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Was Slavery the Cause of the Civil War?
The great American tragedy is raising its ugly head once more, as it does occasionally. People on both sides are viciously accused by people on opposite sides, sometimes justly, sometimes not, as America divides along fault lines remarkably similar to the one that ruptured in 1861. My contention is that the horrible war could only be justified by the victorious side by making it a moral war. Was it?
In GFHandle’s piece, “Should We Honor Lee?,” several of us discussed that question, i.e., whether slavery was the cause. I contend that, in fact, the American Civil War was a cultural war, a refight of the English Civil War of the 1630s. Members of each side fled England to escape the other during the seventeenth century, one side to Massachusetts to seed northern culture, the other to Virginia to seed southern culture — and maintained both their cultures and their animosities to such an extent that they would fight again in the 1860s.
During the discussion, I promised a longer piece defending my assertion that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. As promised, here it is, but focused on America, not the English antecedents to that war. Though discussed on the other thread, I also don’t get into the fact here that the reason the slave-owning plantation elite in the South opposed secession (a fact generally ignored by slavery-as-cause advocates) was because that would end the Fugitive Slave Laws, without which slavery would certainly die on its own. There was nothing moral about the anti-secession position of the plantation elite. They simply recognized that Union protected slavery so they supported Union in order to protect their livelihood.
Over two centuries had passed since Puritans and Cavaliers had fled each other – Puritans to Massachusetts and Cavaliers (along with Borderers) to Virginia – around the time of the English Civil War. A century and three-quarters had passed since that first civil war had culminated in the Glorious Revolution – glorious because it was relatively peaceful, revolutionary because it made the Rights of Man, not those of king or tyrant, the ruling principles of government. Nine decades had passed since those principles had united Puritans, Cavaliers, and Borderers in a fight for freedom on a new continent. And now, a second Puritan-Cavalier war had just ended, like the first, in total victory for the educated mercantilist Puritan side over the hierarchical agricultural descendants of Cavaliers and Borderers.
While the founding generation still led the nation, revolutionary fervor kept the Enlightenment ideals of the Glorious and American Revolutions burning strong both north and south. But with the second and third generations, ancient prejudices began to reassert themselves. Authoritarianism within the ruling classes strengthened in each section and set the two parts against each other. In terms of geography, the Puritan North gravitated more towards Hamilton’s Federalist Party, while the Borderer South gravitated towards Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. In terms of class, the rulers, north and south, gravitated towards Hamiltonian Whigs; while shippers, workers, and free farmers, north and south, gravitated towards the Jeffersonian Democrats.
Party names would change, but the Hamilton-Jefferson split would define American politics throughout the nineteenth century. The Hamiltonian parties (Federalist, then Whig, then Republican) would support the authoritarian ideals of a strong centralized government dedicated to a mercantilist/corporatist state. The Jeffersonian parties (Democratic-Republican, then shortened first to Republican and then to Democratic) would support the libertarian ideals of a weak decentralized government dedicated to the protection of rights.
However, as the parties could not survive as purely sectional parties, each nurtured strong constituencies in both sections in order to remain viable national parties. Federalist-Whigs were strongest in the North, but had solid southern support. Democrats were strongest in the South, but had solid northern support. Liberty-loving New England shippers and upcountry small farmers, for example, went Democratic, partially balancing the strength of puritan industrialists, who sought government protection of their interests. Liberty-loving small farmers in the South likewise went Democratic, partially balancing the same Federalist-Whig desire for control among the slaveholding elite.
Neither party, however, was uniform in beliefs throughout the nation. Democrats of the North supported, along with their southern brethren, states’ rights, small decentralized non-obtrusive government, and super-low or non-existent taxes. But, fearing the competition of slave labor, they opposed it’s spread to territories; while southern Democrats, though generally non-slaveholders, supported its expansion as a psychological bulwark against the puritan oppression they could almost feel breathing down their necks. (However, they stopped supporting slavery in the territories when they migrated, say, to California, and had the chance to farm without competition from slave labor.)
Southern Whigs shared with northern Whigs an ideology of support for government-business collusion and authority, but they wanted power firmly in the hands of state governments dominated by themselves, large slaveholders. They saw the strong centralized national government of northern Whigs as a threat to their feudalistic fiefdoms.
