Road to Disunion Vol II 1854 to 1861 Secessionist Triumphant By Dr. William W Freehling

     Road to Disunion Vol II 1854 to 1861 Secessionist Triumphant 

By Dr. William W Freehling

    Dr. Freehling was covered in last week's review, so instead of recycling, let’s move forward!  Road to Disunion Vol. II was published in 2007, a full 17 years after the publishing of volume I.  That said, Dr. Freehling had no problem picking right where he left off right, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Act, and continuing right until the opening exchange at Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War.   

In Volume II, Dr. Freehling continues his core themes. The first, again plainly and openly stated, was that there was no united singular South, but several Souths divided into very different regions with different interests.  Even within those regions, there was division based on social class, location, and life experience, with the biggest distinction he draws being the differences between populations who lived in black belts, regions where there were a high number of slaves, and white belts where the populace was mainly made up of non-slave owning whites.

To illustrate the first theme, Dr. Freehling tackles four failed undertakings that were supported and opposed by various factions in the South: the creation of Kansas as a slave state, the conquest of the Caribbean and Central America to create more slave states, an attempt to reopen the African slave trade in defiance of the American Federal Government, and lastly an attempt to reenslave freed blacks.  Let’s go ahead and take a look at all four, one at a time. 

First was the attempt to ensure that Kansas would be admitted as a slave state, even over the objections of the people who lived there.  In fact, it would be fair to say, especially over the objections of the people who lived there. Over the border in Missouri, where slave owners nervously watched as the number of slaves dwindled and the number of anti-slave white men increased, the idea of being bordered on 3 sides by free states was intolerable.  So they recruited from among the people of Missouri “One Day Kansans” to cross the border and vote in a pro-slave government, as well as sponsored violent armed mobs to terrorize free state settlers and run out anti-slave organizers from the territory at gunpoint.

While this movement enjoyed support in the Southwest and much of the Deep South, the other Border States condemned this behavior, as did the North. So did states like Virginia, as rigging elections was seen as a step too far.  So trying to admit Kansas as a slave state failed to pass in Congress.  Interestingly enough many South Carolina leaders also opposed it because they feared this would lead to people taking slaves out of the economically depressed lands of South Carolina for greener, colder pastures. 

The idea of conquering the nations of South America and trying to seize Cuba and other islands came from New Orleans and was championed by the city’s merchant class.  They were losing business to other ports and thought they needed a set of slave states encircling the Gulf, which would naturally ship their goods to New Orleans. The Federal Government, of course, refused to do this, as most people in the North felt they had plenty of land for settlement to the West already and didn’t like the idea of starting wars with European nations.  Also, there was a great deal of resentment lingering over the Mexican-American War, with some Northerners feeling they had been tricked into an imperialist adventure on behalf of greedy Southern Slavers. 

So their solution was to turn to Filibusters, a name for private armies of mercenaries raised by adventurous wealthy men looking to achieve fame and political power by conquering other states. The United States government did not take this well, often arresting these men for piracy and breaking the Neutrality Laws passed during the Napoleonic Wars.  In one case where a filibustering army led by William Walker invaded the nation of Nicaragua, U.S. Navy Commodore Hiram Paulding counter-invaded and, using his Marines, arrested Walker and his mercenaries and dragged them back to the US for trial.  

Once again the South was divided on this topic. Many Border State slavers feared that adding Caribbean and Latin American slave states would cause the end of slavery in their own states, as men would sell their slaves or simply move further south in pursuit of profit.  So too, did the South Carolina elites,  again fearing the loss of slaves.  Other Southerners in the Middle South opposed it because conquering Native American tribes was one thing, but conquering recognized nation-states was another thing entirely.  

What South Carolina was all in favor of was reopening the African Slave Trade, even if that had to be done illegally. The problem in their view was there weren’t enough slaves to go around, and part of this was driven by the increase in cotton prices in the 1850s, which in turn drove up the price of healthy slaves beyond what many white men could afford. This meant that the wealthiest men in society owned more and more slaves, and fewer and fewer men outside that wealthy elite owned any slaves.  

