One major development in the history of American slavery was the famous Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford. In that 1857 decision, the Court said that Scott, a runaway slave, had no rights under the Constitution–and never would–because he was and forever would be the property of his owner. Further, the Court ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because it violated slaveowners' Fifth Amendment rights to keep their property from being taken away. Rather than settling the slavery issue once for all, which had been the hope of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the Dred Scott decision further inflamed abolitionists. John Brown and others cited this case as one of their major motivations for continuing the fight.

The Republican Party, formed in 1854 in the wake of the dissolution of the Free Soil Party, the Know-Nothing Party, and the Whig Party, had the abolition of slavery as one of its cornerstone policies. That party's second presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidency in 1860, despite not even being an option for voters in most southern states. His victory was short-lived, however, as South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed in the next few weeks. These seven states formed their own Confederacy and chose their own capital, Montgomery, Ala. They eventually named their own legislature and executive, Jefferson Davis.

Secession
The residents of those states felt that they had the right to remove themselves from the Union, that they felt more attuned to their own state than to the rest of the country. The tradition of a strong state government went right back to colonial days. Each of the 13 Colonies had its distinct character, economic needs, and philosophies. This individuality was offset in part by regional similarities and by the Constitution, which created a stronger central government than the one that had existed under the Articles of Confederation.

But the colonies-turned-states still possessed a strong sense of state identity. This idea was very much in line with the thinking of the leaders of the Democratic-Republican Party, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions, and Madison, in the Virginia Resolutions, put forward the idea that states could, if they thought that directions from the federal government were an abuse of power, choose not to follow those directions. These Resolutions were written in the 1790s, in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which many in the Democratic-Republican Party thought were an over-reach of federal power. The argument at the root of the Nullification Crisis was ostensibly over a tariff, a tax on goods transferred from one entity to another. Transactions could take place between companies, between states, or between countries. The Tariff of 1828 was deeply unpopular in parts of New England and the South and was so detrimental to South Carolina, in particular, that that state began to agitate for a political response. South Carolina's own John C. Calhoun was Vice-president at the time, having been elected with Andrew Jackson in 1828.

President Jackson responded on two fronts, advocating the use of military force to bring South Carolina into line while also convincing Congress to work on yet another tariff, one that South Carolina might finally approve. Congress passed both a Force Bill and the Compromise Tariff of 1833. South Carolina responded by repealing its nullification ordinance.

In a sense, both Jackson and South Carolina could claim victory. The new tariff was weak enough to gain the support of the recalcitrant South Carolina and the rest of the South, so state agitation was effectively at an end. South Carolina got what it wanted, and so did the Federal Government. Both sides avoided a military showdown (although Jackson might have helped convince South Carolina of the futility of this by sending a couple of Navy ships to Charleston). The idea of a state's being able to step outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Government didn't go away, however. South Carolina and the other Southern states revived it after Lincoln's election and carried out the theory to its greatest logical conclusion, seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America.

Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Thirty-nine days later, the Civil War began, with an attack on Fort Sumter.

First page > Early Commonalities > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5