Dred Scott was the enslaved person of an army surgeon from Missouri. He was in Illinois, a free state, when the surgeon died. He sued for his freedom “on grounds of prolonged residence in a free state and a free territory” (170). The US Supreme Court, under the Southern Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, ruled against Dred Scott. His ruling had an “apparent purpose in negating U.S. citizenship for [African Americans]” (174), and his judicial opinion held that “a ban on slavery was […] an unconstitutional deprivation of property” (176).

Taney had hoped that the Dred Scott decision would weaken the Republican Party by negating enslavement in US territories as a political issue they could run on. Instead, anger over the decision drove more anti-enslavement Democrats to the Republican Party, while giving rise to a conspiracy theory to force enslavement on free states. Attacking Democrats for wanting to expand enslavement became part of Abraham Lincoln’s Senate campaign in 1858. Further, the issue became the basis for a series of seven debates across Illinois between Lincoln and his opponent, Stephen Douglas. In the end, Douglas was elected to the Senate and “Democrats also carried five of the nine congressional districts in Illinois” (188), but Lincoln gained national fame.

The United States economy crashed with the Panic of 1857, which was caused by “a surge of speculation in western lands” (189). While the disruptions to the economy proved less dire than expected, it led Republicans and some Democrats to adopt a platform of raising tariffs. Southern politicians opposed such measures, since the Southern economy depended “on the export of raw materials and the import of manufactured goods” (193). Southerners also tried to block congressional legislation meant to handle the economic depression, such as giving land to new Western settlers, establishing colleges in new Western states, and building a transcontinental railroad. The struggle over these bills gave electoral victories to Republicans by 1860. In turn, Republicans opposed the efforts of Democrats in Congress to begin new negotiations to purchase Cuba.

The Panic of 1857 further heightened tensions between the North and South in other ways. Since the Southern economy benefited from exports, the economic downturn did little to harm their economy. In Southern eyes, this justified their belief in the superiority of their enslavement economy over the North’s wage economy. Arguments like those of the Southern sociologist, George Fitzhugh, who wrote the books Cannibals All! and Sociology for the South, held that enslaved persons were taken care of for life, unlike wage workers, and that the wage economy of the North created “‘a servile class of mechanics and laborers, unfit for self-government, yet clothed with the attributes and powers of citizens’” (197).

However, one Southerner, Hinton Rowan Helper, author of the book The Impending Crisis published in New York, countered that enslavement itself made the South economically, politically, socially, and intellectually backwards. The Impending Crisis was outlawed in several Southern states.

While most abolitionists were committed to “nonviolence” (203), events in the 1850s made some abolitionists like Frederick Douglass became more open to violent rhetoric. One opponent of enslavement, John Brown, had fought in Bloody Kansas. In 1858, Brown and a group known as the “Secret Six” (204) tried to take weapons from the US armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and give the weapons to enslaved persons to start an uprising in the South. After a confrontation in which several men on both sides were killed, Brown was captured and executed by hanging.

In response to the Harper’s Ferry raid, Southerners feared that there would be enslaved person revolts, but the further news that no enslaved person had joined the raid convinced Southerners of their belief in “the slaves’ tranquility” (208). Northerners soon came to see John Brown as a “martyr” (208) to the abolitionist cause. Southern outrage over Northern valorization of Brown became more intense than the outrage over the raid itself, despite the efforts of Republicans to “disavow Brown” (212).

In the wake of the Harper’s Ferry raid, many Southerners acted on the fear and anger by joining local militias while Southern state governments purchased weapons. Southern Democrats demanded a “federal slave code for the territories” (214) despite the opposition of Northern Democrats like Stephen Douglas, who preferred “popular sovereignty” (215), the principle that settlers in the territory could vote to choose whether or not to allow enslavement. Even then, Douglas won the nomination to become the Democrats’ presidential candidate, but only after a fiercely contested convention.

The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate for the 1860 election over William H. Seward, since he was known for his anti-enslavement views as a former Whig while he also “had a reputation as a moderate” (218). While the Democrats were bitterly divided between the Northern and Southern factions of the party, the Republicans were unified around Lincoln.

