Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy

Description

Regardless of whether they owned slaves, Southern whites lived in a world defined by slavery. As shown by their blaming British and Northern slave traders for saddling them with slavery, most were uncomfortable with the institution. While many wanted it ended, most were content to leave that up to God. All that changed with the election of Abraham Lincoln. Rebels in the Making is a narrative-driven history of how and why secession occurred. In this work, senior Civil War historian William L. Barney narrates the explosion of the sectional conflict into secession and civil war. Carefully examining the events in all fifteen slave states and distinguishing the political circumstances in each, he argues that this was not a mass democratic movement but one led from above. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Uneasy Rest the Masters: Strains from Below in the 1850s Agricultural Wastelands Debts, More Land, and More Debts Frustrated Sons The Problem of the White Poor and Free Blacks Slaveholders All: Reopening the African Slave Trade Populist Stirrings 2 Getting Right with Slavery: The Drive for Unity A Holy Mission: Evangelicals and Slavery Antislavery Consciences and Their Limits Plantation Mistresses: Privileges Trump Unease The Persistent Dissenters 3 Waiting for Lincoln: The Election of 1860 Creating a Southern Rights Party The Campaign in the South: Seedtime for Disunion A South in Crisis: Drought and Insurrectionary Panics Priming for Secession 4 Verdict Rendered: Lincoln Is Elected A Divided Electorate: The Returns in the South White Outrage and Demands for Secession Conservatives on the Defensive Ratcheting Up the Resistance Hard Times and the Salvation of Secession Gin Houses Ablaze: Slave Defiance 5 South Carolina Takes the Lead Reclaiming Revolutionary Glory Launching the Movement Secession as Public Theater Free Blacks and White Mechanics Rushing to Deliverance 6 Deadlock and a Deepening Crisis The Initial Northern Reactions Congressional Stalemate The Last, Best Hope Major Anderson: The Charleston Wild Card A Return to Stasis and a Northern Fiasco 7 Secessionist Surge: The Lower South Leaves Mississippi and Florida: The Surge Begins Alabama: Yancey Triumphant Georgia: The Secessionists’ Narrowest Victory Louisiana: Securing a Latecomer Texas: An Unconventional Path to Secession 8 The Upper South: Straddling the Divide Virginia: The Great Prize Tennessee: The Hinge State in the Middle South North Carolina: Squeezed from Above and Below Arkansas: Highlands versus Delta The Border States: A Strategic Prize 9 The Confederacy: A Slaveholder’s Republic Defining Its Mission: From Convention to a Congress A Permanent Constitution: Making It Safe for Slavery Moderates in Control: Staking Out a Middle Ground Forming a Functional Government State’s Rights Rears Its Head: The Confederacy and the Governors Visions of Greatness: A Model for the World Deo Vindice: The Confederacy’s Holy Mission 10 From Waiting Game to War: Lincoln Takes Command The Fort Sumter Conundrum: Evacuate or Reinforce? False Hopes: Seward and “Masterly Inactivity” End of the Waiting Game: Lincoln Makes His Decision Upheaval in the Upper South: The Second Phase of Secession The Border States: Shaken but Unmoved Conclusion Notes Index