Question

What was the main reason the Southern states felt that they needed to secede?

Answer 1

Secession was a right reserved by the states when they formed the alliance of 1789 by the treaty called the Constitution of the USA. Remember, in 1783, Great Britain granted independence to thirteen new nations in North America by the Treaty of Paris. [If you do not understand that simple basic fact, you cannot begin to comprehend the state's rights issue.] Those new nations allied in a confederation of nations under the Articles of Confederation. That experiment was a failure so they tried again under the constitution. They never surrendered their autonomous independence to the federal government and, in fact, when they acceded to the constitution, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia expressly retained the right to secede.

John Adams and Ben Franklin made their views on secession very clear in the Declaration of Independence. When the government no longer serves, defends and protects the rights of the nation or the individuals who constitute the nation, it is the right of the people to leave it or change it. Thomas Jefferson not only co-authored the Declaration but he and James Madison wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions as well. It is more than obvious that they believed in the right of secession. Others who made public arguments in support of the obvious right to secede were James Mason, Gourverneur Morris, Daniel Webster (until he flopped when it was more advantageous to argue otherwise), John C. Calhoun (after he flopped for the same reason), Robert Livingston and most of the Founding Fathers (even, of all people, Alexander Hamilton).

The New England States threatened to secede in 1803. They did it again in 1812-1814 (see the Hartford Convention). Secession was discussed at the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention. The Fathers wanted to create a weak central government and reserve to the states all of their independence and sovereignty other than as to those limited issues enunciated in Article I. As to those, they believed that uniformity of laws was to their mutual best interests. All other powers, including the right to leave the union, were reserved. That was the whole point of Article IV and amendments IX and X. In each instance that a state or group of states threatened to secede, it was because the federal government was becoming the very draconian monolithic monster that the Founding Fathers had tried to prevent. 1860 was no different.

By 1860, the south was paying 75% of federal taxes but 75% of federal revenues were being spent in the north. Although the constitution itself required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners (Article IV, Section 2) northern states were passing laws which nullified the constitution. The Fugitive Slave Law was intended to stop such unconstitutional behavior but the federal government did nothing to protect southern property rights. Northern industrialist prevented the south from industrializing. By excise taxes they made it all but impossible for southern planters (who had no choice but to continue farming because the north wouldn't let them branch out into other endeavors - the north needed the crops and the taxes) to trade on international markets and then the northern bankers and merchants set rock-bottom prices on southern goods. Politically, the 1860 elections proved the south was disenfranchised completely. Lincoln won by a landslide without carrying a single southern state (and he wasn't even on the ballot in several). The south had no voice in Congress, the Executive was an obvious northern institution and the Supreme Court was at the mercy of the President and Congress.

The government no longer served, defended or protected the rights and interests of the south. The southern states did the logical and legal thing. They reasserted the independence they had never forfeited and formed a new alliance of nations. In response, Lincoln and the north invaded in a war of aggression and caused the government of the people, for the people, by the people of the CSA to perish from the earth. Hope this helps!

Slavery was protected by the constitution at Article I, section 2, Article IV, sections 2 and 9 and Amendments IV, V, IX and X. In 1860, the northern dominated congress passed the Corwin Amendment which, if ratified, would have become Amendment XIII. It would have prohibited any future amendment from abolishing slavery. The south did not have to secede to protect slavery. The federal constitution did that for them

Answer 2

btw this question belongs in the history section!