Slaveholders' Rights, Not States' Rights

Recent controversies over Confederate symbols have raised the question: Why did the southern states secede from the Union in 1860-1861?

Those who claim that the South seceded to defend states’ rights are wrong. The only rights that white southerners sought to preserve in seceding from the Union were their “rights” to hold slaves.

Beginning in the 1840s, the United States became embroiled in a fierce debate over two great issues — the right of slaveholders to reclaim fugitive slaves who had escaped into the North and the right to take their slaves into new federal territories in the West.

On the first question, the Constitution appeared to be clear. Fugitive slaves, under Article IV, Section 2, were to be “delivered up” to their owners. In 1793, Congress first passed a federal fugitive slave law in order to implement the clause. Decades later, after northern states attempted to enact laws to prevent enforcement, Congress passed a new fugitive slave law, mandating that all northern citizens assist in the return of fugitives.

On the second question — slavery in the territories — the Constitution did not provide an answer. But as the nation expanded, white southerners hoped to be able to take their slaves into new lands. Although Congress twice passed compromise legislation that allowed setters in territories to determine for themselves whether territories would permit slavery or not, the issue continued to divide Americans along sectional lines.

In 1857, when Dred Scott’s case made it to the Supreme Court, the justices saw an opportunity to resolve the issue. Scott’s owner, an army surgeon, had taken Scott with him to live for a while in free territory, and upon their return to Missouri, Scott filed a suit for his freedom. The case offered the Court an opportunity to address the question of whether Congress could prohibit slavery in federal territories, because Scott’s claim to freedom relied on congressional legislation that, decades before, had prohibited slavery in the territory where Scott had been taken.

In his majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney came down strongly on behalf of the rights of slaveholders. Not only did Taney rule that Scott was not free by virtue of his time in free territory, the chief justice also declared that slaveholders possessed an unrestricted right to take slaves into territories.

Because the Fifth Amendment protected the rights of property from interference without due process of law, Taney invalidated the federal statute under which Scott had claimed he was free. Settling a long-simmering question, Taney summed up the matter: “The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

In its nearly 70-year history to that point, the Supreme Court had never before struck down a federal law as violating any part of the Bill of Rights. This was first time it did so — in order to protect the rights of slaveholders.

Northern outrage over the decision coalesced in the Republican presidential candidacy of Abraham Lincoln, who spent the years between 1854 and 1860 building a national reputation in opposition to slaveholders’ rights in the territories.

Lincoln believed that the founders had envisioned the eventual end of slavery, and he rejected attempts to expand the institution. In his speech at Peoria, Ill., in 1854, Lincoln ridiculed white southerners’ increasing emphasis on their supposed rights. “The plain and unmistakable spirit of [the founding] age, toward slavery,” said Lincoln, “was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity. But now it is to be transformed into a ‘sacred right.’ ” Four years later, in his debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln repeatedly denounced Taney’s Dred Scott decision.

In the presidential election of 1860, southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge for president on a platform that affirmed slaveholders’ rights. “All citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle with their property in the Territory, without their rights, either of person or property, being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation,” it stated.

When Lincoln was elected president on an opposite platform, white southerners feared for the future of the institution of slavery. Economic interest, white racism, and commitment to a traditional way of life all converged in the notion that southerners possessed a bundle of rights associated with their holding of slave property.

In announcing their decision to leave the Union, southern states drafted secession resolutions that sought to affirm these rights. The Mississippi Resolutions on Secession, for example, argued that “the institution of slavery existed prior to the formation of the Federal Constitution, and is recognized by its letter, and all efforts to impair its value or lessen its duration by Congress, or any of the free states, is a violation of the compact of Union.” South Carolina’s secession resolution criticized the free states for assuming “the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions” and for denying “the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution.”

When the Confederate states drafted their own constitution in 1861, the document specifically prohibited any law “denying or impairing the right of property in [N]egro slaves.”

In 1775, as the American Revolution began, the English writer Samuel Johnson had remarked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of [N]egroes?" Eight and a half decades later, during the secession crisis, white southerners continued to claim their rights and liberties — to hold their fellow human beings as slaves.

These were the rights — not states’ rights — that lay behind the formation of the Confederacy.