In 1854, the Whig Party imploded. The northern remnants combined with disaffected antislavery Democrats, antislavery but anti-black Free Soilers, and anti-Catholic/anti-immigrant Know-Nothings from the North to form the Republican Party. These reincarnated Whigs were now stronger than ever in the North, but they were no longer a national party. Anti-southernism was almost one of the new Republican Party’s founding tenants. Southern Whigs could in no way join the new party and still call themselves Southerners, so they joined either a new party for southern Whigs – the Constitutional Union party – or switched to the Democrats.
Democrats also split into northern and southern factions. That was the opening the Republicans needed. Despite winning less than 40 percent of the national popular vote and being absent from the ballot throughout much of the South, the new Republicans were able to take the presidential election in an electoral landslide against two regional Democratic parties and the Constitutional Union Party.The five Gulf States, plus South Carolina and Georgia, reacted to having an anti-Southern party lead the Union by voting to leave it. The more populous and prosperous Upper South also voted on secession, but all chose to remain in the Union.
At first, northern mercantilists were giddy with the possibilities. With half the obstructionist southern states departed, crony capitalists in favor of government-business collusion were in firm control of the national government. Right off the bat, Congress passed sky-high tariffs, the centerpiece of an activist agenda that would protect northern industries and finance the public works they were certain national greatness depended on.
Euphoria was short-lived, however, killed by a shocking realization. The Confederacy’s constitution made the new nation a virtual free trade zone. Economics would dictate that Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans would replace Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as gateways to the continent. This would not only cripple the northern economy but make the fine new tariffs almost worthless. Mercantilist puritans had at last securely grasped the ring of political power, but at the cost of economic power.
And then came war. Modern historical understanding makes slavery the cause of the war. It was not. You could make a case that slavery caused secession, at least in the Deep South. Slavery-as-the-cause advocates, though, conveniently forget that secession is not war; causing one does not equal causing the other. Slavery-as-the-cause advocates also ignore the fact that the Upper South chose against secession so neither slavery nor tariffs were the cause of secession, or of war, in the Upper South. Secession there came later, and clearly for a different reason.
The South had no interest in making war on the North. If there was to be war, the North would have to wage it against the South. Yes, the Southern attack on Fort Sumter was the technical beginning, but only because the North wanted war. If it had not, that nearly bloodless battle would not have been enough. A peacemaker like, say, Martin Van Buren, would have found a way to peace, even after the attack. Debaters, lawyers, and war-makers use events that are technically true in order to win their case, and getting the other side to fire the first shot is a key technicality often used by war-makers. But simply being right on technicalities is not enough to justify war. That war was impossible unless, for whatever reason, the North wanted war.
In 1861, though the North wanted war, it had no desire to make war over slavery. So slavery can hardly be called the cause of war for the North, either. The North made war for something else. You could call that something else Unionism. Unionism was certainly supported by more people than abolitionism – but not by enough people, at first, to push the nation to war. The upsurge in Unionist sentiment strong enough to lead to war followed straight on the heels of the realization of what a free trade South would mean to northern industry. A simplified version of the cause of war, then, would look like this:
First, the Deep South seceded over slavery.
Then the North made war over free vs. protected trade.
Then the Upper South seceded over states’ rights.
This sequence of events is hard to deny. Rather than even try, modern historians prefer to ignore it. They take simplification one step beyond reason and say slavery caused the war. History, though, shows that the North made war on the South, and not over slavery. Lincoln’s dilemma at the beginning of his term was how to preserve his agenda in the face of a free trade South. His solution was a war that would, as a side effect, destroy slavery. But, as we are now seeing once again, it didn’t destroy it cleanly and left multiple legacies that America is still struggling with.
One of those legacies is that the war is still being fought, and war always involves a search for good guys and bad guys. Proponents of the Northern Explanation make the North good and the South bad; proponents of the Southern Explanation make the South good and the North bad, or at least mitigate southern culpability. They are both wrong. There are no good guys in this story. It was a struggle between warmongers in the North and slave drivers in the South, each side intent on preserving personal power and wealth, with the common man serving once again as cannon fodder.
