Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
I think that was true of the Continental Congress, and the Articles of Confederation created something roughly analogous to the European Union, where power and sovereignty still clearly resided at the state level. However that wasn’t working out very well, and the whole purpose of the new Constitution of 1787 (written after the Revolutionary War had ended) was to “form a more perfect Union,” i.e. to bind the 13 states together into one state whose laws “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” While the states retained partial sovereignty and ceded only certain powers to the new national government, my view is that the states entered a new permanent Union when they chose to ratify the Constitution. That was the moment in the marriage analogy when they took their vows and said “I do.”
So divorce is illegal?
This sort of caviling and sin-brokering confuses me. Of course somebody won: who won the most? Clearly, those who were freed as a result of the North’s actions. That alone is enough to explain who was most in the right on this question.
As you point out, preserving slavery was what caused secession of the seven states in the Deep South, because of their fear that a Republican government would prevent the further expansion of slavery which they (the South) believed would ultimately doom slavery even in the existing slave states.
The fruitful discussion is whether there the United States should have let the seceding states go their own way. However, the injection of the tarriff and centralization issues into the discussion, which were not part of the 1860-1 debates is ahistorical. I’ve mostly seen it raised in a segment of the libertarian community (places like Lew Rockwell.com and DiLorenzo’s books). It is clearly driven by a dislike of some of the outcomes of the Civil War, but because they don’t like the outcomes they feel compelled to create a pre Civil War history that simply didn’t exist at the time in which the war is a plot by the Northern railroad oligarchs. Reading the Lincoln quotes at Lew Rockwell is reading stripped of context and chronology. Rockwell and DiLorenzo are the libertarian equivalents of relying on Howard Zinn to learn American history. We can debate whether the desire to preserve the Union, dislike of slavery, and the increasing Northern dislike of the Southern aristocracy due to its continued aggression during the 1850s justified the war, but reading the debates, letters and newspapers of the time in full, and not cherry-picked, and it is abundantly clear this was not a centralization plot.
You mention Lincoln’s reference to tariffs in the First Inauguration. In that speech he also endorsed the Corwin Amendment which had passed Congress two days before his inauguration. Corwin was a proposed constitutional amendment which would have preserved slavery in the states where it was currently allowed and prevented any further constitutional amendments on the subject.
No, but us Catholics don’t take it lightly.
But did they win? They were “freed” in one sense, but they suffered for generations nonetheless. The feds could have just bought every slave and given each one 40 acres and a mule and had the same result.
The loss of sovereignty is a huge loss for the northern and southern states, as well as the descendants of the slaves. States are forced to abide by the dictates of the cabal of the so-called checks and balances of the three branches of the federal government. States vote out homosexual marriage? Sorry, the federal courts changed your mind for you, you stupid voters. Texas doesn’t want to have the feds tell them what to do for retirement plans? Sorry, even though the Texas Supreme Court twice told the federal court that they didn’t have jurisdiction, the feds told them they had to comply.
So just who won? Everyone lost on that issue. Blacks won on slavery. I’m happy for that result, of course, but a better statesman could have figured out how to win on both, and without killing 600,000 people.
But slavery was inextricably linked with heritage of ancestors, agrarian lifestyle and whether one wanted high or low tariffs. You try to separate them out. I don’t see how that is done.
The other thing that is absolutely critical in all of this is the invention of the cotton gin. Without the invention of the cotton gin, slavery would not have had the value that it did.
Source: Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars
The value of slave labor was greater than most free labor – because of cotton that was fueling British mills.
Southerners would devise an even more exploitative means of extracting labor for the raising of cotton after the civil war, namely share cropping. No need for land owners to worry about the welfare of their property and keep up its value now that the labor was free. This is statement is not meant as a defense of slavery, but only of the unintended consequences of the ending of slavery.
On further reflection I think the discussion over the North’s reaction to secession is interesting in theory but as a contemporaneous decision strikes me as akin to Truman’s decision to use the A-bomb. As to Truman, it is simply inconceivable from a military perspective and in light of prevailing public opinion that any American president would have made a different decision at the time.
Same thing in 1861. It wasn’t only Lincoln and Republicans who opposed secession. Most Northern Democrats also did and were willing to fight to preserve the Union (though not for abolishing slavery). Lincoln’s greatest political opponent, the Democrat Stephen Douglas, supported Lincoln and his position on secession. George McClellan, another Democrat who was to run against Lincoln in 1864, supported the war to preserve the Union, though he cared not at all about slavery, and happy to be his general.
Some demographic information on secession:
The 1860 census shows the relationship between the relative size of slave population and the timing of decisions about secession. Six of the seven states seceding by early February 1861 had slaves populations ranging from 44% to 57% of their total populations (Texas was an outlier with 30%) while the four states seceding post-Sumter had smaller slave populations, between 25% and 33%. In the four slave states that did not secede the slave population did not exceed 20%: Kentucky (20%), Maryland (13%), Missouri (10%), Delaware (2%).