During the presidential campaign, Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to not only combat the expansion of enslavement, but to give equal rights to African Americans. In reaction, Republicans distanced themselves from a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in New York that would have extended voting rights to African Americans. Republicans “played down the moral issue of slavery while emphasizing other matters of regional concern” (225), such as tariffs and corruption in the Buchanan administration.

While some Republican supporters had misgivings over the party’s refusal to abolish enslavement or repeal the Fugitive Slave Act, others like Frederick Douglass believed Lincoln represented the Republican Party moving in a more abolitionist direction. Meanwhile, Southern Unionists and Northern Democrats feared that Southern secession would happen if Lincoln was elected. The very existence of an anti-enslavement political party, even a moderate one, aroused anger in the South. Nevertheless, Lincoln won “60 percent” (232) of the North.

In response to Lincoln’s election, a convention called in South Carolina voted to secede from the United States. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas quickly followed suit. Texas was the only one to hold a referendum where voters could vote for secession, but McPherson still believes that in all these states secession had majority support.

Some secessionists were cooperationists, who wanted to see coordinated arrangements among Southern states before secession. This group also included “ultimatumists,” who “urged a convention of southern states to draw up a list of demands for presentation to the incoming Lincoln administration” (237), and “conditional unionists,” who believed that secession should not happen until the Lincoln administration did something overtly against Southern interests. Despite that, secession happened without any such organization and, once it happened, proved to be popular even among cooperationists.

Secessionists also disagreed on the legal basis of their actions. Some argued that secession was constitutional while others argued they had “the right of revolution” (240) because their liberties were threatened. Such threatened Southern liberties were the “right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories; freedom from the coercive powers of a centralized government” (241).

Southern politicians were worried by the number of non-enslavers who elected moderate cooperationist delegates to the state secession conventions. In response, Southern politicians tried to pitch secession to non-enslavers. They used arguments of “white supremacy” and the threat of “racial equality and amalgamation” (243) to make such a case. Secessionist propaganda asserted that the equality of white Americans and democracy depended on the existence of enslavement. McPherson argues that the rhetoric of the Confederacy, the new nation-state established by the secessionists, used “the language of counterrevolution” and sought to “protect the status quo before the revolutionary threat [could] materialize” (245).

Despite his sympathies for the South, President James Buchanan gave “a firm denial of the right of secession” (246). Likewise, Northern opinion feared that further parts of the United States would try to secede, held that secession was unconstitutional, and rejected the argument that secession could be a revolution with a “‘morally justifiable cause’” (248).

Compromises were suggested in Congress, but they “all shared the same feature: Republicans would have to make all the concessions” (251). One such compromise was proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden, who suggested a series of constitutional amendments that would have prevented Congress from abolishing enslavement and cemented the 36° 30’ as the boundary between pro-enslavement and free states and territories. The Crittenden compromise was rejected by Republicans in the Senate, and McPherson argues it was very unlikely it or any compromise could have succeeded even with Republican support.

Meanwhile, voters in the upper South states of Virginia, Arkansas, and Missouri chose a majority of pro-Union delegates in their state conventions, and voters in Tennessee and North Carolina rejected holding a convention at all: “The main reason for this outcome was the lesser salience of slavery in the upper South” (255). Lincoln tasked William Seward with finding compromises that would keep the upper South states on the Union side. However, even a moderated version of the Crittenden compromise was voted down in Congress.

At Montgomery, Alabama, the new Confederate government chose Jefferson Davis as their provisional president. Back in the North, Lincoln “appointed his four main rivals for the nomination to cabinet posts” (260), with Seward as secretary of state, Edward Bates as attorney general, Simon Cameron as secretary of war, and Salmon Chase as secretary of the treasury. Lincoln’s inaugural address was seen as moderate by Republicans and provocative by the Confederacy, but Lincoln succeeded for the most part in his main goal of winning over unionist Democrats.