Liberal history is generally quite cynical (and rightly so!) about the causes of war, often finding economic motivations. But they make exceptions. War conducted by fellow liberals for liberal agendas, i.e., for centralized government and governmental solutions, is generally given a noble veneer. The only way to make the Civil War noble is to make slavery the cause. It’s a tough trick, though, that can only be accomplished by tying war and secession into a single indivisible lump. But it’s only a trick. War and secession are not the same, and the cause of one is not automatically the cause of the other.
If, for simplicity’s sake, you insist on a single cause for the war, there actually is one, an exceedingly common one. The Civil War was a war about money and power. The ruling northern elite wanted tariffs for the sake of money and power. The ruling southern elite wanted slavery for the sake of money and power. Once secession had been effected, that desire by the two power elites left no solution short of war.
Published in History
The USSR dissolved as a nation into it’s constituent parts. All agreed to the break up. Likewise the split between Czech Republic and Solvakia was by mutual agreement, ratified by their parliament.
The US Congress did not agree to southern secession, none of the other states consented. Unlike the colonies which had no legal voice in the Parliament, the South had full representation in the US government. They had the means to plead their case. They chose war instead.
As to the Northerners freaking out about the economic implications. I think with time, the reality that southern secession meant nothing could be politically normal would freak everyone out too. The idea that trade between the states could have continued as before secession is unthinkable. So yah secession threw a big wrench in everyone’s plans, because it upended the whole political order. None had fully thought through the consequences of secession either north or south when it happened. So I guess it took everyone some time to realize what letting this criminal act stand meant. It meant the end of the Nation, which I guess would also mean the upending of the economy. Certainly in the short term.
I think there is so much here we could learn from. They say if you don’t know history, you are doomed to repeat it.
There is a lot in this description of the Civil War in its complexity that could easily parallel our modern conflict, but Slavery-cause proponents bury it all. What we are left with is an inability to take away any other lessons except “slavery is bad, mmmmk”.
No one in this country is going to resurrect the slave trade, never mind the secret dreams of infantile radicals who dream of being heroes.
But we are wholely likely to be manipulated by racial animosity, economic war, and heavy handed central government in splitting this country once again.
Hmmm. I think at the end it was about let’s get this over with. That’s how most wars with clear winner and loser end.
Russia was too weak to do anything about it but that is not the same as agreeing to the break up.
There was in secession in 1861. If the nation had ended, the nation would not have been in a position to fight the war that it did fight. So I think your assertion that secession (which took place) would mean the ending of the nation is nonsense.
As far as upending the economy, it did – precisely because a war was fought and the economy of the south was destroyed.
Thanks for the information. And a very good point.
The matter of the Nation and its end was in flux. Had the American government consented to secession in variably it would have lost any authority or power to enforce any law upon the states. The total collapse of the American Constitution then would have been only a matter of when not if. With respect to the economy it is impossible to think that free and open trade would have continued between the north and south had the two become separate nations. Each would in turn in variably have levied tariffs against each other, or even created a closed border. The situation does not mean it would not have reached some new equilibrium, but the shock of finding it would have been massive. And considering how much authority the Federal Government would have lost because it let the South secede I am not even sure it could have negotiated such an equilibrium. Also given the nature of the Southern Constitution I am not sure the CSA itself would have survived for long. As it seems that it was barely able to coordinate to fight a common enemy, how much more disjointed would it have been without that. No…secession was doomed to create chaos and chaos is bound to create economic catastrophes.
I think the way to view the Civil War is through the lens of a “But for…” filter. What that means is, you have to ask yourself the question “Could the war have happened “but for x”? In this case, we have several potential causes which contributed to the ultimate conflagration:
So, when we ask ourselves whether the war would have occurred “but for” any one of these causes, and you subtract any one of them, it certainly seems that the only one that irreducibly led to war was the question of Slavery.
Slavery left a bloody trail across early American history which reared its head repeatedly, nearly causing national ruptures for 60+ years before finally boiling over.
