Secession of South Carolina from the United States of America

Introduction

As anyone who has taken a course in early American history has been told, one key reason that the Civil War was fought was to preserve the union of states, as the southern states, one by one, seceded from the United States in order to form the Confederate States of America.  This secession, which threatened to destroy the new nation before it had time to fully blossom, began with South Carolina’s exit from the union of the United States.  The purpose of this paper is to discuss why South Carolina seceded, the effect that this action had on the rest of the southern states, and the role that South Carolina’s action played in sparking the Civil War.

A Nation Divided

One of the key issues that divided the United States in the late 1850s and early 1860s was slavery; more precisely, the northern states by and large were opposed to slavery and sought to abolish it (hence the term “abolitionist”); in contrast, the southern states supported slavery due to a great extent to the fact that slave labor was essential for effectively operating the many cotton plantations that dotted the southern landscape.  Cotton was a huge cash crop, responsible for a great deal of the southern economy, and plantation owners grew rich at the expense of slave laborers.  Various sources debate whether or not slaves were treated well, but the fact that every slave was denied total freedom is undeniable.

An event that caused the slavery dispute to reach full volume was John Brown’s Raid in 1859, when John Brown, a fierce opponent of slavery, led a group of men on an attack against the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, in an effort to gain the weapons needed to build an anti-slavery army and also to send a strong message to the south that slavery would be fought with force (John Brown's Raid, 1859).  Ironically, Brown was captured and hanged for rebellion against the U.S., but this action sent a clear message to the pro-slavery states that action needed to be taken to protect the institution of slavery.
South Carolina Leads the Secession Movement