You can also look at the average number of slaves owned by slave-owning families in the slave states and see a familiar pattern. In the seven original Confederate states the average number of slaves owned per family was between 9 and 15 with an average of 13. The four late seceding states were between 7.5 and 10 per family with an average of 9. The four non-seceding slave states were between 3 and 6 per family with an average of 5.
“Justified” is entirely subjective. Was Robert Aske’s rebellion against Henry VIII justified? Was Wat Tyler’s rebellion against the poll tax of Richard II justified? Was Shays’ Rebellion justified?
Buchanan and his administration probably would not have. It was probably his (non)reaction to everything between Nov. 1860 and March 1861 that lead things to go as far as they did as quickly as they did.
Right which is why it comes down to a reasoned evaluation of the relative arguments for rebellion. The fact that the South has democratic representation lessens the case for their rebellion along tyrannical grounds.
Would I be correct in saying that in some significant ways, it was a national defense issue? Was there a threat felt to exist that England or France or Spain could attack a weakened half of the United States, either one?
I have wondered about this for years. Expansionism is described by historians as imperialism and as many other evil things, but was there a practical reason for it?
Interesting. I wonder if those enslaved in Union states would share your view that their fate was attributable to a mere “bizarre prohibition.”
I know at one point that England considered providing material support to the South, but I am fuzzy on the realpolitik behind that decision.
I have seen these numbers. South Carolina was over 50 percent.
People have talked often about the negative reaction of the cities in the North to emancipation and the antiwar protests in the North. But there are probably some practical explanations.
The potato famine in Ireland occurred between 1845 and 1847. The response from Americans is a heartwarming story for sure. Boston, for example, started up a relief fund that raised a lot of money, and they sent ships to Ireland with food and medical supplies. But many distressed Irish citizens came here as well to build a new life:
One can easily imagine the fear that was felt in the immigrant communities at the prospect of the newly freed blacks coming north for low-skill manufacturing jobs.
These were crazy and volatile times in the United States.
Given that the United States had only just been birthed in the eyes of the Empire, it was still conceivable to some of them that driving a wedge in between North and South would weaken this new power. It was only 40 years earlier that the US blundered its way into winning the war of 1812 where at one point the national capital was captured and burned by the British.
I think it’s true that slavery would have been on a glide path towards eventual self-destruction if not for the invention of the cotton gin which made economical the application of mass manual labor.
But herein lies the unfortunate truth of the matter: when you ask which Union General is most reviled in the South the answer is likely to always be WT Sherman. Why? Because Sherman hit the Southern aristocracy where it really hurt them: in the pocket book. He destroyed their property rather than destroying the people who owned it, while it was left to Grant to mop up the Confederate forces themselves, including fighting a number of quite bloody battles.
Something like 24% of war-aged Southern men died in the Civil war – many of them killed in battles with Grant’s forces, yet somehow “Billy the Torch” is more hated. What that indicates to me is that the thing which the aristocracy cared about most was property, not people. They were perfectly happy to let ignorant dirt-farmers die on a muddy field somewhere far from their homes under the heading that somehow the Union Army was there to personally dispossess them of their meager property, when the reality of the matter is that those poor dirt farmers were being used as cannon fodder to defend the human property of the wealthiest members of that society.
I’m back, for a while. Fascinating and informative discussion, virtually every post. I’m learning a lot. However, way too much has accumulated for me to be able to respond as much as I’d like, so I’ll choose just a few. First Valiuth in #45 and #46.
Yes, V, that was the section of the Inaugural where Lincoln offered his deal. Your interpretation of the pertinent words is certainly well done. Those words for anyone looking in:
“The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object.”
To me, though, it still looks like a deal. Subsequent actions showed that Lincoln was actually not particularly interested in any of the federal possessions except those used “to collect the duties and imposts,” such as Fort Sumter. Beyond being allowed to collect duties and imposts, he promises, there will be no invasion. That’s the deal. If the CSA had accepted it (which of course they couldn’t if they intended to be an independent country), Lincoln truly would have had no reason to invade. He would have had everything he needed to pursue his activist government ideology. And, without the votes of seven southern states, he would have been free to pursue it to his heart’s content.
Gumby Mark, interesting data. But is the correlation causal or coincidental? Another correlation is this: states closer to the North, from which slaves would have an incredibly easier time escaping if there were no fugitive slave laws, chose against secession at first, changing their minds only after Lincoln made it clear he would invade the South. And don’t forget, the slave-owning aristocracy even in the Deep South, believed that slavery was eventually doomed, even for them, without Fugitive Slave Laws, and therefore voted against secession. Unfortunately for them, the anti-northern “fire breathing” hotheads who loved a good fight and hated the teachy-preachy North, had more votes.
Something to consider. If Lincoln was more concerned with slavery than tariffs, he could have let the Deep South go, and used the now overwhelming northern dominance of Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave laws. But that would have meant giving up on tariff collection, which (he believed) would have meant giving up on the rest of his activist and expensive program. He, to be blunt, chose war instead.
EDIT. Majestyk in #78, Yes! Yes! Yes!
See Don Doyle’s The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War.