Beginning with the Northwest Ordinance barring slavery in the Northwest Territory which was enacted the same year as the Constitution (1789) the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions presaged the upcoming Nullification Crisis and the Missouri Compromise merely kicked the can down the road. SC’s nullification ordinance tested the waters to see whether or not states could decide for themselves the Constitutionality of Federal law (answer: no) which was entirely appropriate, else wise, the entire notion of a Federal government becomes moot and subject to the whim of states.
The can kept on getting kicked down the road until Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, which put into the mind of every slaveowner the idea that they were sitting on top of a powder keg which could go off and kill them and their entire families if the wrong spark hit the right spot and led (obviously) to an ever-tightening set of rules and restrictions upon slaves and an increase in the general brutality in which they were kept… which in turn led to increased attempts at escape.
Things bumped along through the Mexican-American war until the time came to divvy up the spoils of war, necessitating the Compromise of 1850, which (again) centered on the question of slavery, where it could be allowed and how fugitive slaves were to be handled in free states.
This compromise led to vicious infighting in the Kansas Territory over the question of whether or not Slavery would be allowed in that state, that competition manifesting itself in the Caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate Floor – this violence merely being a reflection of the much worse breakdowns of civility and pitched combat that were going on in areas where the question of slavery was a live political issue.
Then came the Dredd Scott decision, which stripped any status of essential personhood from slaves and declared them to be both inferior to whites and little better than beasts of burden to be bartered or beaten at the behest of their betters and owners. It also had the effect of annihilating the Missouri Compromise, which opened entirely new frontiers to slavery.
This in turn led to the bloody raid on Harper’s Ferry by John Brown (put down by some guy named Robert E. Lee, coincidentally) which exposed the fact that there were significant elements within the country who were willing to do considerable violence to their countrymen in an evangelical desire to end slavery.
The election of 1860 saw the Election of Abraham Lincoln on the ticket of the Republican Party. With the President now being a member of an explicit abolitionist party, the Southerners could see the writing on the wall in terms of the social potentialities. Driven by both the reminiscence of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and understanding that nullification attempts would likely be rebuffed, the South found itself politically isolated and fractured, having been unable to settle on a Presidential candidate able to effectively resist Lincoln (who earned 40% of the vote in a 4-way race) and did the only thing they thought they could to preserve their institutions: Secede.
The proximal cause of all of these ructions and the element without which these shoves would never have come to blows is Slavery. The other bits and pieces played a role in the drama, but were shown to be capable of being solved through the normal political process. The truly intractable bit was always the insistence of Southern elites that there could be no modification to or limits to the expansion of slavery.
No set of regional social conflicts or the imposition of tariffs could have had this effect. People weren’t beating each other in the Senate over tariffs or killing one another in Kansas over the heritage of their ancestors – they were doing these things over the question of whether or not Slavery was going to continue or be terminated.
Thanks for the info, Valiuth. I was pretty sure you would be the go-to guy on the breakup of the USSR.
I take it that secession was a criminal act in Europe, but that the USSR and Czechoslovakia agreed to override criminality through parliament? If so, it was an excellent choice, as avoiding war can certainly be more important in any cases than sticking to legalities.
Be that as it may, it is not at all clear that secession was a criminal act in America. There were legitimate voices and arguments on both sides of the issue, but the idea that secession was illegal was clearly a minority view. That’s why Lincoln had to exert so much effort in the First Inaugural justifying his claim that it was a criminal act, and yet he was still willing to allow secession (in that same Inaugural) if the South would allow the USA to collect tariffs in the southern ports. As for working out an arrangement in Congress, America had other well established means for secession developed during the Glorious Revolution in England and applied in 1774. We sent representatives of the people to a non-governmental congress established precisely for that purpose, the Continental Congress. The New England secessionists did the same in 1815 until the Battle of New Orleans took the wind out of their sails. The southern states followed the same well known procedures in 1861.
Well put. Simplification for the sake of easy understanding is always necessary t0 some extent, but oversimplification and absolutist devotion to oversimplification are often signs that the simplifier is using history as a weapon to pursue an agenda. “Slavery is the cause,” in my opinion, is an oversimplification intended to justify a war that was necessary t0 turn America towards the ideology of activist centralized government as problem solver rather than the traditional idea of passive decentralized government as protector of rights.
