How did the pre US Civil War southern fire- eaters manage to so wildly miscalculate the consequences of secession?

How was the United States created? Thirteen states got together and decided to form a single country, first under the Articles of Confederation and then, under the United States Constitution. The thing here is that the states created the US so, Southerners reasoned that states that voluntarily joined the US could voluntarily leave. Imagine joining a group that you had to remain in for life? Or, getting married and not having the option to divorce? For secessionists, the idea that the US was a ‘voluntary union’ meant that, if things ever got too bad, they could just leave. You see this stream of thought from the very beginnings of the US and, especially, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832/1833 where South Carolina threatened to leave the Union. Go back before that to The Hartford Convention of 1814/1815 and you’ll see the problems don’t just belong in the South.

This is a fun question. The first thing that comes to mind, as a I read it, is an apocryphal story that is told about Napoleon’s retreat with the Grande Armee from Russia. It’s cold, bitter cold, the French troops are sloshing through the snow the best they can, trying hard to keep together. Two of Napoleon’s legendary Old Guard are marching in the long, drawn out, ragged retreat when they see the emperor and his entourage start to ride past them. Napoleon’s Old Guard were famous for being able to do things no one else dared and one of the guardsmen shouted out, “Emperor! Why did we invade Russia? What was the point?”

So, secessionist believed that since states voted themselves into the Union, they had every right to vote themselves out. They overestimated the importance of King Cotton. They were sure that many in the North would be glad to see them leave and be done with them. And, there was a real certainty to Britain or France would intervene on their behalf. Add to all this a sense that, while terribly outnumbered by the North, their rural/agrarian way of life made them better soldiers and better capable of winning any fighting that might happen. God and, ironically, Liberty were on their side since they were seeking the right of self-determination, to be ‘free’ to beg the sort of country they wanted to be. It’s ironic, a bunch of slaveholders seeing themselves as proponents of freedom and liberty but, in their minds, that’s exactly what they were and they weren’t going to allow oppression by a more populous North force changes on their society. Add all that together and you get the American Civil War.

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Now, other French troops might be in for a heap of trouble, questioning the emperor like this, but Napoleon loved his Old Guard more than almost anything else so he tolerated a lot from them. According to the story, he slowed his horse down and looked back at his loyal guardsmen, shrugged his shoulders and replied, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” The answer could easily apply to the secession movement in the US circa 1860 and 1861.

In the South, the war was often not seen as as a civil war, it was often referred to as The Second American Revolution. This, it seems to me, is very pertinent here. We moderns have a hard time wrapping our heads around the South and slavery but many Southerners who were pro-secession really believed they were on the side of ‘freedom’. Ironic, no? I mean, secession was largely driven by a very small, very rich, very white planter class that had accrued all their power over a period of generations by benefitting from keeping other humans in chains and treating them as property. How in the world could Southern planters see themselves as being advocates of ‘freedom’?

Secessionist leaders were sure that they had ‘right’ on their side. If their people voted to leave the US, they could leave and form their own country. Easy enough! Only, Lincoln and many Republicans in the North didn’t see it that way, they saw the Union in terms of a a ‘perpetual union’ that couldn’t be broken up. Ironically, this idea that secession was illegal was conveniently ignored by Lincoln and his allies when it came to the formation of the state of West Virginia which, itself, seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union. So, states seceding from the US, bad. States seceding from seceding states, good!

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Cotton was hugely important and the cotton grown in the southern US was especially beloved both in Europe and in northern textile mills. This led to this belief that the Confederacy could succeed on King Cotton alone. Also, because Southern cotton was so beloved, many secessionists were sure Britain, France or both would intervene to insure Southern independence after secession. For the British, this would be revenge for losing the Revolutionary War. For the French, it would be because that’s what the French do! They intervene in America and help people gain their freedom! Of course, Britain was the world’s leading abolitionist power so, their helping the Confederacy gain freedom would’ve likely cost the South a lot in return. There’s no way any scenario can be built where Britain just helps the South secede and doesn’t apply enormous pressure on the newly independent Confederacy to end slavery. Ironic, that, since that’s the main reason the Confederacy was seeking to be its own nation to begin with. As for the French, Napoleon III was no Napoleon I and, as much as he’d like to have seen an independent Confederacy just to the northeast of his puppet state creation in Mexico, he was not going to stick his neck out and involve the French Second Empire in American affairs, at least not without Britain taking the lead first.

Each state the seceded did so via a convention so, each state’s decision was cloaked in the actions of democracy and freedom, such as it was. That the South was a society based on slavery didn’t really bother a lot of Southerners. The slaves they owned were, by and large, already slaves when they were purchased from very wealthy west African slave states and brought to America. Up to the 1860’s the history of much of the world was based on servile labor, in one form or another, doing the work for a wealthy landed elite. Southern planters didn’t see anything ‘unusual’ in their world. Serfs and slaves had always made up the bulk of the population in most societies and a small, wealthy, literate elite led them. We see this model repeated time and time again throughout history prior to the Industrial Revolution so, the Southern planter class didn’t see their world as being ‘weird’ the way we do with our view from the 21st century.