From North and South: Declarations of War

Introduction

The Civil War, the conflict that Abraham Lincoln rightly said would be remembered "to the latest generation."  It was the definitive event in American history, the line in the sands of time that compels everything to be defined as happening before or after. It was the great national epoch, whose "fearful lightning" thrust forward to eternal memory giants like Lincoln, U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. It was the crucible of transformation, in which the slaves were emancipated, the nation was industrialized, the West was settled, and a new direction taken. It was the pinnacle of personal human drama and emotion, as the lives of millions were "touched with fire", as they coped with a war on American soil and a casualty list almost as great as all other American wars combined. It was the spawner of legacies, as so much that has happened since would not have occurred but for the searing years when truly, brother fought against brother to determine the nation's future. Nobody can understand the United States of America without understanding the Civil War.

The Constitution of the United States provides that only Congress can declare war, and so it happened in 1812 and 1846, when it declared war on Britain and Mexico, respectively. But the nation was faced with a different situation with the Civil War, as neither side wanted to be seen as initiating the conflict and neither issued a declaration of war. At the end, however, in the wake of full military surrenders and such great loss of life and devastation, there were both historical and legal needs to determine the formal commencement of the war. But because the roads to war were different in the North and South, separate actions by the sides can, with the perspective of history, be seen to constitute acts of war, and thus effectively declarations of war. Finally, as to the Union, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, naming one specific act as the official commencement of the Civil War.

The Raab Collection is proud to present the original documents that, one officially by ruling of the Supreme Court, and one unofficially by fact of history, constitute the dual declarations of war.

The Southern document, coming right from the floor of the Secession Convention of South Carolina on December 25, 1860, and signed by its clerk, issues the first official call for the formation of a Southern Confederacy. The act of calling on the other slave states to leave the Union and form an alternative government, and the positive responses of those states, turned the secession of South Carolina from an isolated incident into a nation-building moment. And the document that generated that event, the birth certificate of the Confederacy, meant war with the United States government.

The Northern document, signed by President Lincoln on April 17, 1861, ordered the Secretary of State to affix the seal of the United States to his proclamation blockading the South, and thus make it official. Under international law, declaration of a blockade is an act of war, and thus after the conflict the Supreme Court held the institution of the blockade to constitute the legal commencement of the Civil War.

Complete descriptions of these two momentous documents follow. They would form the cornerstone of any great personal or institutional collection.

1 - The Blockade of the Confederacy

With war clouds hanging heavy over Washington in early April 1861 and the budding Confederate States of America a reality, Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott  developed a plan for the execution of the onrushing war. Scott's concept, later dubbed the Anaconda Plan, consisted of the blockade of the Southern seaports and control of the Mississippi River. This, he believed, would strangle the South by preventing it from exporting its crops for currency, preclude its receiving needed supplies and weapons to support its war effort, and isolate the western from the eastern sections of the Confederacy.

Lincoln was aware that the blockading of ports was an act of war. In fact, since an act of war is, by implication, taken against another state, some in his cabinet argued that a blockade would constitute a tacit recognition of the sovereignty of the Confederacy, something the North wanted to avoid. Lincoln was less interested in the legal definitions than in the military utility of the plan, and he approved it despite the objections.

On Friday, April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, initiating hostilities between the North and South. Lincoln immediately began moving to meet the crisis head on. The U.S. Army had less than 800 officers and only some 14,000 enlisted men, yet the federal government needed to mobilize for war. The only law in existence permitting the raising of additional troops was the Militia Act of 1792, which empowered the president to call out the militia to suppress insurrection. Using this law, on April 15, Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring that an insurrection existed, called out 75,000 men to put it down, and convened a special session of Congress for July 4.

After the war, the Supreme Court issued an opinion fixing the exact dates on which the war began and ended. It held: “...The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second.'

On April 19, Lincoln issued his proclamation blockading Southern ports. It provided that "a competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels" from the ports of the states in rebellion. Then, to make the proclamation official, he signed this document, authorizing "the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to a Proclamation setting on foot a Blockade of the ports of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas." The seal was affixed to the blockade proclamation, which was announced that day. It was a de facto declaration of war by the Union against the Confederacy.

By the end of 1861, over 250 warships were on duty, with 100 more under construction. By 1865, some 600 ships were patrolling the Confederate coastline. Moreover, as the war progressed, the Union also intensified the blockade's effectiveness by capturing or sealing off a growing number of Southern ports. The storied blockade-runners were increasingly stymied. In the blockade’s first year, their chance of capture was one in ten. By 1864, the odds had become one in three, and by 1865, one in two.

Strategically, the blockade was decisive. It limited both the import of military and other needed supplies and the export of income-producing cotton. "The blockade reduced the South's seaborne trade to less than a third of normal. And of course the Confederacy's needs for all kinds of supplies were much greater than the peacetime norm. As for cotton exports,....the half-million bales shipped through the blockade during the last three years of war compared rather poorly with the ten million exported in the last three antebellum years...[And] the blockade was one of the causes of the ruinous inflation that reduced the Confederate dollar to one percent of its original value by the end of the war." (James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom). The authoritative Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War states, “Historians generally agree that the blockade, with more than 600 ships, not the force of Union arms, finally brought about the downfall of the Confederacy.”