Majestyk, excellent summary of the dominoes leading to war. I like how you tie in the Mexican-American War, which was critical, I think, for several reasons.
Only one missing dominoe, one that is little discussed, springs to mind. The economic conflict between N and S was not only based on free vs. slave labor, and free vs. protected trade. There was also the issue of government participation in the economy, most importantly railroad building.
Whigs and then Republicans were for it, Democrats were against it. Whigs/Republicans first wanted a government built canal system. When that fantasy came crashing down in mountains of state debt, they set their eyes on railroads and financing by the federal government. Railroads had been doing just fine by themselves, but Whigs/Republicans wanted a government built rail connection to the Pacific (and much more), but could only afford one. Would it be a northern connection or a southern connection? The winner in that debate would gain great economic advantage for their region partially financed by the loser.
That’s why Secretary of War Jefferson Davis facilitated the Gadsen Purchase of land that could serve the more natural and less mountainous southern route. (He was against government intervention, but if there was to be intervention, he didn’t want the South to come out once more on the losing end.)
And that’s why northern railroads threw critical support behind the nomination and election of Abraham Lincoln, their lawyer extradinaire, who promised to pursue a northern route.
Let us not forget the element of romanticism which infected various elements of the nation, but especially the South. Think about the folk tales that emerged (John Henry comes immediately to mind) whose heroes eschewed the use of or openly disdained technology, considering it soulless.
This sort of Luddite impulse contributed directly to the South’s economic impoverishment which was exposed so painfully by the tariffs on manufactured goods.
So, how do the slave states that remained in the Union fit into your analysis? Your analysis suggests that the Union was anti-Slavery, but Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia were all slave states until the 13th Amendment was passed. In your mind, would slavery have justified the secession of abolitionist states?
Yet, no legal or democratic means was attempted to test the legality of the process that so many assumed existed? That is because I think all new it to be preposterous, or more likely that Southerners felt or expected that they would loose such a process. While the New Englanders talked of secession in 1815 and South Carolina again in the 1830’s none of them moved beyond talk. Talk is protected under the first Amendment. So discussing the issue was an option and not a problem. I think had any of them acted on their impulse unilaterally as happened following Lincoln’s election they would have faced the same issues the CSA faced. It would have been war too.
Also I still think that analogizing the America Revolution to Southern Secession keeps ignoring the point that the colonies in 1776 had no representation in Parliament. Even then I don’t think I would technically rule that the American Revolution was legal, even if it may be argued as necessary and morally justified. I think for the South the case that secession was either necessary or morally justified is far weaker if none existent.
Few revolutions are “legal” from the perspective of the current government, what really matters is whether or not they are justified.
I have now read the First Inaugural address. I see nothing in it that makes Lincoln sound as if he would accept secession in exchange for tariffs. He states that
Lincoln makes the point that the act of secession was on its face unlawful and impossible and that the Union was in no way dissolved and that until by legal means instructed or prohibited to do otherwise he would enforce the laws of the Federal Government as well as possible, including the collection of tariffs and the occupation and maintenance of Federal property. And that so long as no resistance to this was met he would do this with the minimal possible force and foot print. So he would allow them to claim whatever they wanted so long as they took no actions to actually deny the authority of the US Government. He was giving them a chance to back out. That until they acted to stop the Government they had not really rebelled.
Thus to me it seems like Lincoln was trying his lawyerly drandest to give the South a legal way out of the predicament they had created. Much like a cop trying to talk someone down by telling them that they haven’t really committed any crime yet, and that if they just put the gun down and walk away we can all forget about it and move on. Of course the South did not take the out, and did just what they had been warned not to do. Leaving the Government no choice but to exert its just sovereignty, as demanded by the constitution to which all the rebelling states had signed on to.
I suggest you all read Dave Carter’s post this morning:
http://ricochet.com/449991/on-cultural-purging/
Thank you, very sincerely. I plan to print this out and keep it someplace safe.
I always say that there were two main issues, slavery and states’ rights. One side wanted to enslave blacks, the other wanted to enslave states. The war destroyed the premise of the Declaration of Independence; that people have the right to self-determination. Now that is gone.
