Unanimity and Disloyalty in Secessionist Alabama

UNANIMITY AND DISLOYALTY IN SECESSIONIST ALABAMA Durward Long In the spring and summer of 1860 political pressures in Alabama separated the voters into five separate factions over the presidential nomination and related issues. By November this factionalism had been reduced to three groups, each of which supported either John C. Breckinridge, nominee of the southern Democrats, Stephen A. Douglas, standard bearer for the northern Democrats, or John BeIL the selection of the Constitutional Unionists. Economic and political differences among the groups produced an active campaign in most parts of the state for each candidate. When it was apparent that none of the candidates had been successful in his bid for the presidency another political distillation took place. Two strong factions emerged, divided over the time and motive for secession. One faction became known as the "straight-outs," from their desire to take Alabama out of the Union without waiting on other states or other causes for secession . The second faction wished to cooperate with other southern states in concerted action and became known as "cooperationists." Despite the differences between the groups, the secession convention of January, 1861, voted to secede immediately without further delay. What of the cooperationists? Did they disagree so greatly with their fellow AIabamians that they remained loyal to the Union and disloyal to their state? It appears that the people of Alabama moved from a five-faction division over secession in the summer of 1860 to near unanimity in early 1861. In tracing and describing this transformation several research sources are helpful The shifting positions of politicians, particularly those who supported Bell or Douglas in November, are used with the assumption that such transitions reflected the majority opinions of their constituencies. Expressions of changing sentiment by partisan newspapers and editors, and the sale of newspaper firms by cooperationists, are also useful in drawing conclusions. Letters of prominent Alabama citizens, particularly former supporters of Bell, Douglas, or the cooperation movement, constitute a third index. Resolutions of public meetings also indicate local manifestations of opin257 258CI VIL W AB HIS TOBT ion. Finally, the similarity of the views of most of the delegates in the secession convention is a basic measure, when compared to speeches and later actions of the cooperationists. "In six months," writes one scholar, "the South had achieved an apparent unity out of the diversity of sentiment that had prevailed. . . ."* Alabama's case substantiates this generalization. It was not a case of political leaders shrewdly manipulating the people to the politician's will and selfish desire. It was, in many places in Alabama, rather an instance of the people leading the leaders.2 The majority of the politicians quickly fell in with the idea of secession. Men of outstanding political stature who formerly supported Douglas joined the secessionists . John Forsyth, as early as October 15, 1860, promised while campaigning for the northern Democratic candidate that "If a Black Republican President should be elected by a purely sectional vote, the South resisting and the North uniting against us, this is no union for slaveholders to live in. I should go with Mr. Yancey for disruptionhalter or no halter." Another Douglas leader in Alabama, former Governor John A. Winston, declared: "We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by disrupting the Union." Senator C. C. Clay, Jr., expressed his views in a letter of November 16, 1860, to Thomas Hill Watts: "I am for immediate secession by separate state action—if we wait to unite the South we will wait forever." Furthermore, he wrote, "God speed and prosper the efforts that you, Yancey, [Samuel F.] Rice, and Judge Phelan, our noble governor and many such patriots are now making for the rights, honor, interests, sovereignty and independence of Alabama." William P. Chilton, an old line Whig and supporter of Bell in November, also joined the ranks of the secessionists. Congressman J. L. Pugh called the hope of secession ahope of a "second declaration of independence."3 Watts, an active Bell supporter, had spoken his sentiments before the November election. He felt that "the election of Lincoln will justify secession," because it would prove to the South that disunion was the only remaining recourse. Watts's fire...