2004-12-22
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VOICE ONE:
THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English by the
Voice of America.
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Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election held in November,
eighteen-sixty. When he took office several months later, he faced
the most serious crisis in American history. For the southern states
had finally acted on their earlier threats. They had begun to leave
the Union over the issue of slavery.
I'm Kay Gallant. Today, Harry Monroe and I tell about this
critical time in the United States.
VOICE TWO:
The southern states did not want
Abraham Lincoln to win the election of eighteen-sixty. Lincoln was a
Republican. And the Republican Party opposed slavery. Lincoln never
said he wanted to end slavery in the south. He did not believe
anyone had the right to do so. Yet he did not want to see slavery
spread to other parts of the United States.
Lincoln told southerners: "You think slavery is right and should
be extended. While we think it is wrong and should be limited. That,
I suppose, is the trouble. It surely is the only important
difference between us."
VOICE ONE:
Pro-slavery extremists felt this difference was enough. And they
were sure Lincoln and his Republicans would soon win control of
Congress and the Supreme Court. Before long, they thought, the
Constitution would be changed. Slavery would become illegal
everywhere.
Even if this did not happen, southerners were worried. Unless
slavery could spread, they said, the slave population in the south
would become too large. In time, blacks and whites would battle for
control. One or the other would be destroyed.
So even before the presidential election, southerners began
discussing what they would do if Abraham Lincoln won.
VOICE TWO:
Early in October, the governor of South Carolina, William Gist,
wrote letters to the governors of other southern states. He said
they should agree on what action to take if Lincoln became
president.
Gist said South Carolina would call a state convention as soon as
the election results were made official. If any state decided to
leave the Union, he said, South Carolina would follow. If no other
state decided to leave, then South Carolina would secede by itself.
Governor Gist received mixed answers.
Two states -- Alabama and Mississippi -- said they would not
secede alone. But they said they would join others that made this
decision. Two more states -- Louisiana and Georgia -- said they
would not secede unless the north acted against them. And one state
-- North Carolina -- said it had not yet decided what to do.
No southern governor, except William Gist of South Carolina,
seemed willing to lead the south out of the Union.
VOICE ONE:
Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November sixth,
eighteen-sixty. South Carolina exploded with excitement at the news.
To many of the people there, Lincoln's victory was a signal that
ended the state's ties to the Union. To them, it was the beginning
of southern independence.
Both United States Senators from South Carolina resigned. So did
a federal judge and the collector of federal taxes. United States
flags were lowered. State flags were raised in their place.
The state legislature agreed to open a convention on December
seventeenth. The convention would make the final decision on leaving
the Union. Several other southern states did the same.
VOICE TWO:
This idea of leaving the Union -- secession -- split north and
south just as much as slavery. Southerners claimed they had the
right to secede peacefully. Northerners disagreed. They said
secession was treason. They said it would lead to civil war.
In the months before Lincoln's
inauguration, President James Buchanan tried to deal with the
situation. First he proposed a convention of all the states. The
purpose of the convention would be to work out differences between
north and south. The southern members of Buchanan's cabinet rejected
this idea.
The second proposal was a strong policy statement on secession.
The statement would include an opinion by the attorney general. It
said the government could use force, if necessary, to keep states in
the Union. The southern cabinet members rejected this idea, too.
VOICE ONE:
President Buchanan had to settle for a moderate policy statement
on secession.
It said the president could send troops into a state to help
federal marshals enforce the rulings of federal courts. But if
federal judges resigned, there would be no federal court rulings to
enforce. Therefore, to send troops to a state where federal officers
had resigned -- such as South Carolina -- would be an act of war
against the state. And only Congress had the constitutional power to
declare war.
Buchanan accepted this statement. He was only too happy to let
Congress decide what to do.
VOICE TWO:
There was little chance that Congress could do anything.
Congressmen from both north and south already had made decisions
that could not, and would not, be changed easily.
Most of the congressmen from states in the deep south supported
secession. They did not want to remain in the Union. Many
congressmen from states in the north had been elected because they
promised to keep slavery from spreading to the western territories.
They did not plan to break their promises.
A few lawmakers hoped President Buchanan, in his yearly message
to Congress, might propose a compromise.
VOICE ONE:
Buchanan began by denouncing northern Abolitionists. He said they
were responsible for the present problem. Their interference, he
said, had created a great fear of slave rebellions in the south.
Then Buchanan called on the south to accept the election of
Abraham Lincoln. He said the election of a citizen to the office of
president should not be a reason for dissolving the Union. Buchanan
declared that the constitution gave no state the right to leave.
But, he admitted, if a state did secede, there was little the
federal government could do.
"The fact is," Buchanan said, "that our Union rests upon public
opinion. It can never be held together by the blood of its citizens
in civil war. If it cannot live in the hearts of its people, then it
must one day die."
VOICE TWO:
Buchanan proposed to Congress that it offer a constitutional
amendment on the question of slavery.
He said the amendment should recognize the right to own slaves as
property in states where slavery was permitted. It should protect
this right in all territories until the territories became states.
And it should end all state laws that interfered with the return of
escaped slaves to their owners.
No one liked President Buchanan's message to Congress.
Northerners did not like his declaration of federal weakness in the
face of secession. Southerners did not like his declaration that
secession was unconstitutional.
The message did nothing to change the situation. Soon after it
was read to Congress, South Carolina opened its secession
convention.
VOICE ONE:
Delegates to the convention would make the final decision if
South Carolina would remain in the Union or secede. There was little
question how they would vote.
A committee wrote a secession resolution. The resolution said
simply that the people of South Carolina were ending the agreement
of seventeen-eighty-eight in which the state had approved the
constitution of the United States.
It said the Union existing between South Carolina and the United
States of America was being dissolved.
The committee offered the resolution to the convention on
December twentieth, eighteen-sixty. There was no debate. The
delegates voted immediately. No one voted against it.
VOICE TWO:
South Carolina had seceded. But what must it do now. There was
the problem of property in South Carolina owned by the federal
government. The convention continued to meet to work out details of
South Carolina's new position in the world. That will be our story
next week.
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VOICE ONE:
You have been listening to the Special English program, THE
MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry
Monroe. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley.