150 Years Ago Today

In the most momentous election in the history of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the 16th president. His election was met with outrage (and in some places rejoicing) in many Southern states. For decades political, economic and social differences had been building in the United States, mostly along sectionalist lines, with the issue of slavery (which had gradually died out in the North) becoming the most extreme point of contention and the one upon which compromise had by 1860 become all but impossible for both sides.

Southerners perceived (probably rightly) that Lincoln's election meant the eventual death of chattel slavery in the United States. It marked the first time that slavery was implicitly condemned by the nation through the election of an avowed abolitionist as president, which fact alone made his election intolerable to most Southerners. Both before and after his election Lincoln repeatedly assured the South that he would take no steps to interfere with the institution where it already existed, but he also avowed that he would not permit any more "Slave States" to be admitted to the Union. Effectively this meant the certain demise of slavery since it would only be a matter of time before enough new "Free States" would enter the Union to amend the Constitution and abolish the institution.

Beginning in December and continuing into the new year of 1861 seven Southern States, lead by South Carolina, passed ordinances of secession and announce their withdrawal from the Union. Early in 1861 delegates from the first six states (later joined by Texas) met in Montgomery Alabama where they quickly adopted a provisional constitution for a new country named the Confederate States of America. The Confederate Constitution was closely modeled on that of the United States with a few important points of difference that highlighted the Southern political understanding of the nature of their new country (an alliance of sovereign states with an extremely limited central government). Among the changes were an explicit prohibition against the national government engaging in any form of internal improvement with only a very few specifically named exceptions (lighthouses and navigational markers etc.), all of which had to be paid for locally by those using the services. The president was elected to a six year term of office instead of four and was barred from succeeding himself. The individual states were expressly affirmed to be sovereign. And the right to property in the form of human slaves was guaranteed as perpetual and irrevocable.

On February 18th 1861 former United States Senator Jefferson Davis (D) of Mississippi (also former Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce) together with former Governor of Georgia Alexander Stephens were sworn in as the provisional President and Vice-President of the Confederate States respectively. Both Davis and Stephens assumed their offices reluctantly, each having urged their respective states not to secede.

Beginning today and for the next nearly five years Americans will be observing the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which more than perhaps any other event still haunts our country and remains a subject of often heated debate. In one of those delicious ironies of history, exactly one year later to the day (Nov 6 1861), Jefferson Davis was formally elected to a full six year term as the President of the Confederate States of America.