A More Perfect Union Volume 1, Issue 6 Southern Secession By: Marcus Smith August 17, 2007

The Case Against Southern Secession

Just last week my family and I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina so that I could attend law school at the University of North Carolina. As my family and I, along with my mom and dad, and sister Traci, traveled across some of the rural parts of the area I noticed that every once and a while we would run into the old Confederate flag, still hanging from the homes of these southerners. My mind naturally shifted to the birth of that flag, the Civil War. That flag represented the South, or, also known during the Civil War as, the Confederate States of America (CSA). a quick history lesson After President Abraham Lincoln was elected in the 1860 Presidential election—having not gained a single electoral vote from a southern state—the first line of business for southern politicians was to leave the union. This action would force the federal government to “[call] forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, [and] suppress Insurrections” (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, clause 15). The Civil War thus began some few months later as shots rang through the air and smoke filled the skies hovering over Fort Sumter.

the southern argument The big political issues leading up to the war were all revolving around states’ rights, so the south would say. However, all of the turmoil was centered around slavery. The big debates and compromises in Congress dealt with the equal representation of free states and slave states in the Senate. The south felt that if the Northern states’ had more of a representation in the federal government than they would simply nullify slavery, and thus destroy their commerce, and, in turn, way of life. So when the North won both the Congress and the Presidency in the 1860 general election, the south felt like they might as well leave the Union and create a new Confederacy whereby each state could run their societies as they willed. the northern argument The club that Lincoln and company would carry into the war was phrased nicely in these words by Akhil Reed Amar: “Although states would enter the Constitution as true sovereigns, they would not remain so after ratification. The formation of a ‘more perfect Union’ would itself end each state’s sovereign status and would prohibit future unilateral secession” (America’s Constitution, 33). What Amar is saying is that, once the states ratified (or voted to accept) the U.S. Constitution in the years proceeding 1787, they were, in effect, giving up their previous status as pure sovereign states, and entering into a more perfect Union, which they could never leave; this was a concept understood by both Northerners and Southerners both during the ratification and Civil War. So from this concept the North derived their call to war when they would march to the beat of preserving the Union. why was preserving the union so important The Preamble to the Constitution says: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” In creating the Constitution our founding fathers were doing more than simply setting up a federal government, they were creating a political atmosphere in America that would ensure “Justice … domestic Tranquility … defense … Welfare … [and] Liberty.” But what does this have to do with preserving the union? When the founders were looking into forming a new government in 1787 they wanted to avoid all of the political problems that they had seen throughout history. One of those problems was the border disputes seen in the European countries (which had constantly thrust them into war). The government that we were living under before the Constitution came about —the Articles of Confederation— had created an almost replica situation as this European border dispute situation. So, our founding fathers wanted to avoid this issue by creating one single Union—indivisible and inseparable. If the South would have been allowed to leave the Union in 1860, then the “Justice … domestic Tranquility … defense … Welfare … [and] Liberty” the founders wrote about in the Preamble in 1787 would have come to a rapid end, for disputes between the North and South, and disputes of southern states going against themselves, would have risen just as disputes have risen in Europe. constitutional argument against secession Aside from the fact that “[no] state convention, in its ratification [of the Constitution], purported to reserve the right of its state populace to unilateral secession” (America’s Constitution, 37), there is a strong constitutional argument against southern secession. Article VI of the Constitution says that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” By seceding from the Union and setting up their own government, the south was, in a sense, nullifying the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. By entering into the Union they were committing to themselves to the Constitution forever after, and they failed in that commitment. And since it was the duty of the federal government to suppress rebellions within the states (note, the North never called the Civil War a war, for if it were a war that would mean that two different nations were involved, since only one nation was involved, it was merely a rebellion) they had to send troops in to the south to defeat the secessionists.