“If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.”
Alexander Stephens
The second wave of states to leave the Union were the Upper South states.
These included Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and pro-Confederate Kentucky and Missouri, who held divided loyalties. The Upper South states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had a more extensive free population than the Deep South and made up most of the Confederacy. In general, there was a difference in the causes of secession between the original seven seceding “Cotton States” of the Deep South and the remaining Upper South. When the Cotton States left the Union, the Upper South either turned down voting on withdrawal from the Union or voted against secession.
Historian E. Merton Coulter writes, “The Majority sentiment in the Upper South had been unionist until Lincoln’s call for troops… Upper South… had cried equally against coercion as secession.”
When many historians talk about secession, they almost always ignore the Upper South; they unanimously point instead to the Cotton States. I believe this omission is because connecting slavery as a cause with the Upper South would be much more difficult. Further, looking at their causes of secession exposes the transformation of our Union into a centralized nation under Lincoln.
