Causes and Excuses for the United States Civil War - Research Paper Example

Causes and Excuses for the U.S. Civil War More than 150 years later, it is nearly impossible to accurately delineate an exact set of causes for the American Civil War. However, it is not, as many think, merely a question of slavery. Slavery was important, but it was also an excuse for the underlying issue of states’ rights. Several other factors were also involved in building up to this conflict. The differences in culture between the north and the south set up difficulties to do with governance. The two economic structures had totally different bases, which could have been complementary, but allowances for these differences were not made. Finally, the expansion westward was a truly strong factor as poor whites migrated from the South to where they could get free land and slavery became a hot issue in the new territories. Even the personal political ambitions of the major figures of the time played a part in creating the atmosphere which finally resulted in the War Between the States. Centering such debates around states rights remains provocative, especially among "neo-Confederates." But, according to Dew, "The secessionists of 1860-61 certainly talked much more openly about slavery than present-day neo-Confederates seem willing to do" (p. 10). (Decredico) So, although slavery was at the root of the war, it was not the root cause. It simply figured into most of the other causes. There is a great deal of disagreement upon the root causes of this war, but it boils down to one simple point, according to Basler , “The ultimate cause of the Civil War was simply human disagreement, which could not be, or rather was not, resolved by non‐ violent means. Its roots went at least as deep as the American Revolution, and could be traced even deeper into human history if the effort promised to give any better understanding for the present purpose, which it does not. Mans fundamental disagreement has always been about who shall have what and who shall rule whom, and how and why. (Basler 3) In fact, it is this factor upon which all governments are built and why they are maintained. In looking at Mike Wright’s list of two dozen names which have been applied to this war we can see that there is still a huge difference of opinion as to the causes. The War for Constitutional Liberty, the War for Nationality, the War for Southern Nationality, the War for Southern Independence, the Second American Revolution, the War for States Rights, Mr. Lincolns War, the War Against Slavery, the War for Abolition, the Southern Rebellion, the War of the Rebellion, the War for Southern Rights, the War of the Southern Planters, the Civil War, Americas Civil War, the War Between the States, the Civil War Between the States, the War Against Northern Aggression, the Yankee Invasion, the War for Separation, the War for the Union, the Confederate War, the War of the Southrons, the War for Southern Freedom, the War of the North and South, and the Lost Causes. (Wright xix) There was little trustworthy documentation of the time leading up to the war, and what documentation we have is highly contradictory. That said, we can still infer from what has been passed down within families and political documents that slavery was just the excuse for what was a fundamentally deeper rift between the north and the south. The most effective way to study the war, to understand it and its legacy of good and ill in all its complexities, is to draw each individual, young and old, male and female, of every ethnic origin, into the discourse, in a multiplicity of forums. (Madden, 1997) So we cannot just study the work of historians and reading history books will only give us isolated facts. Perhaps it is in letters written at the tine and in dramatizations and fiction we will find the real causes, people and their belief systems. Good Christian churches in the south managed to rationalize slavery as their Christian duty to civilize the black man. Well researched novels and movies can help and documentaries, such as that by Burns, Burns and Ward (1995) Slavery was an important difference between the northern and southern regions, and without this particular issue, the war might never have been fought, since people would not have had this highly controversial issue around which to rally. In the beginning, when Thomas Jefferson drafted the original constitution, there was a prohibition to slavery, as negroes were part of “all men” who were created equal. However, at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia, the references to slavery were removed. Jefferson was known to say later on how incomprehensible this idea was to him. “What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! He can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty—and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage ... which he rose in rebellion to oppose!” (Basler 10) Economically, the south was tied to a slave labor economy since the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a huge cash crop. The cotton gin, invented by a black man, Ely Whitney, removed the seeds and hulls from the cotton, making processing of cotton automated and cheap. However, human beings had to pick the cotton, and it was back breaking labor intensive work. Plantation owners saw slavery as the only way they could afford to pick their cotton. Even poor whites would require more outlay in wages than the cost of feeding and maintaining slaves. Without the invention of the cotton gin, there would have been little economic base for slavery. In addition, these cash crops created the ruling class of plantation owners and gave the south an economic base it would not have otherwise had. England desperately needed the cotton for its industrial mills, so the southern states had dreams of forging an alliance with Great Britain, possibly in opposition to the Union. It is certain that the Confederacy wooed England as a supporter and expected to gain economically by selling their cotton there. However, the navy blockage of trade routes put a fly in that ointment. The loss of this revenue was a hard blow to the confederate states. Surely these ideas occurred much before any state succeeded from the Union, and it was thought that they could actually win. Underlying the differences of opinion between the north and south were vast differences in culture, based upon the differences in terrain, weather, economy, social structure, politics and even religion. The north developed along the lines of manufacturing and entrepreneurship, since the land