Reasons For Secession

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Secession for Slavery Brett Kovel Teed Hist 111 10-16-13 Nearly 155 years after the end of the Civil War, new questions of why the Confederate States seceded have arisen amongst the historical and national communities. Was secession from the Union because of slavery or because of a constitutional right? According to General Bradley T. Johnson,” every lover of constitutional liberty, liberty controlled by law, all over the world begins to understand that the war was not a war waged by the South in defense of slavery, but was a war to protect liberty won and bequeathed by free ancestors.” Now, General Bradley said this in 1896, nearly 31 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. It could be that he, like…show more content…
To save face, and attempt to make the South’s actions during the war not seem so horrendous, there has been a split or attempt to cover the true reason for secession. Edward Pollard offers a different cause for secession,” the entire popular vote for Lincoln was 1,858,200; that for Douglas, giving him, his share of the fusion vote,1,276,780; that for Breckinridge, giving him his share of the fusion vote, 812,500; and that for Bell, including is proportion of the fusion vote, 785,504. The whole vote against Lincoln was thus 2,824,874, showing a clear aggregate majority against him of nearly a million votes.” Pollard, in his opening paragraph, claims that it was the election of a man, who had lost by nearly one million votes, which started the war. According to Pollard, the North had 188 electoral votes, whereas the South had a meager 120. Mr. Lincoln’s election was a regional election, one in which he carried no southern states. Pollard says that,” if the North was prepared to act in a mass of its power was irresistible; and the election of Mr. Lincoln plainly showed that it was prepared so to act and to carry out a sectional design.” Pollard is basically saying that it was the North who created such a sectional rift between northern and southern states and this is why the South planned on seceding. Not because of attacks on the institution of slavery, but because of the underwhelming lack of electoral votes given to the South. As you can see, after the war, there was a split amongst the reasons for secession, but no matter how southern sympathizers coat it, the main cause is
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