idea throughout the whole length and breadth of the land. There can be no doubt that the people thought they were adopting a Federal Constitution – forming a federated union.

Now then, what is the meaning of this word “federal,” which entered so deeply into the thoughts, hearts and understandings of the people of that day?

Dr. Johnson, the highest authority of that day, in his Dictionary, thus defines the word: Federal – (Foedus, Lat.) relating to a League or Contract. Federate, he defines (Federatus, Lat.) leagued, joined in a Confederacy. The great American lexicographer Noah Webster, says of this word “Federal,” that it is derived from the Latin word “Foedus” which means a League. A League he defines to be “an Alliance or Confederacy between Princes or States for their mutual aid or defense.” And in defining the meaning of the word “Federal,” he uses this language: “Consisting of a Compact between States or Nations; founded on alliance by contract of mutual agreement; as, a Federal Government, such as that of the United States.”

Federal, from its very origin and derivation, therefore, has no meaning and can have none, disassociated from a Compact or Agreement of some sort, and it is seldom ever used to qualify any Compacts or Agreements except those between States or Nations. So that Federal and Confederate mean substantially the same thing.

Washington, in one of his letters which I have just read, spoke of the new Government as “a Confederacy.” In another, to Sir Edward Newenham, dated the 20^th of July, 1788, he speaks of the new Government then ratified by enough States to carry it into effect as a “Confederated Government.” In . . . 1789 he expressed his conviction that “his happiness . . . that “the Senate would at all times cooperate in every measure which may tend to promote the welfare of “this Confederated Republic.” These are the terms by which he characterized “the union” after the present Constitution was formed and after it was in operation. There is no difference between the words Federal and Confederated as thus used and applied. We see that Washington used them both, at different times, to signify the same thing, that is, the Union of the American States under the Constitution.”

(A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, Alexander H. Stephens. Sprinkle Publications, 1994 (Original: S.A. George, Printers, 1868), pp. 167-170)

America’s Greatest Military Leader

General Lee visited Wilmington briefly in early 1870 after visiting father’s gravesite in coastal Georgia. This son of Gen. “Lighthorse Harry” Lee also fought bravely for political independence and led brave American soldiers who venerated him.

In a postwar address to the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, Col. Charles Marshall alluded to Gen. Lee’s “wonderful influence over troops under his command, saying that that such was the love and veneration of the men for him that they came to look upon the cause, [the struggle for political independence] as General Lee’s cause, and they fought for it because they loved him. To them he represented cause, country and all.”

America’s Greatest Military Leader

“April 30, 1870.

At Wilmington, they spent a day with Mr. & Mrs. George Davis. His coming there was known only to a few persons, as its announcement was by private telegram from Savannah, but quite a number of ladies and gentlemen secured a small train and went out on the Southern Road to meet Lee. When they met the regular passenger train from Savannah which Lee was aboard, he was taken from it to the private one and welcomed by his many friends. He seemed bright and cheerful and conversed with all. Lee spoke of his health not being good, and on this account begged that there would be no public demonstration on his arrival, nor during his stay at Wilmington.

On reaching that place, he accompanied Mr. George Davis to his home and was his guest during Lee’s sojourn in the city. Mrs. Davis was the daughter of Dr. O. Fairfax of Alexandria, Virginia. They had been and were very old and dear friends and neighbors.

There was a dinner given to my father that day at Mr. Davis’s home, and a number of gentlemen were present. He was looking very well, but in conversation said that he realized there was some trouble with his heart, which he was satisfied was incurable.

The next day, May 1^st, Lee left by train for Norfolk, Virginia.”

(Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee, II. Garden City Publishing, 1904. pp. 400-401)