It is a frequently repeated lie on this board by the Yankees, Scallywags, and generally uninformed that ALL the Confederate states seceded because of slavery. However, that is demonstrably untrue.
I give you the case of Arkansas. Arkansas, being a slave state, got caught up in the secession fever and had a convention to decide the issue in early 1861. Guess what happened? Though the arguments were passionate and their sympathies were certainly with the seven states who had already seceded, the delegates of Arkansas decided NOT to secede. They decided that the issues, including the question of slavery WERE NOT to the point that secession was necessary or desirable.
Then Ft. Sumter happened and Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down what he called an insurrection. He asked Arkansas for its levy. I give you Arkansas' response in its Ordinance of Secession:
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Thus it is DEMONSTRABLY FALSE to assert that Arkansas seceded because of slavery. Arkansas seceded because it felt that Abraham Lincoln was wrong to try to force other states to submission by force of arms and that it would have no part of that.
The same could likewise be said of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia...all of which did not secede until AFTER Ft. Sumter and AFTER Lincoln sent out the call for troops. Then and ONLY then did they join the Confederacy and align themselves with the other slaveholding states. For them, more than slavery, the issue was one of federal force and federal power. Did the president and the federal government have the right to bring the power of the federal government to bear on the individual states and to force them back into the union? For them, the answer was a resounding "no" and they threw their lots with the Confederacy.
Had Lincoln allowed the seven seceding states to go in peace. It is unlikely that Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina would have joined the Confederacy at that time.
