Lincoln's Refutation of Secession

Abstract

All seem to agree that Abraham Lincoln was indefatigably de voted to preserving the Union, but were his means those of a hero or those of a tyrant? The debate on the constitutionality of his various actions as president: his suspension ofhabeas corpus, the shutting down of proslavery newspapers in the North, all rest on what was truly the most monumental constitutional issue he would face: the legality of secession and the nature of the Constitution itself. Indeed, since the Constitution was first ratified, the threat of se cession?exaggerated though it might have been?had dogged the national government. Georgia and South Carolina responded to an anti-slavery petition to Congress by intimating that they would secede if Congress attempted to free the slaves. In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson denied the obligation of states to honor unconstitutional federal laws; these arguments were later resurrected by John C. Calhoun in support of the right of secession. Secession plots by the Federalists (including the Hartford Convention) abounded in the early nineteenth century. But no state had ever followed through on a threat to secede until Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln had no choice but to confront the question of the constitutionality of secession. In December, soon after Lincoln's election, South Carolina seceded from the Union, and six more states followed within the next two months. As Lincoln took