This received some support in the Deep South, but the Border States and the people of Virginia were simply aghast at the idea. There were two attempts to flout the law, but, interestingly enough, while the captains of the ships were arrested and released by Southern juries refusing to convict them, the firsthand experience of dealing with people freshly kidnapped from their homes was too gut-wrenching for most of the supporters to continue the attempts. So the arch-slavers found themselves too empathic to actually go out and enslave strangers from another continent.  

So a group of South Carolinians decided maybe the easier thing to do would be to re-enslave freed blacks. Allow me to delve into what I will generously call the logic of this idea, which was rooted in plain and simple racism. The argument was that Free Blacks would be worse off than slaves because they were not capable of handling themselves in modern society without a gracious owner to protect and direct them. This fell apart because there were plenty of successful Free Black Men and Women, some of whom even owned slaves of their own. Also, in many other Southern states, this raised cries of protests of subverting the will of the slavers who freed their slaves.  Plus, in many areas freed blacks functioned as a needed artisan and skilled labor class that was simply too valuable to risk. So the idea fell apart pretty quickly. 

So what did unite the South, you might be asking?  After all, they pulled together enough to start the Civil War.  There were two things, really: first was the institution of slavery, and the hatred that outside criticism stirred.  The men of the South loathed being told that owning slaves made them immoral and less ethical than Yankees, who they looked down upon as Capitalist cannibals. In the name of these two things, they were willing to go to any lengths to protect the institution of slavery and silence any criticism, including shattering the nation itself and creating their own where dissent would be utterly forbidden. 

We see this when they are willing to trample the rights of the people who actually live in Kansas, bringing not just voter fraud but also violence and political repression in the name of spreading slavery.  We see this when Northerners or even native Southerners voice criticism or act in ways that could be considered subverting or resisting the social order of slavery, and the reaction to form an angry mob, commit assault and battery, and force the offender out of their lands at gunpoint. We also see this when the non-slave owner inhabitants declare they wish no part of a Southern Confederacy, areas like eastern Tennessee, North Virginia, and North Alabama; the response isn’t respect for their rights to choose their government, but violent repression and bitter denunciation.  Ironic given that they demanded every right to leave their government, but refused to grant that right to others. 

The second driving theme that is unavoidable when reading the text is that the elite class of South Carolina was the wellspring from which the idea of Secession flowed.  That poisoned water would slowly but surely soak into the soil of the South, until it nurtured a Southern-wide crop of young men who believed that the only thing to do was to tear the nation apart, no matter the cost. The effort took decades and constant work to spread the ideals that at first only the elites of South Carolina held dear, that slavery was good and should last forever, and the only way to do that was to split from the Northern Free states.  This would turn out to be one of two things uniting the different Souths into a single South. 

The other thing that unified them was fear of their slaves and the thought that discussion of freedom would cause them to rise up.  The raid on Harper's Ferry by John Brown is discussed at length in the book, and the South was not only terrified of the idea but convinced that the North would continue to send men south to encourage the slaves to rise up and murder them in their beds.  In their minds, the abolitionists would not rest until they had caused a mass race war in the South and destroyed everything they built. This fed the hatred and resentment of the North in the South and led to demands for national censorship and trampling of Northern State rights in the pursuit of protecting slavery.  This in turn feed Northern resentment and hate of high-handed Southern tyrants who would enslave white Northerners just to protect their delicate feelings. 

When South Carolina and the lower Southern states succeeded, many states in the middle and upper South balked.  They hoped that if they could delay long enough, they could hammer out a compromise and reform the Union without violence.  They could serve as middlemen between the Lincoln administration and the rebels and create a lasting peace.  However, when South Carolina’s cannons forced the issue and Lincoln called for volunteers to defend the Union,  many of the men of those states found they would rather kill Yankees than Southerners. Their dislike of having their flaws and faults publicly pointed out, and the decades-long resentment of those critics, outweighed any qualms they had about breaking the country.  After all, at least those Southerners were fellow slave owners

Companion video is found here: https://youtu.be/WF5lA4pIn3g?si=K1NeUS6J7aR5Dct1