Declaration of Causes for Secession of Mississippi

Overview

The secessionist movement in Mississippi, as in the rest of the South, was rooted in sectional differences over the future of slavery. White Mississippians considered slavery the foundation of their social order and culture and believed that only its survival would preserve their civilization and ensure their prosperity and safety. In the end, the imperative of defending and even promoting the institution distorted whites’ religious theology, gender conventions, and nearly all social ethics. When Mississippians spoke of defending slavery, they understood the term broadly to include their slave-based way of life. Thus, the majority of white Mississippians ultimately supported secession to protect slavery and all that it represented in their lives.

Before the 1850s some Mississippians discussed secession as a potential last, desperate measure to protect slavery. As long as the direct threat to the institution remained slight, however, secession was too radical for the vast majority of the state’s voters. Support for disunion grew during the controversy surrounding California’s admission as a free state and the accompanying Compromise of 1850. Most southerners believed that “free soil” (the non-extension of slavery) posed a threat to the long-term viability and health of slavery, and as support for free soil grew among northern voters, white Mississippians became increasingly anxious and wary.

The most important development in the history of the secessionist movement was the formation and success of the free soil Republican Party. One reason Republicans advocated the non-extension of slavery was to limit planters’ political power in the national government, drawing on growing northern resentment of the “Slave Power.” Most Republicans were not abolitionists; probably just a minority had real moral misgivings about slavery itself, and many were racists who wanted to exclude all nonwhites from the territories. For a great variety of reasons, then, Republicans were united in their commitment to stop the spread of slavery beyond where it already existed...

...The presidential campaign of 1860 energized secessionists and gave new urgency to the movement for disunion. The possibility of a Republican victory appalled Mississippians, and a strong majority of voters supported the Southern Democratic candidate, John C. Breckinridge, whose party pledged secession if Abraham Lincoln won....

The secessionist movement in Mississippi paralleled that in most Lower South states, although widespread ownership of slaves almost certainly contributed to the state’s enthusiastic support for disunion....Mississippi trailed only South Carolina in the percentage of its residents enslaved, and most estimates suggest that more than half of white households owned slaves. Furthermore, the wild profits made from cotton in the 1850s undoubtedly caused many Mississippians to feel particularly threatened by the Republicans’ free soil platform. Because of a combination of factors, then, Mississippi took a leading role in the southern secessionist movement.

Source:

Secessionist Movement

Mississippi Encyclopedia

https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/secessionist-movement/