DOCUMENT 4WHAT CAUSED SECESSION?These are diary entries by George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York attorneyNovember 7, 1860. Lincoln is elected. Hooray . . . The next ten days will be a critical time. If no Southern state commit itself to treason within a fortnight [two week period] or so, the urgent danger will be past.November 10. . . . News from the South continues to be menacing and uncomfortable. November 12. No material change in the complexion of Southern news. Unless writers of telegraph items lie loudly, secession is inevitable.November 15. . . . We are generally reconciling ourselves to the prospect of secession by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, . . . Florida, and perhaps Mississippi, too.November 29. Thanksgiving Day . . . There’s a bad prospect for both sections of the country. Southern ruffianism and brutality are very bad, but the selfishness, baseness, and corruption of the North are no good at all. Universal suffrage . . . [is] at the root of our troubles . . . [the] nucleus [of the crisis] was the abolition handful that . . . till about 1850, was among the more insignificant of our isms. Our feeling at the North till that time was not hostility to slavery, but indifference to it, and reluctance to discuss it. . . . But the clamor of the South about the admission of California ten years ago introduced the question of slavery. . . . That controversy taught us that the two systems could not co-exist in the same territory. It opened our eyes to the fact that there were two hostile elements in the country, and that if we allowed slaves to enter any territorial acquisition, our own free labor must be excluded from it. The question was unfortunate for our peace. But we might have forgotten it had not S. A. Douglas undertaken to get Southern votes by repealing the Missouri Compromise. That was the final blow. Question: According to George Templton Strong (Doc4), what were the factors in the US “breakup” do you think Sen Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska act the REAL cause?
DOCUMENT 4
WHAT CAUSED SECESSION?
These are diary entries by George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York attorney
November 7, 1860. Lincoln is elected. Hooray . . . The next ten days will be a critical time. If
no Southern state commit itself to treason within a fortnight [two week period] or so, the
urgent danger will be past.
November 10. . . . News from the South continues to be menacing and uncomfortable.
November 12. No material change in the complexion of Southern news. Unless writers of
telegraph items lie loudly, secession is inevitable.
November 15. . . . We are generally reconciling ourselves to the prospect of secession by
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, . . . Florida, and perhaps Mississippi, too.
November 29. Thanksgiving Day . . . There’s a bad prospect for both sections of the
country. Southern ruffianism and brutality are very bad, but the selfishness, baseness, and
corruption of the North are no good at all. Universal suffrage . . . [is] at the root of our
troubles . . . [the] nucleus [of the crisis] was the abolition handful that . . . till about 1850,
was among the more insignificant of our isms. Our feeling at the North till that time was
not hostility to slavery, but indifference to it, and reluctance to discuss it. . . . But the
clamor of the South about the admission of California ten years ago introduced the
question of slavery. . . . That controversy taught us that the two systems could not co-exist
in the same territory. It opened our eyes to the fact that there were two hostile elements in
the country, and that if we allowed slaves to enter any territorial acquisition, our own free
labor must be excluded from it. The question was unfortunate for our peace. But we might
have forgotten it had not S. A. Douglas undertaken to get Southern votes by repealing the
Missouri Compromise. That was the final blow.
Question:
According to George Templton Strong (Doc4), what were the factors in the US “breakup” do you think Sen Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska act the REAL cause?
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