{"id":4654,"date":"2022-11-10T01:45:22","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T01:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/?page_id=4654"},"modified":"2026-01-08T21:41:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:41:53","slug":"secession-crisis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/course-syllabus\/secession-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Secession Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Election of 1860\"chart\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Secession (December 1860 to February 1861)<\/b>\"1861<\/a><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>“The fact is that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force.” —James Buchanan, Annual Message, December 3, 1860<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lincoln’s Inaugural, March 4, 1861\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
\"1861\"<\/a>

Lincoln\u2019s First Inaugural (New York Times)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.” —Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Frederick Douglass on Lincoln’s 1861 Inaugural<\/strong><\/h2>\n

“Making all allowance for circumstances, we must declare the address to be but little better than our worst fears, and vastly below what we had fondly hoped it might be.\u00a0 It is a double-tongued document, capable of two constructions, and conceals rather than declares a definite policy.\u00a0 No man reading it could say whether Mr. Lincoln was for peace or war, whether he abandons or maintains the principles of the Chicago Convention upon which he was elected….The South want to extend slavery, and the North want to confine it where it is, ‘where the public mind shall rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction.’ This was the question which carried the North and defeated the South in the election which made Mr. Abraham Lincoln President.\u00a0 Mr. Lincoln knew this, and the South has known it all along; and yet this subject only gets the faintest allusion, while others, never seriously in dispute, are dwelt upon at length.” –Douglass’ Monthly, April 1861<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lincoln\u2019s Secession Crisis, And Ours<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

April 1861<\/strong><\/h3>\n