was less agricultural, being mostly subsistence farming in small communities, and cities developed near the large waterways. Global commerce was a thriving business as the northern states traded raw materials and finished goods from artisans and craftsmen. The south was mostly agricultural with huge plantation planted to the two main cash crops: tobacco and cotton. So a totally different culture had developed around these factors in addition to the socio-political differences. The concepts of rights and freedom had not changed in the South for seventy-five years and the North’s had. The rise of the Republican Party, competitive, egalitarian, with its free-labor capitalism signaled the South that the North had turned toward revolution. Socio-political differences were based in the power structure, which was middle and upper class in the north, comprising social and business leaders, mostly well educated and financially stable, but not necessarily rich. Ethnic origin and even religion did not have as much import as one’s education and contribution to society. There was certainly discrimination, but Negros were considered to be people, perhaps lower class, but people none-the-less. In the south the power was vested in the white plantation owners and Negros were property. Poor whites were uneducated and not part of the power structure, considered little better than Negros. In fact, since a plantation owner could garner more electoral votes for the slaves he owned, they were more valuable than the poor whites. They gave the owners power without any additional cost. The Dred-Scott Decision of the Supreme Court in 1857 (Missouri Dred-Scott Case 2010) fired up even more controversy as it was declared that Negros were not citizens and, therefore had not rights. Northerners had already seen individual civil rights eroded or destroyed by the idea that they could be forced to aid in the capture of “alleged” escaped slaves by the Fugitive Slave Act (Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 2010) The personal ambitions of politicians also played an important part in advancing the inevitability of war. Figures such as Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Edmund Ruffin, or William L. Yancey used abolitionist, states` rights or slave versus free states in the new territories as fodder for their rhetorical cannons, drawing crowds and advancing their careers without realizing where this was leading. Most historians have recognized the factors of free will and personal ambition as contributory, but these factors cannot be blamed on their own, and no historian asserts this. (Basler viii) The expansion into new territory with huge land acquisitions was, perhaps the most important provocation for the succession of the southern states. The controversy over whether the new states would be slave or free became ongoing. “Such cataclysmic events as civil war tend to have a range and diversity of causes, and are rarely entered into lightly. And yet, given expansion in the number of states following the acquisition of huge areas of land, particularly with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the huge area acquired after the Mexican War, the issue of whether territories applying to become new states would be pro-slave or free-soil looked set to continue to rear its head and foment significant conflict.” (Spicer, 2004) When the Missouri territory reached the population level to apply for statehood, Henry Clay proposed that part of Massachusetts be separated into the new free state of Maine. Each time a compromise, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, was created in order to balance free states and slave states, another new territory applied for statehood. Besides, for every slave state, congress knew it was giving away power via the 3/5th personhood of owned slaves. This gave more electoral votes to slave states than the actual number of people who could vote would have done. So this type of solution was not really a good one, and it did not satisfy the southern states either. Just as has been happening in the health care issue, wild theories circulated concerning the issues of slavery and states’ rights. Spicer points out the idea which was popular concerning a Southern Slave Power wanting to push slavery into new territories, curtail freedoms even of citizens and gain control of the federal government. Northern abolitionists caused Southerners to justify their ideas on slavery and this provided even more fodder for conspiracy theorists. There were rumors of a Southern “slaveocracy” which had poisoned two Presidents and had tried to kill three others. (Spicer, 2004) Spicer (2004) outlines the contributions of individual as follows. James Randall and Avery Craven claimed that politicians and leaders of the time on both sides were unusually incompetent. Michael Holt argued that the disintegration of the Whig-Democrat party system destroyed faith in government and led to war. However, by 1860 politicians were not prepared to bury the issue of slavery and the ideal of voting party line and creating party platforms was developing. Slavery became a plank in Lincoln’s platform. John Calhoun, William Seward and Jefferson Davis lacked national followings and stood to gain from conflict. Presidents Pierce and Buchanan were severely criticized for allowing the escalation of conflict in the 1850s. John Brown was possibly the single most important factor in the build-up to war. “Ed Bearss has pointed out that the most crucial consequence of Browns raid was the reorganisation of the militia in the South which marked a preliminary stage to the formal raising of a Confederate army.” Democrat Stephen Douglas desired personal profit and sought the building of a transcontinental railroad through his home state of Illinois, which caused him to advocate the Kansas-Nebraska Act. However, he grossly misjudged the growing moral distaste in the north for slavery. “Lincoln was another non-sectional politician, the man who could have allowed the seceding Southern states to go their own way but whose iron resolve to save the Union, and refusal to yield when last-ditch attempts at compromise were made in the Crittenden Plan, ensured that war would happen.” (Spicer, 2004) One might even be tempted to blame Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party, since South Carolina succeeded on the day he was elected president. Southerners saw Lincoln as the Devil Incarnate. He was the symbol of abolitionists, even though he said many times that his only aim was the preservation of the Union. However, according to