I think you were being a bit polite about Lincoln’s failure as a statesman. The secession could have been dealt with without going to war, but Lincoln wanted to force them back. I like your explanation as to why that is so, you state it very clearly and without being inflammatory.
However, I think it should be said that Lincoln was a blood thirsty tyrant who wanted to preserve a strong central government at any cost.
Just as with any system of laws and government, the culture tends to race far ahead of the legislative and administrative process’s ability to keep pace.
In Maryland and particularly Delaware, the absolute number of slaveholders and their representation as a function of percentages rapidly dropped after the Ratification of the Constitution such that by the time of the Civil War, there was little left but a rump of a few slaveowners in those states.
Many States have these sorts of “Zombie laws” on their books which cover all manner of bizarre prohibitions. For example there shall be “No hunting with the aid of ferrets” (West Virginia Statute) or “Sex is illegal (except between married persons)” in Virginia and “Atheists can’t hold public office” in Texas.
Merely because a facially ridiculous or weird statute exists on the books doesn’t mean that it reflects the opinion of the body politic – it merely indicates that legislatures don’t always get around to cleaning up after themselves, particularly in cases where social trends have moved well into tolerance or outright acceptance of previously forbidden behaviors.
Abraham Lincoln, December 11, 1860 – “Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery.”
This is definitely a slander. Lincoln stated repeatedly how grieved he was at the notion that any blood should be shed amongst his countrymen, but the South was clearly itching for a fight and saw the provocation of things like John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry as an existential threat – not from Lincoln himself, but from Northern Sensibilities regarding the Southern practice of holding slaves.
Why were there bloody, pitched battles throughout many parts of the Territories over the question of whether or not that state would be a Slave State? Was it only “Northern Aggression” that is to be blamed for that bloodletting or was it Southern desire for the expansion of slavery and the willingness to enforce that expansion with violence? It may be a little bit of both, but one side was clearly the aggressor, with occasional bouts heading the other direction.
The reaction of Southern slaveowners after Nat Turner’s revolt is in my estimation dispositive. They only increased the draconian nature of the conditions under which they kept their slaves, made it illegal for them to learn to read and demanded repeatedly that slaves be returned to their owners as a condition of maintaining peace in the Union.
How do you square this with the Southern Desire to curb the self determination of Northern states through fugitive slave laws?
Very good point.
Dred Scott was even worse than your summary. It declared that blacks, free as well as slave, were not, and could never be, citizens of the United States. Free blacks could no longer get passports from the State Department after the decision since they were no longer citizens, regardless of where they resided in the United States.
Dred Scott was an early example of living constitutionalism. The southern dominated court decided not to rule narrowly, as it easily could have, but rather to nationalize the slavery issue in a way to settle it once and for all. To do so they manufactured a phony history of the Founding and Early Republic. Instead of settling the issue it inflamed feelings.
Crocodile tears. You know who could have stopped that blood from being shed? Lincoln. That was his job, but he had no interest in doing so.
Compare to modern days: Why do people get upset about homosexual marriage? I mean they were really getting steamed up? Was it solely because what people call themselves matters? Absolutely not. The reason was because to lose on that issue meant losing on every issue. Polarization does that. If one party loses on one issue, then every other issue that is aligned with that issue also loses.
Slavery was bad, of course, and it should never have been allowed to exist and it should have been ended immediately. But the war wasn’t solely about slavery anymore than electing Trump was solely about Hillary’s emails.
I don’t. There were a lot of sins committed by both sides. That’s the point. If it were clear cut which side was right, there couldn’t have been a war. Most people are too sensible for that.
Prager U did a video on this question a couple of years ago:
To answer the post title question, “Yes”.
I beg to differ. It may have been that both sides thought they were on the side of the angels… it just happens that one side of that particular question was very clearly exhibiting false consciousness in the sense that they wanted “States rights for me but not for thee” in the sense that they couldn’t brook intolerance of their institutions across state lines. If that were the case, the Fugitive Slave Act shouldn’t have been and would have had no bite.
Yeah, this analysis was as intellectually feeble then as it is now.
And when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation there were riots in the north. So, must one side be pure? Of course not. There were two main causes. One side tended to be right on one issue and wrong on the other. Both were right and both were wrong. No one wins, most certainly not from that bloody four years.