The Secession Movement 1860-1861. By Dwight Lowell Dumond. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931. x+294 pp. Appendix and bibliography.)

            In his long standing work, Professor Dwight Dumond examines the lead up to eventual disunion during the secession crisis that began in 1860. Instead of adopting a narrative-style approach, Dumond analyzes what he considers the crucial events that seemingly pushed the lower South to secede rather than looking for conciliation within the Union.

Dumond rightly asserts while not all men of the South held a states-rights point of view, this offered a refuge for those pushing secession and represented a majority view in the lower South. As for the motivations of the would-be secessionist, the author posits that the “fundamental cause of secession was the threatened extinction of slavery.”(5)

As secessionist leaders such as William Yancey and Robert Rhett of Alabama and South Carolina respectively pushed for cooperation among the Southern states, Dumond posits that their efforts were largely ineffective in the short term. Even though two efforts at state cooperation in South Carolina and Mississippi failed, the Alabama platform established a solid set of principles that would lay the foundation for a Southern sectional party.(25-27)

On April 23, 1860 the Charleston Democratic Convention convened with great hopes, but from the start was riddled with sectional and inter-party rivalry. Dumond argues that the main difficulty arising during the convention was that the Douglas Democrats refused to protect slavery within a territory, preferring to give the option to embrace or prohibit slavery to state officials in the construction of their state constitution.(52) Utterly disgusted, the delegates of Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Delaware, and some from Georgia bolted the convention. 

The disastrous outcome of the Democratic conventions at Charleston, Baltimore, and Richmond effectively destroyed the national party, splitting along sectional lines. While the Northern Democrats backed Douglas and Herschel, the Southern Democrats nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The Constitutional Union party represented a more moderate wing with a Southern platform, but underscored the deep sectional divisions over the spread and protection of slavery.(94) The Republican convention adopted the anti-Southern, Chicago platform that even caused the more moderate Southerners to question the motives of the North.(97)

Those Southerners in favor of separation differed as to how it should be undertaken, whether by separate states or together as a block, and exactly when it was to occur.(123) The more moderate of these groups, the cooperationists, awaited the actions of the incoming administration, while the many considered Lincoln’s election as proof enough of the North’s ill intentions. Economic concerns and the hardships of independence convinced even the most ardent immediate secessionist that although the act of secession should occur separately, the states should endeavor to unify thereafter.(124-126) Consequently, Southern governments sent out representatives to other states considering secession to ensure the success of their endeavor and to secure a unified lower South bloc.

            Dumond argues throughout the last efforts to mend the sectional breech that the Buchanan administration and the Republican Congress shoulder much of the blame for their inability to comprehend or sympathize with the Southern position toward slavery. Congress quashed or undermined any attempt of reconciliation through the legislative process. Buchanan’s decision to buildup federal forts in the South, the sending of reinforcements to those forts and the Star of the West episode convinced many Southerners that violence was imminent.(229) As a result, South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf States effectively separated ties from the Union, while those in the upper South seriously pondered their fate. The upper South states made clear that they would resist at all costs any attempts at coercion as demonstrated by the New York resolutions. The Republican Congress with the clear majority due to the lower South’s withdrawal handily defeated any attempt at pacification presented by the Border States.(232)

The Washington Conference represented the last hope to allay the Civil War. The conference failed according to Dumond because the majority of representatives attending were from Northern states, the conference lacked uniformity in voting representation, and Republicans were unwilling to stray from the Chicago platform.(241-244) Many recommendations were passed during the conference, but the Republican Congress rejected them outright and most of the Border States would not have accepted them anyway. If that were not enough, Lincoln’s inaugural demolished any hopes at conciliation, according to Dumond, due to his aggressive stance on secession and reconstruction. As a result, most in the South viewed his speech as a “virtual declaration of war.”(260) 

Not surprisingly Dumond, a student of Ulrich B. Phillips, provides an overly sympathetic view of the South’s involvement during the secession crisis and blames the Civil War entirely on what he deems as Lincoln the provocateur and his band of power-crazed, warmongering Republican congressmen.

Rob Little

Texas Christian University