Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South

Abstract

Secession and the civil war that followed are often regarded as having exclusively structural determinants, expressed in political cleavages. From this point of view, these events are explained, variously, by the rise of abolitionism in the North or sectionalism in the Union or some cultural attribute of the South. This focus gets us part of the way in understanding the events that led to secession, the creation of a Southern Confederacy, and civil war, but this interpretation says too little about precisely how these events and processes played out. Secession occurred in time, sequentially and dynamically, with one state leading and other states following. This article offers a processual specification of the conditions of Southern secession and the creation of a Southern Confederacy. It does so by focusing on mobilization within the vanguard state, South Carolina, and the consequences of this activity for other Southern states.

Domino Secessions: Evidence from the U.S

“…All states belonging to the first wave of secessions are part of the "Deep South," and had a higher proportion of slave owners than those in the second wave. States like North Carolina and Virginia had not benefited from the expansion of cotton production and the plantation system in the 19 th to the same degree as South Carolina and Mississippi, states that seceded early (Meadwell and Anderson, 2008). Second, Figure 6 nicely illustrates how dispersed preferences (slaveholding ranges from roughly 5% to 50%) influence the types of secessions that occur.…”

“…Expectations then drive whether regions secede. As emphasized in Meadwell and Anderson (2008), some regions condition their decision to secede on the action of others. The size and shape of the seceding polity are thus endogenous and can vary over time.…”

The Crisis Sequence: The Case of Secessionism in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama

“…One problem with all such accounts, as Meadwell and Anderson () rightly point out, is that they speak to longstanding conditions that cannot explain the proximal sequence of events feeding into secession. The gendered appeal to “manly independence” was a consistent refrain in antebellum proslavery rhetoric, while abolitionism and southern hostility thereto are as old as American slavery itself, preceding even the founding of the republic (Budros ).…”

“…A halfway point between the preceding approaches and my own is Meadwell and Anderson's () emphasis on both “sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South.” On their account, radical secessionists planned a “chain reaction” whereby early seceders like South Carolina and Alabama would pressure laggards to secede later once the Confederacy was established outside the Union. Although a sequential approach is a must as I have argued, there are at least two gaps in their analysis.…”

“…In particular they ignore the problem of defeating the Whig Party, which was the last remaining institutional obstacle to secession across the South. Even in South Carolina, which Meadwell and Anderson call the vanguard of the Southern Rights cause, former Whigs and Unionists roundly defeated the secessionists in an October 1851 election to choose delegates to a Southern Congress (Ford : 205‐206; Meadwell and Anderson : 205‐210). Second, Meadwell and Anderson assume that the chain reaction occurred because Southern Rights advocates planned it that way.…”