The Controversy over Slave Power
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Primary sources of documents published in the years prior to the advent of the U.S. Civil War affirm the growing tension between North and South over the putative power of the slave-owning states with respect to the rest of the country. For example an article appearing in 1857 in the Atlantic Monthly (12) stated that: "That the stronger half of the nation should suffer the weaker to rule over it in virtue of its weakness, that the richer region should submit to the political tyranny of its impoverished moiety because of that very poverty, is indeed a marvel and a mystery." The editors of this publication asked an important question: "Are we forever to submit to be cheated out of our national rights by an oligarchy as despicable as it is detestable, because it clothes itself in the forms of democracy, and allows us the ceremonies of choice, the name of power, and the permission to register the edicts of the sovereign" (Atlantic Monthly, 14)? The answer to this particular question, at least from the perspective of the North, was simply that it was intolerable to allow the Southern states to continue forcing their views on slavery on the rest of the nation. Slavery was described as having shed a "baleful influence" on the history of the country and as being pursued by the Southern states to "fix slavery firmly and forever on the throne of this nation" (Atlantic Monthly, 13). The division between the North and the South was therefore almost impossible to resolve. Wh
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oun's question to the Northerners was simple: why were they so convinced that the stability of the Union was endangered by slavery? In his view, what endangered the Union was not slavery per se, but rather the Northern response to slavery and the refusal of Northern interests to recognize that the South was being forced due to Northern agitation to choose between abolition and secession. Speaking for the South, Calhoun (27) asked "for justice, simple justice" and offered in the South's defense the U.S. Constitution under which slavery was legal and without whose amendment the North neither could nor should force the Southern states to emancipate slaves.
As Calhoun (28) stated, to save the Union, "the North may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice, and to perform her duties under the Constitution, should be regarded by her as a sacrifice." He was convinced that unless the North ceased its agitation over slavery, the South would be forced to withdraw from the Union in the interest of protecting her own rights to self-determination. It is no accident therefore, that when South Carolina (35) issued a "Declaration of the Causes of Secession" on December 20, 1860, it made reference to the existence of "fr
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Approximate Word count = 1282
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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