Submissionist was a derogatory term used by Southern secessionists in the year preceding the American Civil War to describe Southerners who wanted to preserve the Union. Before 1861, Southerners loyal to the Union were generally respected as principled idealists. As Southern states began to actually secede, however, those who had seceded viewed Southerners who remained Unionists as cowardly and lacking the strength to stand up for their own rights. Following the Secession Crisis, popular sentiment in the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...

held that the North was unwilling to compromise with the South. The

would rather secede from the Union than relinquish sovereignty. Consequently, "submissionist" was a derogatory name for a Southerner who would seemingly relinquish sovereignty in order to remain in the Union. The term was used also to describe a particular kind of ''cooperationist'', that is, those who were generally opposed to secession; Louisiana politician

Pierre Soulé Pierre Soulé (August 31, 1801March 26, 1870) was a French-American attorney, politician, and diplomat in the mid-19th century. Serving as a U.S. senator from Louisiana from 1849 to 1853, he was nominated that year as U.S. Minister to Spain, a p ...

, for instance, a cooperationist, protested that he was "no submissionist" and would choose revolution (i.e., secession) rather than ignominy. Thomas T. Gantt, however, Provost Marshal General of the District of Missouri, proudly called himself a submissionist at the Missouri State Convention on March 15, 1861. Edmund Ruffin, who is credited with firing the first shot at the

Battle of Fort Sumter The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender by the United States Army, beginning the American Civil War. Follo ...

, noted in his diary, September 3, 1861, "As a general rule, the Submissionist party embraces, & is largely composed of, the old, the timid, the cowardly, the imbecile & the mean-spirited."

References

{{Reflist Politics of the Confederate States of America Separatism in the United States

See also

References