South in the 1950s, Davis was urging in the 1850s. But slavery repelled capital and white skilled
labor alike, and Southerners themselves did not want industrialization for many different reasons,
most of all because they felt instinctively that it would mean the end of slavery and plantation
culture. So Davis got no response to his pleas. In any case they were half-hearted and confused.
His wish to educate' the South conflicted with his insistence that Southern textbooks be rewritten to eliminate opinions in conflict with the South's view of slavery, his desire that the South's children should learn from books which werePolitically Correct' and indoctrinate their minds with sound impressions and views' and his determination to kick outYankee
schoolteachers.' Not for nothing did the New York Herald call him `the Mephistopheles of the
South.'
By seceding from the Democratic Party, the Southern states threw away their greatest single
asset, the presidency. Then, by seceding from the Union, they lost everything, slavery first and
foremost. Bell was right in proclaiming, throughout the election, that the only way the South
could retain slavery was by staying in the Union. But that demanded a change of heart, radical and thorough, of Northern opinion in relation to slavery.' Up to the beginning of the campaign, Davis, realizing that Lincoln would win, made a desperate effort to get all the other three candidates to withdraw in favor of a compromise figure-a sympathetic Northerner, perhaps. Breckinridge and Bell agreed to stand down and so did Douglas' running mate, Benjamin Fitzpatrick. But Douglas, ambitious and self-centered-and blind-to the end, flatly refused. Thus Douglas made the Civil War inevitable. Or did he? Was it inevitable once Lincoln won? One of the villains was Buchanan, the outgoing President, who in effect did nothing between the beginning of November 1860 and the handover to Lincoln in March. His message to Congress denied the right of secession but blamed the Republicans for the crisis-two incompatible opinions. He was lazy, frightened, confused, and pusillanimous. Thus four vital months were lost. His military dispositions, insofar as he made any, were inflammatory rather than conciliatory. Only two states wanted a civil war-South Carolina and Massachusetts. In the early 1830s over Nullification, the South California extremists failed to carry anyone else with them, the rest of the South being prepared to trust President Jackson, to see the South got justice. But now they would trust nobody. All the same, an armed struggle might have been averted. Had South Carolina persuaded only four or five other states to go with it, the secession would have fizzled out. If all fifteen of the slave states had seceded, the North would have been forced to give way and sue for a compromise. As it was, just enough joined South California to insure war. The real tragedy for America is that Lincoln, the man the South most hated, was exactly the man to get it to see reason, had he been given the chance. If he had been enabled by the Constitution to move into the White House immediately after his election, and assume full powers, all the weight of his intellect, and all the strength of his character, and all the genius of his imagination could have been brought to bear on the problem of exorcizing the South's fears. Instead, he had to sit, powerless (he used the interval to grow a beard), while the Union disintegrated, and by the time he took up command the process of secession was already taking place, and was irrevocable. As early as November 10, only three days after the election results were received, the South Carolina legislature unanimously authorized the election of a state convention on December 6, to decidefuture relations between the State and the Union.' Eight days later, Georgia followed suit.
Within a month every state of the South had taken the initial steps towards secession. When
Congress reassembled on December 3, it listened to a plaintive grumble from Buchanan, who