President Buchanan had pledged to South Carolina’s representatives not to send reinforcements to Fort Sumter, a federal military base in South Carolina. However, a federal military officer stationed in South Carolina, Major Robert Anderson, moved to relocate his command to the heavily fortified Fort Sumter. There was a “tacit truce” (266) that South Carolina’s forces would not attack Fort Sumter as long as the fort was not again reinforced. The newly inaugurated President Lincoln had to choose between sending needed supplies to Fort Sumter, which risked starting a war with the Confederacy and alienating the upper South states, or giving Fort Sumter up to the Confederacy, which would have angered the Northern public and weakened his administration and the Republican Party.

Lincoln decided to send basic provisions to Fort Sumter with the knowledge of the government of South Carolina. Under pressure from fire-eaters, Jefferson Davis ordered an attempt to take the fort before supplies could arrive. Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter on the morning of April 12th, 1861, capturing the fort two days later. The outbreak of war with the Confederacy was welcomed by the Northern public.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederacy needed the upper South states because they contained the majority of the South’s population, industrial and agricultural resources, and military leaders. The state governments of the upper South states refused to send their state militias against their “‘sister Southern States’” (276), while many of the states saw demonstrations calling for them to join the Confederacy.

Virginia seceded by April 17th and the Confederacy made the Virginian city of Richmond its capital. Although he had previously opposed secession, with his native Virginia joining the Confederacy, the general Robert E. Lee felt obligated to join the Confederate army. Some officers from the North who were married to Southern women did so as well, but some officers who were native Southerners joined Union forces.

Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee next defected to the Confederacy. There was a “correlation between slaveholding and support for secession in the Virginia and Tennessee conventions” (283). On the other hand, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware all had a “proportion of slaves and slaveowners […] less than half what it was in the eleven states that seceded” (284). However, there was still a risk that Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland would secede because they had large and vocal enslaver minorities. Pro-secession mobs erupted in violence in the Maryland city of Baltimore, forcing Northern forces to enforce martial law.

The arrest of suspected Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore was made possible by Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, a legal principle that allows courts to review whether or not an individual has been unlawfully detained. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Taney ruled that Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln “refused to obey it” (288) on the basis that the president was obliged to suppress rebellion.

In Missouri, the pro-enslavement Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson clashed with Captain Nathaniel Lyon, the Union commander of the federal armory in the Missouri city of St. Louis. Militias on both sides fought for control of Missouri, to the point that “[m]ore than any other state, Missouri suffered the horrors of internecine warfare” (292). Fox Jackson and the Missouri legislature fled the Missouri capital of Jefferson City and a Unionist provisional government called the “Long Convention” (293) took control over most of Missouri.

Kentucky “was so evenly divided in sentiment and geography […] its people were loath to choose sides” (293). The state government of Kentucky tried a stance of neutrality. Not wanting to drive Kentucky to join the Confederacy, Lincoln avoided marching Union forces through Kentucky and even allowed Kentucky to trade with the Confederacy. By June, a solidly pro-Union majority was elected to the Kentucky legislature. When a Confederate army occupied the Kentucky town of Columbus, Kentucky joined the war on the Union side.

Delaware was technically a pro-enslavement state, but “[f]or all practical purposes Delaware was a free state” (297). In the mountainous western part of Virginia, enslaved persons were rare and there was widespread resentment against Virginia’s enslaver elite. The region held its own convention in its largest city Wheeling and voted to separate and form its own state, West Virginia. The fact that a Union army led by the general George M. McClellan had secured West Virginia well enough to allow a “statehood referendum” (303) made this possible. The West Virginians accepted gradual emancipation of enslaved persons as a requirement for joining the Union.

It also seemed likely that eastern Tennessee could be claimed for the Union since it was a hotbed of Unionist support. The general William Tecumseh Sherman cancelled a planned Union incursion into the region, however, due to “inflated estimates of Confederate strength” (305). This allowed the Confederacy to crack down on pro-Union resistance in the area. McPherson concludes by suggesting that, “[i]f all eight states (or all but Delaware) had seceded, the South might well have won its independence” (306).