Last week I posted about the importance of the 1860 presidential election in the United States. The victory of Abraham Lincoln for the growing Republican party formalised the wedge that existed between the Northern and the Southern states. Previous to Lincoln’s ground-breaking win came the threat that those in the South would secede from the Union; the months between the election and Lincoln’s inauguration demonstrated that the threats were to be backed up by action.

It was the first attempt at secession from the Union. The closest example was that from the early 1830s in the so-called Nullification Crisis when South Carolina threatened to leave due to tariff disputes. Back then the president – Andrew Jackson (“Old Hickory”) – gathered together an army with the view to invading the state to bring it to heel; which, the state promptly did. However, that was just one state. During the winter of 1860-61 South Carolina was no longer alone, with many others supporting the idea of secession. Even Lincoln’s moderate and cautious speech from his inauguration – emphasising that he did not wish to touch slavery in the South – did little to change the minds of the new booming Confederacy of the United States.

Lincoln’s first inaugural address from 4 March 1861 is an interesting one to assess. The president has gone down in history as the man that freed the slaves, but at this stage he was not thinking about emancipation of all. His platform – similar to the majority of other Republicans – was simply about stopping the spread of slavery across the west, in order to keep it free and cheap with white Americans. In the speech, Lincoln appeals to the South in an attempt to stop the fragmentation of the Union.

‘Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left…

One section of our country believes slavery is right and out to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and out not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute…

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them…

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

I am loath to close. We area no enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’

The speech has gone down in history as momentous. Lincoln was right in attempting to heal the anger between both North and South, and was correct in stating that they would lose nothing by simply taking the time to consider their positions. But as noted in previous posts, the divisions were too wide to be easily healed, and the mistrust between both sides was based on decades of antagonism. The speech failed to do what it set out to do, and within a month the Union and the Confederacy started a war that would last several years and result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.