Causes of the Civil War

Document 2
I merely throw out these sentiments for the purpose of showing you that South Carolina,
having declared her purpose to be this, to make an experiment whether, by a course of
legislation, in a conventional form, or legislative form of enactment, she can defeat the
execution of certain laws of the United States, I for one, will express my opinion that I believe
it is utterly impracticable, whatever course of legislation she may choose to adopt, for her to
succeed. . . . I say it is impossible that South Carolina ever desired for a moment to become
a separate and independent state.

Document 3
[W]e believe and affirm:
That every American citizen who retains a human being in involuntary bondage as his property is (according to Scripture) a MAN STEALER.
That the slaves ought instantly to be set free. . . .
That all those laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are . . . , before God, utterly null and void, being an audacious usurpation of the Divine prerogative. . . .
[T]hat no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating their slaves. . . . [That], if compensation is to be given at all, it should be given to the outraged and guiltless slaves and not to those who have plundered and abused them.
[That] we concede the Congress under the present national compact, has no right to interfere with any of the slave states, in relation to this momentous subject [slavery]. But we maintain that Congress has a right . . . to suppress the domestic slave trade between the several states, and to abolish slavery in those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under its [Congress’s] exclusive jurisdiction.

Document 4
And whereas it is extremely important and desirable, that the agitation of this subject should be finally arrested, for the purpose of restoring tranquility to the public mind, your committee respectfully recommend the adoption of the following additional resolution:
All petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers relating in any way or to any
extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall without being
either printed or referred, be laid on the table and that no further action whatever shall be
had thereon.

Document 5
Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Northern man, but as an American. . . .
I will state . . . one complaint of the South . . . that there has been found at the North, among
individuals and among the legislatures of the North, a disinclination to perform fully their
constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped
into the free states. In that respect, it is my judgement that the South is right and the North
is wrong. . . . I hear with pain and anguish the word “secession,” especially when it falls from the lips of those who are eminently [sic] patriotic, and known to the country, and known all over the world for their political services. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. . . . I hold the idea of a separation of these states—those that are free to form one government and those that are slaveholding to form another—as a moral impossibility. We could not separate the states by any such line if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here today and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country.

Document 7
Free society! We sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics,
filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All northern, and especially
the New England, states are devoid of society fitted for well-bred southern gentlemen. The
prevailing class one meets with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers
who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman’s
body servant.

Document 8
A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.