Burns, Burns and Ward (1995), he realized that in order to preserve the Union he would have to risk destroying it. Lincoln actually prosecuted the war without congressional approval and he violated civil and property rights, impounding northern telegraph offices and even putting some opponents in jail. In his memoires later, Lincoln actually wrote that he would have done whatever it took to preserve the union. (Spicer 2004) “When, on Apr. 12, 1861, the Confederate commander P. G. T. Beauregard, acting on instructions, ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, hostilities officially began. Lincoln immediately called for troops to be used against the seven seceding states, which were soon joined by Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, completing the 11-state Confederacy.” (Columbia Encyclopedia 2010) One major development of the Civil War was the removal of the southern influences in congress, which allowed certain laws to be passed which could not have passed with southern members in place. Also, suppression of the rebellion promotes Republican economic programs. Other outcomes included these: “Ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave the vote to the freed slaves, destroyed the economic base of the slave oligarchy that had stymied Northern political objectives before the war, and laid the legal groundwork for the emergence of an industrial order.” (Ransom, 1999, p. 28) It also broke the stranglehold the south had on the government which had been enabled by the valuation of electoral votes based upon the 3/5th of a man measurement of slaves. So whether or not we can blame slavery for the American Civil War depends entirely upon whether you consider it as a contributing cause to all the other causes. It is possible that without slavery, there would have been not war at all. However, that is moot, since we have no real way of knowing. The south would surely have been very different without slavery. However, the social structure would not have been much different, and the south would certainly have needed more support without the cash crops of cotton and tobacco. The socio-political differences between the north and the south were galvanizing, and the economics were either complementary or oppositional, depending upon the exchange between the regions. The slave labor economy was also a powerful political tool, since each owned slave gave 3/5th of an electoral vote to the state in which he and his master resided. When slavery became an issue for the newly created states from recently acquired territory, and certain legislative decisions created compromises which were temporary, at best the issues gained in popularity on both sides. The leaders of the time wished to capitalize upon one side of the issue or the other and then quietly bury it, but the public became fired up and rumor mills created emotional myths which would not die. The public would not let go of the issue of slavery. Finally, there was a need in congress to break the power of the south on the government, which had accrued over the years. Possibly the biggest cause of the war was incompetence on both sides. Groups and people concentrated upon their own agendas, disregarding the consequences. Band-aids in congress in the form of compromises and the creation of new free states simply did not work. Worse than any other decision was that of the southern states who succeeded thinking that they could actually win. As soon as the slaves were freed 100,000 of them joined the Union army. The south was grossly undermanned and underfunded. They did not get the support from Great Britain upon which they had counted. The north also was overconfident in that it was thought that the war would be over in a matter of weeks. It dragged on for four years and cast more lives than any other war. In studying the battles and strategy, the field commanders and even the top strategists in both government offices, were often totally incompetent, resulting in routs and losses from pure stupidity. So we could say that slavery caused the American Civil war, because none of the other factors would have been either in evidence or important without the issue of slavery. However, it was, at the root, the issue of states` rights and the constitution. When the migration west began, the new issue of slave versus free states remaining balanced came up, probably because the south got more electoral votes with which to control the legislature by counting their slaves as 3/5 of a man, even though there was no balancing vote to count. This had given them enormous power. Also, there were many lesser politicians who stood to gain from the war and they pushed for it. It also created an issue around which the American people could be rallied to support the Union action, so it was the alleged reason to fight at the time. The south had also developed along very different cultural lines, so wanted autonomy, rather like the province of Quebec in Canada. All of these factors contributed, but they all were, in some way, connected to slavery. More than its cause, freeing the slaves won the war for the Union with the additional soldiers and changed the entire future of America. References (1996). Why the Civil War Came (G. S. Boritt, Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Basler, R. P. (1967). A Short History of the American Civil War. New York: Basic Books. Burns, Ric; Burns, Ken and Ward, Geoffery C.. The Civil War (New York, 1990).fill in the rest from your source Decredico, M. A. (2002). Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Journal of Southern History, 68(4), 952+. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. 2010 . The National Center for Public Policy Research . http://www.nationalcenter.org/FugitiveSlaveAct.html Madden, D. (1997, Summer). For the New Millennium, New Perspectives on the Civil War. National Forum, 77, 24+. Missouri’s Dred-Scott Case . 2010 . Missouri State Archives on line . http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/scott/scott.asp McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism," 243 in Ransom .(1999) Ransom, R. L. (1999). Fact and Counterfact: The "Second American Revolution" Revisited. Civil War History, 45(1), 28. Spicer, J. (2004). The Cause of the American Civil War: John Spicer Judges That Slavery Was the Key Factor in Producing the Conflict. History Review, (49), 45+. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. http://www.questia.com/library/u-s-civil-war-causes.jsp Wright, M. (1996). What They Didnt Teach You about the Civil War. Novato, CA: Presidio Press. Read More