Southern Unionists

[ironfoot]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/no-better-southern-man/

[subdjoe]

Interesting read, thank you.  Shows that much of the South wanted to remain in the Union until Lincolns actions forced them to make a choice between states rights and a federal government run wild. 

Voters in the Upper South had their say in February 1861. In state after state, starting with Virginia on February 4, emphatic popular majorities opposed secession. This outcome resulted in part from a massive mailing of pro-Union speeches. Night after night, Hatton reported to his wife, he and other Southern Unionists in Congress stayed up late franking thousands of copies of their oratory for free postal delivery. When given the opportunity to do so, voters in North Carolina and Tennessee even opposed letting a state convention meet. But Unionist victories were conditional, based on the assumption that Republicans would offer concessions and, most of all, that the incoming administration would not use armed force against the Deep South.

[Ga.windbreak]

Great article and as subdjoe points out that the article states this problem could have been contained had Lincoln had but the courage to contain it.

from the link:

When Lincoln took his oath of office on March 4, eight slave states, home to two-thirds of white Southerners, remained in the Union. An uneasy peace prevailed. Tennessee Congressman Horace Maynard beseeched Republicans to act cautiously. “Believe me,” he pleaded, “the moment you wage war, you array the entire South, as one man, in behalf of the portion that is attacked.

Sadly he had neither courage nor the the real interest of the Country or the Constitution at heart. He was but a small man clutching at straws with ideas of grandeur and the power of the sword. To think him a christian is a blight to all who truly have faith in God.

[ironfoot]

"Etheridge wasn’t alone. His address opened the floodgates to a torrent of Southern Unionist speeches in late January and early February. Few of his allies in Congress were quite so ready as he to give the Republican Party a clean bill of health, but they heartily agreed that secession was a virulent epidemic that would sicken or kill its host. It threatened to ignite a civil war that would destroy slavery. "

[subdjoe]

Yep..and those dire predictions make it all the worse that Honest Abe didn't heed the warnings such as: 

But Unionist victories were conditional, based on the assumption that Republicans would offer concessions and, most of all, that the incoming administration would not use armed force against the Deep South.

(taken from the link in your starting post).

But Abe had to have his war and called for invasion of the deep south.  Especially since there was an amendment already passed in Congress to make slavery perpetual in the US (which again reinforces the idea that slavery was not the main issue).

[SouthernByGrace]

ironfoot, in the words of President Jefferson Davis, who opposed secession, I remark that many Southerners knew full well the implications secession would bring, and also knew of the many benefits of being a part of the US Union, and how hard it would be to give up those benefits.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=491

I wish everyone would read the whole speech, but the section that most relates to this topic states:

A State, finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is—in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union—surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit—taking upon herself every burden—she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.

So they knew what they were doing, what they were giving up.

SBG