Why Did The South Want To Secede Essay

The Confederates believed that they were fighting a Third American Revolution by attempting to secede from the United States during the American Civil War. Although the confederate sought to secede from the union and exercise their States’ right, which they claimed was being denied by the union. The South argued that they were being their right to owning property, in this case, the enslaved Africans. The South claimed Independence from the North, just like the colonists did with Great Britain. As a result, the Revolutionary war broke out between Great Britain and the Colonists for the independence and freedom of the colonies, in other words, the colonies wanted to secede from Great Britain. The South attempting to secede from the North is very similar because the South feels
as though it is time to separate from the Northern tyrants and oppressors. The civil war is very similar to the Revolutionary war because both wars were fought in order to gain freedom and obtain independence from a larger power. Since the Revolutionary war and the Civil war are very similar, the Civil war is considered to be the third American Revolution.
Some of the arguments that the south argued they had to secede was because of the Secessionism of Threatened Cultures, this basically states that if a minority culture is threatened within a state that has a majority culture, the minority needs a right to form a state of its own which would protect its culture.
Another reason was because of Cultural Secessionism: any group which was previously in a minority has a right to protect and develop its own culture and distinct national identity through seceding into an independent state. The South also stated that Secession was justified because of Anarcho-Capitalism, this is the individual liberty to form political associations and private property rights together justify right to secede and to create a “viable political order” with like-minded individuals. The main argument that the Southern States had for secession from the union was called Democratic Secessionism, this exercises the right of secession, as a variant of the right of self-determination, is vested in a “territorial community” which wishes to secede from “their existing political community”; the group wishing to secede then proceeds to delimit “its” territory by the
majority.
Lincoln argued that the Civil War caused and allowed a tremendous expansion of the size and power of the federal government. It gave us our first federal conscription law, first progressive income tax, first enormous standing army; it gave us a higher tariff, and greenbacks. James McPherson writes approvingly: "This astonishing blitz of laws . . . did more to reshape the relation of the government to the economy than any comparable effort except perhaps the first hundred days of the New Deal. This Civil War Legislation . . . created modern America. Albert Jay Nock was more critical of the war's impact, especially on the Constitution: "Lincoln overruled the opinion of Chief Justice Taney that suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional, and in consequence the mode of the State was, until 1865, a monocratic military despotism. . . . The doctrine of 'reserved powers' was knaved up ex post facto as a justification for his acts, but as far as the intent of the constitution is concerned, it was obviously pure invention. In fact, a very good case could be made out for the assertion that Lincoln's acts resulted in a permanent radical change in the entire system of constitutional 'interpretation'--that since his time 'interpretations' have not been interpretations of the constitution, but merely of public policy. . . . A strict constitutionalist might indeed say that the constitution died in 1861, and one would have to scratch one's head pretty diligently to refute him."