Home
The U.S. Constitution and Secession

The U.S. Constitution and Secession

A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy

Edited by Dwight T. Pitcaithley

Foreword by Sanford Levinson

Sales Date: March 31, 2018

384 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

Paperback
9780700626267
Published: March 2018

$29.99

Buy

eBook
9780700626274
Published: March 2018

Ebook version available from your favorite ebook retailer.

Hardcover
9780700626250
Published: March 2018

$79.99

Buy

Description
Authors
Praise
Contents

"A valuable trove of material for anyone trying to understand the constitutional issues and what some Southerners thought underlay them."—Journal of American History
"Offers valuable insights to an array of audiences. The sources compiled offer students and scholars alike the chance to consider the sectional crisis in a new light. The fraught efforts at compromise compiled in the volume refocus the political spectrum of the late antebellum era and reveal the fundamental nature of the conflict over slavery."—H-Net Reviews
"The documents clearly show the intractability of proslavery secessionists as well as the desperation of Unionists’ ill-fated efforts to avoid war. Pitcaithley’s introduction is a masterful exposition of how slavery and white supremacy suffused the Southern movement for secession and war. Students of the Civil War era will find this collection eminently useful. Highly recommended."—Choice
“Pitcaithley has produced an important work on one of the most significant events in the history of the United States—the movement by the slaveholding states to secede from the Union. His careful examination of the constitutional sources provides arresting insights into the handful of months between Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of war. Brilliantly organized and contextualized by the author, these documents from America’s greatest crisis provide a definitive answer to the question of why the South seceded.”—Timothy S. Huebner, author of Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism
“Anyone trying to understand the debate swirling around the constitutional right of secession in the months leading up to the Civil War will need to consult this volume. The selection of documents reflects Dwight Pitcaithley’s mastery of this material, as does his superb extended introduction. One word summarizes this book’s place in the massive literature on the Great Secession Winter of 1860–1861: indispensable.” —Charles B. Dew, author of Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
“It is hard to imagine a more timely collection of documents. As Americans debate the place of Confederate monuments in our culture, Pitcaithley’s book provides hard evidence—from the pens and mouths of Confederate leaders—that Southerners created the Confederacy and made war on their own country for the sole purpose of preserving and perpetuating slavery forever. The documents show that the Confederacy was conceived in slavery and dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal.”—Paul Finkelman, Fulbright Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice, University of Ottawa, and John E. Murray Visiting Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
“Dwight Pitcaithley has gathered together a remarkable set of primary source material from the winter of 1860–1861 that completely destroys revisionist claims of state’s rights as the primary cause of disunion and the Civil War. It is clear from congressional speeches, declarations of secession, and the many proposals to amend the US constitution that one issue drove this crisis—slavery. The collection stands out for highlighting the failed efforts at compromise, and Pitcaithley’s outstanding introduction traces the constitutional conflict surrounding human bondage from the original sin of the Philadelphia Convention through the firing on Fort Sumter. The U.S. Constitution and Secession should be read by all students and scholars of American constitutionalism, Southern politics, and American history."—Paul E. Herron, author of Framing the Solid South: The State Constitutional Conventions of Secession, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 1860–1902

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Documents

PART ONE

James Buchanan and John J. Crittenden

James Buchanan’s Address to Congress, December 3, 1860

John J. Crittenden’s Address to the U.S. Senate, December 18, 1860

PART TWO

Declarations of Secession

South Carolina

Mississippi

Georgia

Texas

PART THREE

U.S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

journal of the committee of thirty-three

Report of Special Committee of Thirty-Three

Committee of Thirty-Three: Minority Report No. 1

Committee of Thirty-Three: Minority Report No. 2

PART FOUR

PROPOSALS TO AMMEND THE U.S. CONSTITUTIONn

Kentucky Senator Lazarus Whitehead Powell (Democrat)

Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin (Democrat)

New York Representative John Cochrane (Democrat)

Virginia Representative Shelton Farrar Leake (Independent

Democrat)

Virginia Representative Albert Gallatin Jenkins (Democrat)

Kentucky Representative Robert Mallory (Opposition/Unionist)

Indiana Representative William Hayden English (Democrat)

Illinois Representative John Alexander McClernand (Democrat)

Missouri Representative John William Noell (Democrat)

Arkansas Representative Thomas Carmichael Hindman (Democrat)

Tennessee Representative Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson

(Opposition Party)

Louisiana Representative Miles Taylor (Democrat)

Tennessee Senator Andrew Johnson (Democrat)

Pennsylvania Representative Thomas Birch Florence (Democrat)

New York Representative John Cochrane (Democrat)

New York Representative Daniel Edgar Sickles (Democrat)

Georgia Senator Robert Toombs (Democrat)

Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis (Democrat)

Illinois Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas (Democrat)

New York Senator William Henry Seward (Republican)

Tennessee Representative Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson (Opposition

Party)

Pennsylvania Senator William Bigler (Democrat)

Massachusetts Representative Charles Francis Adams (Republican)

Virginia Representative John Singleton Millson (Democrat)

Maryland Representative Henry Winter Davis (American Party)

Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin (Republican)

Tennessee Representative Emerson Etheridge (Opposition Party)

Tennessee Governor Isham Green Harris (Democrat)

Virginia Governor John Letcher (Democrat)

Alabama Secession Convention

Virginia Senator Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (Democrat)

Tennessee State Representative George Gantt

Pennsylvania Senator William Bigler (Democrat)

Missouri Senator Trusten Polk (Democrat)

Pennsylvania Representative Thomas Birch Florence (Democrat)

Tennessee Joint Select Committee on Federal Relations

Georgia Delegate Herschel Vespasian Johnson (Democrat)

Pennsylvania Representative Thomas Birch Florence (Democrat)

Tennessee State Senate

Tennessee State Senator John Watkins Richardson (Whig)

Kentucky State Senator Benjamin P. Cissell

Pennsylvania Representative Edward Joy Morris (Republican)

Illinois Representative William Kellogg (Republican)

Ohio Representative Clement Laird Vallandigham (Democrat)

Connecticut Representative Orris Sanford Ferry (Republican)

Washington Peace Conference

Virginia Delegate James Alexander Seddon (Democrat)

Ohio Delegate Reuben Hitchcock (Republican)

Virginia Delegate James Alexander Seddon (Democrat)

Illinois Representative William Kellogg (Republican)

Virginia Delegate James Alexander Seddon (Democrat)

Kentucky Delegate James Brown Clay (Democrat)

Virginia Representative Sherrard Clemens (Democrat)

Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin (Republican)

Washington Peace Conference

Wisconsin Senator James Rood Doolittle (Republican)

Ohio Senator George Ellis Pugh (Democrat)

Virginia Delegate Henry Alexander Wise (Democrat)

Arkansas Delegate Hugh French Thomason (Unionist Democrat)

Virginia Secession Convention

Virginia Delegate Robert Henry Turner (Democrat)

Virginia Delegate Henry Alexander Wise (Democrat)

Virginia Delegate William Leftwich Goggin

Amendments as approved by Virginia Secession Convention

PART FIVE

Three Congressional Speeches

Illinois Representative Owen Lovejoy (Republican)

Missouri Representative John Richard Barret (Democrat)

Texas Senator Louis Trezevant Wigfall (Democrat)

APPENDICES

Secession Winter Time Line

Voting for Secession

Chronological Index of Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Glossary

Bibliography

Questions for Discussion

Index

Books

Authors

On The Site

The U.S. Constitution and Secession

A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy

The U.S. Constitution and Secession

A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy

Related Books