France was the interventionist. Napoleon III put Maximilian in place in Mexico in 1861 thus making a shambles of the Monroe Doctrine. Both Britain and France were supportive of the South. Not only because of cotton but to create problems that could possibly be exploited.
After not losing at Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that was squarely aimed at Britain’s Liberal (and anti-slavery) government.
Russia’s navy was at anchor in New York and San Francisco throughout much of the Civil War. Why? To be in a position to raid British commerce if the British Navy started to openly side with the South in trying to lift the blockade. Just as Russia had aided the United States at the end of the War of 1812 against the British, it did during the Civil War.
Perhaps, although North America was already divided into 3 major nations: Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. It’s not really clear that 4 nations would have been substantially more vulnerable than 3.
Even as late as WWI the Germans were trying in the Zimmerman telegram to persuade Mexico to go to war with America with the promise of retaking Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
I am curious about your source for this assertion.
There’s a problem with this narrative in the sense that Lincoln dextrously moved not only to ensure that he had the proper backing to fight the war and end the insurrection of the Southern states, but to bring to a legal end the cause of that fight to begin with via his construction of a coalition which ultimately amended the Constitution to outlaw Slavery.
There is another problem with that narrative as well, in that Federal spending as a percent of GDP (about 4%) climbed suddenly during the War as a result of the conflict, but fell precipitously back down to near pre-war levels (about 5%) all the way until the Wilson Administration. The so-called expansionist vision produced government spending which we would regard as a rounding error in comparison to today. It helps to keep that in perspective.
Certainly Sherman was more hated in Georgia and South Carolina. He was comparatively easy on North Carolina and is not as reviled here. The reason he was so reviled is that he was waging economic warfare on them. Do you think if Sherman’s troops slaughtered all the livestock he could lay hands on, requisitioned the grain, destroyed the grain mills, left so many of his neckties (i.e., Sherman’s neckties) that would prevent supplies from easily being brought in that somehow the wives and children of the ignorant dirt-farmers left back on the homestead would not starve as well? Few people other than Sherman drove home the point to the dirt-farmers that their fate was inextricably linked with that of the aristocracy you claim was tricking them into dying.
Completely agree with that.
Sorry Mark, this mind of mine is a leaky sieve. I’m pretty sure that I’ve read that both Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens opposed secession, as did most of the southern aristocracy. I’ve been hoping that someone among the extremely knowledgeable folks here would jump in to either confirm or deny that. In any case, the aristocracy was trumped by fire eaters on the question of secession, but quickly took over the the reins of the new government leaving the dirt poor fire eaters, as Magestyk so eloquently points out, to be cannon fodder in the service of the protection of the aristocracy.
Magestyk, even though we’ve been arguing from different sides, in a sense, I’ve been impressed with your points. Up until #83. I don’t really get how #83 introduces a realistic problem to the narrative.
BTW, the western land grant railroads were supported by a giveaway of the people’s land which totaled (if memory serves) a land area larger than Texas. This, too, was part of the Republican activist governmental program, and a part which was as destructive to the subsequent history of America as ending slavery by means of war.
Really? I’ve never heard that before in my entire life. I think I would have remembered it.
This was definitive for me. Yes, that’s how I learned it. There were other issues surrounding slavery which muddle the argument, but without slavery there would never have been a civil war. Cultural institutions are much more powerful motivations of men – the cultural institution that embraced slavery and the cultural institution that was revolted by slavery. Abstractions such as states rights don’t motivate men to die. Slavery was the overriding reason for the war.
The reason I asked was that I am aware of some large slaveholders who opposed secession (Davis & Stephens were initially in this group) but have not seen evidence that the slave holding aristocracy as a whole did so. It was certainly the largest slaveholding states that first seceded. In the first to secede, South Carolina, where 57% of the population consisted of enslaved people, the 171 delegates, dominated by the wealthiest in the state, unanimously voted for secession. In the states where referendums were held on secession and where we have breakdown data on the returns the heaviest opposite was in upland and hill areas where there were fewer slaveholders.
If I understand what you said correctly, (and what many have argued elsewhere) one of the key issues at hand and what some have argued the South was fighting against was an aggressive increase in Federal power – a move away from a Jeffersonian, Democratic Republican vision and more towards a Hamiltonian, Federalist vision.
The issue with that narrative is that as we all know, Federal power is best expressed as the power to spend and particularly to tax, without which spending is largely impossible. In order for the Federal Government to have assumed the sort of powers that they Lincoln is alleged to have sought, it would naturally have to come with some manner of taxation and spending in proportion to that increased power. The evidence for that is revealed as being somewhat weak due to the government’s spending as a percent of GDP. There are other forms of power as well, which the South accuses the North of abusing.
But an argument can also be made that the South only adhered to the principle of Federalism qua Federalism when it was convenient for them to do so – the Dredd Scott Decision having cut the pins out from underneath the Missouri Compromise and enforcing the Fugitive Slave acts upon states in which Slavery was illegal.
This is the “Federalism for me but not for thee” that I was speaking of earlier.