THE MAKING OF A NATION 94 - Secession, Part 1

THE MAKING OF A NATION #94 - Secession, Part 1
By Frank Beardsley

Broadcast: Thursday, December 23, 2004

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.

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Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election held in November, eighteen-sixty. When he took office several months later, he faced the most serious crisis in American history. For the southern states had finally acted on their earlier threats. They had begun to leave the Union over the issue of slavery.

I'm Kay Gallant¹. Today, Harry² Monroe and I tell about this critical time in the United States.

VOICE TWO:

 
Abraham Lincoln
The southern states did not want Abraham Lincoln to win the election of eighteen-sixty. Lincoln was a Republican. And the Republican Party opposed slavery. Lincoln never said he wanted to end slavery in the south. He did not believe anyone had the right to do so. Yet he did not want to see slavery spread to other parts of the United States.

Lincoln told southerners: "You think slavery is right and should be extended. While we think it is wrong and should be limited. That, I suppose, is the trouble. It surely is the only important difference between us."

VOICE ONE:

Pro-slavery extremists felt this difference was enough. And they were sure Lincoln and his Republicans would soon win control of Congress and the Supreme³ Court. Before long, they thought, the Constitution would be changed. Slavery would become illegal everywhere.

Even if this did not happen, southerners were worried. Unless slavery could spread, they said, the slave population in the south would become too large. In time, blacks and whites would battle for control. One or the other would be destroyed.

So even before the presidential election, southerners began discussing what they would do if Abraham Lincoln won.

VOICE TWO:

Early in October, the governor of South Carolina, William Gist⁴, wrote letters to the governors of other southern states. He said they should agree on what action to take if Lincoln became president.

Gist said South Carolina would call a state convention as soon as the election results were made official. If any state decided⁵ to leave the Union, he said, South Carolina would follow. If no other state decided to leave, then South Carolina would secede⁶ by itself.

Governor Gist received mixed answers.

Two states -- Alabama and Mississippi -- said they would not secede alone. But they said they would join others that made this decision. Two more states -- Louisiana and Georgia -- said they would not secede unless the north acted against them. And one state -- North Carolina -- said it had not yet decided what to do.

No southern governor, except William Gist of South Carolina, seemed willing to lead the south out of the Union.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November sixth, eighteen-sixty. South Carolina exploded with excitement at the news. To many of the people there, Lincoln's victory was a signal that ended the state's ties to the Union. To them, it was the beginning of southern independence.

Both United States Senators from South Carolina resigned. So did a federal judge and the collector of federal taxes. United States flags were lowered. State flags were raised in their place.

The state legislature agreed to open a convention on December seventeenth. The convention would make the final decision on leaving the Union. Several other southern states did the same.

VOICE TWO:

This idea of leaving the Union -- secession -- split north and south just as much as slavery. Southerners claimed they had the right to secede peacefully. Northerners disagreed. They said secession was treason. They said it would lead to civil war.

 
President James Buchanan
In the months before Lincoln's inauguration⁷, President James Buchanan tried to deal with the situation. First he proposed a convention of all the states. The purpose of the convention would be to work out differences between north and south. The southern members of Buchanan's cabinet rejected this idea.

The second proposal was a strong policy statement on secession. The statement would include an opinion by the attorney general. It said the government could use force, if necessary, to keep states in the Union. The southern cabinet members rejected this idea, too.

VOICE ONE:

President Buchanan had to settle for a moderate policy statement on secession.

It said the president could send troops into a state to help federal marshals enforce the rulings of federal courts. But if federal judges resigned, there would be no federal court rulings to enforce. Therefore, to send troops to a state where federal officers had resigned -- such as South Carolina -- would be an act of war against the state. And only Congress had the constitutional power to declare war.

Buchanan accepted this statement. He was only too happy to let Congress decide what to do.

VOICE TWO:

There was little chance that Congress could do anything. Congressmen from both north and south already had made decisions that could not, and would not, be changed easily.

Most of the congressmen from states in the deep south supported secession. They did not want to remain in the Union. Many congressmen from states in the north had been elected because they promised to keep slavery from spreading to the western territories. They did not plan to break their promises.

A few lawmakers hoped President Buchanan, in his yearly message to Congress, might propose a compromise.

VOICE ONE:

Buchanan began by denouncing northern Abolitionists. He said they were responsible for the present problem. Their interference, he said, had created a great fear of slave rebellions in the south.

Then Buchanan called on the south to accept the election of Abraham Lincoln. He said the election of a citizen to the office of president should not be a reason for dissolving the Union. Buchanan declared that the constitution gave no state the right to leave. But, he admitted, if a state did secede, there was little the federal government could do.

"The fact is," Buchanan said, "that our Union rests upon public opinion. It can never be held together by the blood of its citizens in civil war. If it cannot live in the hearts of its people, then it must one day die."

VOICE TWO:

Buchanan proposed to Congress that it offer a constitutional amendment⁸ on the question of slavery.

He said the amendment should recognize the right to own slaves as property in states where slavery was permitted. It should protect this right in all territories until the territories became states. And it should end all state laws that interfered⁹ with the return of escaped slaves to their owners.

No one liked President Buchanan's message to Congress. Northerners did not like his declaration of federal weakness in the face of secession. Southerners did not like his declaration that secession was unconstitutional.

The message did nothing to change the situation. Soon after it was read to Congress, South Carolina opened its secession convention.

VOICE ONE:

Delegates to the convention would make the final decision if South Carolina would remain in the Union or secede. There was little question how they would vote.

A committee wrote a secession resolution. The resolution said simply that the people of South Carolina were ending the agreement of seventeen-eighty-eight in which the state had approved the constitution of the United States.

It said the Union existing between South Carolina and the United States of America was being dissolved.

The committee offered the resolution to the convention on December twentieth, eighteen-sixty. There was no debate. The delegates voted immediately. No one voted against it.

VOICE TWO:

South Carolina had seceded¹⁰. But what must it do now. There was the problem of property in South Carolina owned by the federal government. The convention continued to meet to work out details of South Carolina's new position in the world. That will be our story next week.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley.

1 gallant   

adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的

参考例句：

• Huang Jiguang's gallant deed is known by all men. 黄继光的英勇事迹尽人皆知。
• These gallant soldiers will protect our country.这些勇敢的士兵会保卫我们的国家的。

2 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

3 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

4 gist   

n.要旨；梗概

参考例句：

• Can you give me the gist of this report?你能告诉我这个报告的要点吗？
• He is quick in grasping the gist of a book.他敏于了解书的要点。

5 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

6 secede   

v.退出，脱离

参考例句：

• They plotted to make the whole Mississippi Valley secede from the United States.他们阴谋策划使整个密西西比流域脱离美国。
• We won't allow Tibet to secede from China and become an independent nation.我们决不允许西藏脱离中国独立。

7 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。

8 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

9 interfered   

v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉

参考例句：

• Complete absorption in sports interfered with his studies. 专注于运动妨碍了他的学业。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I am not going to be interfered with. 我不想别人干扰我的事情。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 seceded   

v.脱离，退出( secede的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The Republic of Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903. 巴拿马共和国于1903年脱离哥伦比亚。
• One of the states has seceded from the federation. 有一个州已从联邦中退出。 来自辞典例句