 For decades, South Carolinian political leaders had promoted regional passions with threats of nullification and secession in the name of southern states' rights and protection of the interests of the slave power.Alfred P. Aldrich, a South Carolinian politician from Barnwell, stated that declaring secession would be necessary if a Republican candidate were to win the 1860 U.S. presidential election, stating that it was the only way for the state to preserve slavery and diminish the influence of the anti-slavery Republican Party, which, were its goals of abolition realized, would result in the "destruction of the South"