Secession Winter: Part Two
Representatives from seven cotton growing states (the Deep South) met in Montgomery, Alabama on February 7, 1861. There, they wrote a constitution and formed a new government, the Confederate States of America. The Congress of this new government selected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as their president and Alexander Stephens of Georgia as their vice president.
It is interesting to note that both of these men had been Unionists following the election of Lincoln. They argued that the best course for their respective states and the entire slave South was to give Lincoln a chance before deciding whether or not to leave the Union.
The Border States of the Upper South, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky, along with Arkansas and Missouri were slave states, too. But leaders in each of those states chose not to join the Confederate States of America. They would remain in the Union and see how Lincoln’s government would handle the situation.
In Washington City government leaders seemed to take a wait and see stance. Between December 20, 1860 when the South Carolina Secession Convention voted to leave the Union and the Lincoln inauguration of March 6, 1861, President Buchanan chose not to confront the seceding states. He feared angering leaders in the loyal Border States and thus pushing them into secession.
Once in office, President Lincoln chose the same course for basically the same reason. Meanwhile, during the Secession Winter, two serious efforts were made in Washington City to lure the states of the Deep South back into the Union and to calm the fears of people living in the Border States.
More on the Secession Winter of 1861 later.