“Somehow the cause of the war”: The Roots of the Civil War

I. Why is the Civil War so critical?

  • Survival of the nation at stake
    • Significance extended beyond the US itself: Could a republic endure?
  • National trauma that eclipses all others
    • Most reliable research conservatively estimates that 750,000 men died
  • Consequences were revolutionary
    • Freeing of nearly 4 million slaves
    • Reckoning with nation’s “original sin”—the glaring contradiction enshrined in the Constitution

II. Emergence of a new sense of nationhood

  • Prior to the war, Americans were intensely localistic
    • 80% lived in towns of 2,500 people or less
    • People’s identification with their towns and states often trumped their identification with the nation
  • After the Civil War, a new sensibility is reflected in language
    • “The United States” becomes a singular rather than a plural noun
    • People began speaking much less about a “union,” and much more about a “nation”

III. Dramatic shift in power from South to North

  • Civil War answers the longstanding question of which social and economic system would dominate:
    • A political economy based on slavery, overwhelmingly agricultural, with a very limited federal government?
    • Or a political economy based on free labor, with a stronger federal government that fostered domestic manufacturing?
  • The war left the South devastated economically (region lost 60% of it wealth/capital)
  • Whereas Northern industry was spurred (wealth/capital in the region increased by 50%)
  • Transfer of political power from South to North

IV. Strengthening of the federal government

  • Prior to war, the federal government was for most a distant entity
    • Post Office and Customs House
  • Flurry of wartime legislation changed the nature of government by claiming new powers
    • To draft citizens into the army
    • To collect taxes
    • To issue a national currency
    • To put down civil unrest
    • To end slavery and define the citizenship rights of former slaves

V. Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural as a history lesson

  • Southern states were the aggressors
  • They went to war to protect their “peculiar and powerful interest”—slavery
  • North did not attempt to eradicate slavery at the outset—merely to block its extension
  • No could have predicted the bloodshed or revolutionary changes (end of slavery)
  • The “mighty scourge of war” is God’s punishment of both South and North
    • Nation as a whole complicit in allowing slavery to persist and in being enriched by it

VI. Ex-confederates’ version of history (post Civil War)

President Jefferson Davis: They fought for “the inalienable right of a people to change their government … to withdraw from a Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered.” The “existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident.” (Rise and Fall of Confederate Government, 1881)

Vice President Alexander Stephens: “The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as the General Government …. It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other side. Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles … of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other … were finally brought into … collision with each other on the field of battle.” (A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States, 1868)

VII. What Confederates said before and during the War

Alexander Stephens on what caused the war and why the Confederate constitution was superior to that of the US: “This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right.” [But Jefferson was wrong to ever say that “all men are created equal.”] Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition ….” (March 21, 1861)

VIII. How did slavery cause the war?

  • Institution of slavery profoundly influenced the social, economic and political structure of the South – creating a culture that was, in many ways, different from that of the North;
  • Every point of contention between Northerners and Southerners – be it religious disagreements, economic disagreements, or political disagreements – ultimately came back to slavery & whether or not it should be allowed to expand.

IX. Slavery in late 18th century America

  • Well-established institution; about 700,000 slaves, spread across both N and S
  • Revolutionary ferment leads to growing discomfort
    • Large slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson express hopes for the institution’s eventual demise
    • Some southern states make it easier to free slaves
    • Spate of manumissions, esp. in Upper South
    • Formation of abolitionist societies, including in Upper South
    • Some southern states ban or heavily tax in the international slave trade
    • In the North: By 1804, all states except Delaware have either banned slavery or provided for its gradual extinction

X. Constitution/founders on slavery

  • First of a series of sectional compromises on slavery
  • Fugitive slave clause
  • 3/5ths clause
    • Slave counted as 3/5ths a person for representation & taxation
      • Allowed slaveholding states greater power in the House
      • Made the votes of white southerners worth more
      • Contributes to the idea of “Slave Power”
  • Allowed for the banning of the international slave trade
  • Also in 1787, passage of Northwest Ordinance
    • Established precedent of containment; banning slavery in some areas

XI. What did the founders intend?

  • Secessionists would argued that they were preserving the founders’ legacy
    • Founders included Constitutional guarantees
    • Many were slave owners themselves
    • Example: South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession
  • North disputed this
    • Founders thought slavery was a dying institution
    • They often spoke of its baneful influence in a Republic
    • Northwest Ordinance

XII. Rapid expansion of slavery in the 19th century

  • Profitability
  • Cotton revolution
    • Growing European demand for cotton
    • Cotton gin
    • By 1850s, US South providing 70% of world’s cotton
    • By 1860, cotton accounts for 58% of US exports
      • Gives South a feeling of invincibility; “Cotton is King”
  • Leads to huge westward migration
    • 50% of slaves in the upper South forcibly relocated
  • Makes many people rich, both S. and N.
    • Example: Jefferson Davis
    • Northern textile mills were most directly dependent on southern cotton
    • But cotton profits also fueled banking, insurance, shipping—all based in the North

Scope of course: The war’s coming, course & consequences

  • We will focus not just on the war years (1861-65), but on the period from 1850 to 1877
  • Why start in 1850?
  • Somewhat arbitrary; could start much earlier
  • Compromise of 1850
  • Why end in 1877?
  • Contested presidential election
  • Withdrawal of Union troops from the South

Course structure/logistics

  • Course readings all on e-reserves: access code RP112
  • Recommend that you print out material and create your own reader
  • Class time: Will be a mixture of lecture and discussion
  • Can always raise your hand to ask questions
  • Requirements
  • Low stakes quizzes; document analysis; in-class MT; take-home final OR a research paper
  • NO electronics
    Closing thought: The war, according to Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, “uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought [change] so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.”