Slavery was the underlying reason that South Carolina, followed by ten
other states, left the Union. In 1860, leaders of the state were perfectly clear
about why they were seceding. On Christmas Eve, they signed a “Declaration
of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina from the Federal Union.” Their first grievance was “that fourteen of
the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional
obligations,” specifically this clause, which they quote: “No person held to
service or labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another,
shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labour, but shall be delivered up.. .” This is of course the Fugitive
Slave Clause, under whose authority Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850, which South Carolina of course approved. This measure required
officers of the law and even private citizens in free states to participate in
capturing and returning African Americans when whites claimed them to be
their slaves. This made the free states complicit with slavery. They wriggled
around, trying to avoid full compliance. Pennsylvania, for example, passed a
law recognizing the supremacy of the federal act but pointing out that
Pennsylvanians still had the right to determine pay for their officers of the law,
and they refused to pay for time spent capturing and returning alleged slaves.
South Carolina attacked such displays of states’ rights:
But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding
States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their
obligations.... The States of Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa,
have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or
render useless any attempt to execute them.
Thus South Carolina opposed states’ rights when claimed by free states.
This is understandable. Historically, whatever faction has been out of power in
America has pushed for states’ rights. White Southerners dominated the
executive and judicial branches of the federal government throughout the 1850s
—and through the Democratic Party, the legislative branch as well—so of
course they opposed states’ rights. Slave owners were delighted when
Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney decided in 1857 that throughout the nation,
irrespective of the wishes of state or territorial governments, blacks had no
rights that whites must respect. Slave owners pushed President Buchanan to