Slave Power - Southern Power

Southern Power

Southern power derived from a combination of factors. The "three-fifths clause" (counting 100 slaves as 60 people for seats in the House and thus for electoral votes) gave the South additional representation at the national level. Parity in the Senate was critical, whereby a new slave state was admitted in tandem with a new free state. Regional unity across party lines was essential on key votes. In the Democratic party, a presidential candidate had to carry the national convention by a two-thirds vote to get nominated. It was also essential for some northerners—"Doughfaces"—to collaborate with the South, as in the debates surrounding the three-fifths clause itself in 1787, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the gag rule in the House (1836-1844), and the wider subject of the Wilmot Proviso and slavery expansion in the Southwest after the Mexican war of 1846-48. However, the North was adding population—and House seats—much faster than the South, so the handwriting was on the wall. With the implacable Republicans gaining every year, the secession option became more and more attractive to the South. Secession was suicidal, as some leaders realized—and as John Quincy Adams had long prophesied. Secession, argued James Henry Hammond of South Carolina, reminded him of "the Japanese who when insulted rip open their own bowels." And yet when secession came in 1860 Hammond followed. Richards concludes, "It was men like Hammond who finally destroyed the Slave Power. Thanks to their leading the South out of the Union, seventy-two years of slaveholder domination came to an end."