Rebels in the Making by William L. Barney

Author:William L. Barney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Alabama: Yancey Triumphant

Yancey’s moment had arrived. For years, he had preached that the South must not submit to a hostile Northern majority, and now most white Alabamians agreed. The most fervent secessionists vowed to leave the state and accept any financial sacrifice if Alabama refused to secede. “My wife and I have talked the matter over,” wrote a minister in Tuscaloosa, “and she agrees with me that poverty and hardship are to be preferred to the certain vassalage that awaits our posterity if Alabama refuses to strike one manly blow for freedom.” The secretary of the Baptist state convention meeting in Tuskegee informed Governor Moore that the delegates held themselves “subject to the call of proper authority in the defence of the sovereignty and independence of the State of Alabama.” The leading conservative papers came out for resistance. The pro-Bell Montgomery Post announced it was ready to set aside party differences to “prepare to maintain the rights and institutions of our section.” In declaring for resistance, the Mobile Daily Advertiser touted the economic benefits of secession for the commercial interests of the city. Interior merchants, who purchased their goods in the North, would now direct their business to Mobile. Prosperity would also be ensured by Mobile’s projected status as a port for direct trade to Europe, resulting in the city’s becoming “the commercial metropolis of all the Gulf coast east of New Orleans.”22

The Breckinridge press in south Alabama lined up solidly behind separate state secession. Speed was imperative, warned the Hayneville Chronicle in the black belt county of Lowndes, where slaves were increasing at twice the rate of whites. Northern emissaries, it was alleged, would soon tell the slaves of Lincoln’s election and incite them to rebellion. Only by rapidly organizing “a military force” could the state “readily keep down any effort at rebellion.” What was at stake was “the safety of the people.” In this mindset, military resistance became a preemptive strike against slave uprisings.23

Conservatives in the Bell and Douglas camps, who combined had polled 46 percent of the presidential vote, were less worried about what the slaves might do and more about the anarchy that might be result from precipitate action. They had no choice but to advocate resistance but insisted it take the form of a cooperative movement that would, as the Autauga Citizen reasoned, unite “a number of States sufficiently strong to form a Southern Confederacy that would give us needful protection.” Otherwise, as another Douglas paper argued, “a mere hurrah movement” would be dangerous: “all the evils of revolution will be let loose, and the demons of anarchy will riot at will. . . . [F]renzied appeals will take the place of reason, demagogues usurp the seats of statesmanship, and secret leagues supercede [sic] constituted authority.” A splintered and weak South at war with itself would be easy prey for vengeful Northerners.24

The appeal of cooperationism, as well as its weakness, was its elasticity. It clung to the diminishing hopes of saving the Union by allowing

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