CHAPTERSouthern Secession in 1860–1861BRUCE COLLINSThe main dilemma for scholars
of the coming of the Civil War, and more precisely of its main precipitating event, the coming of secession in the South during the winter of 1860–61, resides in the multiplicity of interpretations on offer. It is sometimes easier to say where interpretations are wrong than where a particular interpretation is wholly right. The historian is classically engaged in the perennial dilemma of trying to reconcile long-term historical developments with precise political decisions. Some of the most recent general interpretations of the period continue to highlight this fundamental dilemma.
Ina monumental two-volume work, the second volume of which has just appeared, John Ashworth provides an excellent example of the highly structured workings of long-term economic and social factors in his analysis of the coming of confrontation between the two sections.
1
On the other side James McPherson in his trenchant and highly successful reassessment of the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War in particular argues repeatedly for the importance of contingency.
2
In this chapter I would like to examine a particular theme central to an understanding of secession and consider how recent working have illuminated and clouded it.
Nearly 100 years ago the white Southern historian Ulrich B. Phillips wrote of Georgia’s
experience of secession, It is not easy to determine whether the policy of secession was radical or conservative. Its advocates as well as its opponents claim the quality of conservatism for their respective causes,
and each party had some ground to their contention.”
3
In considering the nature of secession we have to distinguish between the political actions adopted during the winter of 1860–61 and the longer-term social and cultural values which those who took those political actions embraced. One
2 initial interpretative dilemma is how far we
assume that those involved inSouthern political decision-making (as legislators,
party leaders, or voters)
understood, and agreed in their understanding, Lincoln’s analysis of the long-term future of the United States as being ultimately wholly free or wholly slave and viewed the Republican Party as representing a policy and inclination which would put slavery on the road to ultimate extinction.
If there was widespread understanding
of these Republican positions,
then those espousing secession would have been social conservatives and those opposing secession would have in effect been endorsing a potentially radical change in the structure of the existing slave-based Southern society.
While this chapter will return to this particular theme, its initial focus will be on the narrower question of whether politicians were conservative or radical in the immediate political context of 1860–61.
Share with your friends: 
