Succession: The Declaration of Independence enshrined the right of succession. Pg.

23 Southerners accepted the logic that a Lincoln presidency threatened slavery, and threats to slavery justifiedeven demandeddrastic measures, including secession and war. Pg 23 Threats to slavery=succession: They made the privileged place that southern states held within the Union insecure, and without a dominant role for the South, the Union seemed less valuable. Pg 23-24 In addition, Southerners controlled key Congressional committees and dominated powerful positions like the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the chief justices seat and the presidency throughout the first eight decades of the United States national existence. The election of a president who did not share the hostility to slavery expansion, threatened the favoring of southern interests to which white Southerners felt entitled, and in so doing, dissolved any federal claim on southern allegiance. As Rufus Cater put it, when northern fanatic like Lincoln misinterpreted and perverted the Constitution to bar slavery from the western territories, they relieved white Southerns of all obligations of loyalty, and licensed the southern states to frame a new government suited to themselves, even if doing so precipitated war. Pg 24 Threats to slavery, even indirect ones like the Republican Partys opposition to slaverys westward extension, also posed a frightening public safety problem in the minds of many white Southerners. Pg 24 Because the institution of slavery rested on a foundation of force and violence, tensions always smoldered beneath the surface of southern society, where there kindled a contradiction that southern whites were forced to confront. Pg 24 Secession over the embarrassing question of slavery would be regarded by onlookers through the world as the first step toward the entire breakdown of our whole system of republican government. Pg 26 North Tries to Compromise: The Crittenden Compromise, named for the Kentucky senator who spearheaded the effort, consisted of a series of constitutional amendments and Congressional resolutions. It would have guaranteed perpetual noninterference with slavery; extended the Missouri Compromise line permanently across the continent, allowing slavery to spread south of the 36 30 latitude; forbidden the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of local voters, and only then if Maryland and Virginia had abolished slavery; prohibited Congress from exercising any authority over the interstate slave trade; channeled federal funds into compensation for slave owners whose runaway slaves remained at large in the North; and added an unamendable amendment to the Constitution which guaranteed that none of the Crittenden Compromise amendments could ever be amended once passed. Pg 26