Chapter 281: The South Regards The Speech As A Declaration Of War

March 1861

Southern Hostility Continues To Grow

Despite Lincoln’s closing plea – “we must not be enemies” – Southern reactions to his inaugural speech are uniformly negative.

The Alexandria Sentinel says “the inaugural address is a declaration of war;” the Athens Herald claims “Mr. Lincoln’s inaugural, analyzed, fully means nothing but force, war, and bloodshed;” the Atlanta Confederacy adds “the future is ominous…we are dealing first with men who hate us bitterly.”

While a Northern observer, Senator Stephen Douglas, finds ambiguity in the address – “I hardly know what he means…every point…is susceptible of a double construction” – the Charleston News hears “smooth and oily words… deeply impregnated with the intolerance of a partisan.”

There is little disagreement that the new President has properly identified the crux of the sectional conflict in a single sentence:

One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.

But the rest of the speech, according to the critics, simply boils down to legalistic mumbo-jumbo contrived to prove that “majority rule” means the North can impose its will on the South, no matter how ruinous the effects are on its economic future.

This is the same argument that has played out in America since the 1787 Constitutional Convention – the North’s failure to recognize the extent to which the South’s wealth depends upon the extension of slavery. In Philadelphia, this message is delivered by South Carolinians like Charles C. Pinckney, Edward Rutledge and Rawlins Lowndes:

Without negroes this state is one of the most contemptible in the Union. Negroes are our wealth, our only natural resource. Yet behold how our kind friends in the North are determined soon to tie up our hands and drain us of what we have.

The South claims that these attacks are repeated down through the decades:

* In 1832 the Tariff of Abominations which the South tries to “nullify.”

* In 1846 the Wilmot Proviso and Salmon Chase’s Free Soil Party.

* In 1856-7 with the “Bloody Kansas” warfare.

* In 1858 in rejection of the Lecompton Constitution.

The message being that the North is determined to ruin the Southern economy and its traditional way of life.

But as James Henry Hammond declares in his 1858 “Cotton is King” speech, the attempts have not yet succeeded. Between 1850 and 1860, cotton production almost doubles – the result of new plantations opening on lands along the Mississippi Valley.

U.S. Cotton Production 

And the price of its slaves at auction is higher than ever. In fact by 1860 the value stands at $3 Billion, more than the combined worth of all the manufacturing and railroad assets in the nation!

Value Of Southern Slaves 

If Lincoln and the Republicans have their way with “majority rules,” the Southern economy will be doomed.

Given this reality, the South wonders why Lincoln, along with Henry Seward, insists on calling the crisis “artificial” and “nothing that really hurts anybody” – views he has expressed on his whistle stop journey to Washington and again at the Inaugural?

March 1861

Lincoln And Seward Still Underestimate The Threat

The fact is that in March 1861 neither Lincoln nor Seward fully comprehend in the South’s desperation.

They both tend to regard the early secession movement as a temporary anomaly, sparked by yet another small band of “ultras” in South Carolina who fomented the “nullification” movement.

As such, they are both convinced early-on that this too shall pass, that if they exhibit restraint and patience toward the secessionists, the anger will subside, calmer heads will prevail, and the Union will be restored.

They perceive the dispute in moral terms – the right vs. wrong of human bondage.

For the South, however, the paramount issue is what it has always been — the impact of the ban on its prospects for future wealth.

Stop the continued expansion of plantations requiring slaves and you stop its growth engine. This threat is not just emotional in nature and it is not passing.

Still the Republicans as a whole believe the South is “bluffing” once again to have its way in the political arena.

But they are wrong.

This time the threat is truly existential, and, as in Kansas, the South means to fight it out.

While Lincoln will recognize this reality ahead of Seward, he enters the White House clinging to the hope that the “better angels” will somehow prevail in time.