The U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on the War’s Official Commencement

After the war, the Supreme Court issued an opinion fixing the exact dates on which the war began and ended.  It held: “...The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second.'' Thus, according to the Supreme Court, Lincoln’s signature on this order sealing the imposition of the blockade marked the official beginning of the Civil War.

2 - From the South Carolina Secession Convention floor documenting the original call for secession and the formation of the Confederacy

In the autumn of 1860, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln.  South Carolina, which since the presidency of Andrew Jackson had been in the vanguard of southern nationalism and secession talk, warned that if the Republicans won, it would withdraw from the Union. In the general election on November 8, the Republicans received a minority of the total popular vote, but the vote was distributed to give Lincoln all the electoral votes he needed.  The South Carolina General Assembly wasted no time and on November 10, 1860, called for a “Convention of the People of South Carolina” to draw up an Ordinance of Secession. It also elected Francis Pickens as Governor. In his inaugural address on December 17, 1860, he made clear that the state's path was separation.  On the same day as Pickens' address, the Convention convened at the capitol, Columbia, and chose David F. Jamison president of their body. Benjamin F. Arthur was elected Clerk, meaning that his signature would attest to the official copies of the Convention's ordinances and resolutions, including the Ordinance of Secession. Following this came intelligence that smallpox was raging as an epidemic in Columbia and by first train the next morning, the delegates and new Governor all went to Charleston.

The Convention proceeded to business by appointing several committees to consider various subjects, such as the nature of relations with the people of the other slaveholding states. A committee was also chosen to draft the secession document. It reported back the following proposed Ordinance: "We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain… the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."

It was noon on December 20, 1860 when the Ordinance of Secession was submitted for consideration, and by 12:45 the Convention had adopted it on a roll call vote of 169-0. The cry at once went forth, "The Union is dissolved!" The members of the Convention proceeded to sign the Ordinance in the presence of Governor Pickens, the members of the Legislature, and other dignitaries, and it was attested to by Arthur.   Then Convention President Jamison exhibited the instrument to the people, read it, and said: "The Ordinance of Secession has been signed and ratified, and I proclaim the State of South Carolina an independent commonwealth."

During the next days, the Convention passed laws and resolutions a new nation would require. Then it turned to a matter perhaps more vital than any. All realized that South Carolina could not realistically go it alone but needed to be joined by other slave-holding states in a larger confederacy. These states were by no means all as ready as South Carolina to secede, and their people needed to be convinced both that secession was justified, and that they should follow suit. Therefore, on December 24, 1860, the same day Gov. Pickens made a speech proclaiming sovereignty for South Carolina, the Convention addressed the first need and adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which...Justify the Secession of South Carolina.”

The Convention immediately followed with an address “To the People of the Slaveholding States of the United States,” urging their secession, and ending with a clarion call for establishment of a Southern Confederacy. “United together, and we must be a great, free and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down, we trust, to the remotest ages. We ask you to join us in forming a confederacy of Slaveholding States.”   Thus the three documents that constituted the foundation of secession were in place: the Ordinance of Secession, the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which...Justify the Secession, and the Address...to the People of the Slaveholding States (which culminated in a call for a Southern Confederacy).

The time had now come to communicate these documents officially to the other slave-holding states, with the hope and expectation that they would act on them. The Journal of the Convention of the People of South Carolina reports that on December 25, the Convention resolved to direct Governor Pickens to transmit the three momentous papers to the slave state governors for them to provide to their legislatures or conventions. The Resolution was the birth certificate of the Confederacy, as it marked the official out-reach of the South Carolina Convention to the other slave states, and dispatched the first official call for a Southern Confederacy (the call that in fact resulted in formation of the Confederate States of America within just a few months). The text of the Resolution was written out and signed by B.F. Arthur in his capacity as Clerk, with his notation that it was adopted in Convention on December 25, 1860.   Because this Resolution was in effect an order to Gov. Pickens directing him to act, the original in Arthur's hand was sent to the Governor, whose private secretary, B.T. Watts, docketed it on the verso “Resolution of the Convention”.  Furthering the goal of uniting with the other Southern states was foremost on the mind of the Convention, and on December 29, it passed an additional Resolution requesting the Governor to send Commissioners to these other states to explain and advocate its position. influential in persuading other Southern states to follow suit in secession and organization of a common government.

The Call to the Slave-holding States to Secede.

The South Carolina Secession Convention instructs Governor Pickens to inform the slave-holding states of its secession and to call on them to form a Southern Confederacy

The Resolution of the Secession Convention making the first call for establishment of the Confederacy, December 25, 1860, as instructions to Pickens and certified by the Convention clerk, B.F. Arthur

“That copies of the ‘Ordinance of Secession’...and of the 'Address of the People of South Carolina assembled in Convention, to the People of the Slaveholding states of the United States’, be transmitted by the Governor of this State to the Governors of the slaveholding States..."