On the Brink of the Precipice: The Election of 1860
On the Brink of the Precipice: The Election of 1860
This chapter describes how the dramatic confrontation of 1860–61 forced Northerners to make any number of momentous decisions, including, in the end, whether or not to engage in a civil war to prevent secession. It is ironic, then, that the conflict's roots could be said to lie in a nondecision: the refusal of the 1787 Constitutional Convention to specify who within the new government would have final authority to decide constitutional disputes. Of course, it could be argued that the true origins of the crisis lie a century before that, in an “unthinking decision”: colonial planters' switch from white indentured servants to black slaves as their chief labor force. Whether or not the crucial decisions had been avoided, unthinking, or lay shrouded in the mists of history, their outcomes left Americans of 1860 to harvest the fruit of their reliance on slave labor.
Keywords: Northerners, civil war, secession, 1787 Constitutional Convention, new government, constitutional disputes
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