American Civil War

 

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war between the United States of America, called the Union, and the Confederate States of America, formed by eleven Southern states that had declared their secession from the Union. The Union won a decisive victory, followed by a period of Reconstruction. The war produced more than 970,000 casualties (3 percent of population), including approximately 560,000 deaths. The causes of the war, the reasons for the outcome, and even the name of the war itself, are subjects of much controversy, even today.

Historiography: Multiple explanations of why the War began

Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events
The origins of the American Civil War lay in the complex issues of slavery, politics, disagreements over the scope of States' rights versus federal power, expansionism, sectionalism, economics, modernization, and competing nationalism of the Antebellum period. Although there is little disagreement among historians on the details of the events that led to war, there is disagreement on exactly what caused what and the relative importance. There is no consensus on whether the war could have been avoided, or if it should have been avoided.

Failure to compromise

In 1854 the old two-party system broke down after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Whig Party disappeared, and the new Republican Party arose in its place. It was the nation's first major political party with only sectional appeal; though it had much of the old Whig economic platform, its popularity rested on its commitment to stop the expansion of slavery into new territories. Open warfare in the Kansas Territory, the panic of 1857, and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry further heightened sectional tensions and helped Republicans sweep elections in 1860. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln, who met staunch opposition from Southern slave-owning interests, triggered Southern secession from the union.

During the secession crisis, many politicians argued for a new sectional accommodation to preserve the Union, focusing in particular on the proposed "Crittenden Compromise." But historians in the 1930s such as James G. Randall argued that the rise of mass democracy, the breakdown of the Second Party System, and increasingly virulent and hostile sectional rhetoric made it highly unlikely, if not impossible, to bring about the compromises of the past (such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850). Indeed, the Crittenden Compromise was rejected by Republicans. One possible "compromise" was peaceful secession agreed to by the United States, which was seriously discussed in late 1860—and supported by many abolitionists—but was rejected by Buchanan's conservative Democrats as well as the Republican leadership.

Southern nationalism: Psychological nationhood

Most historians agree, following Ulrich B. Phillips, Avery Craven, and Eugene Genovese, that the South had grown apart from the North psychologically and in terms of its value systems. One by one the common elements that bound the nation together were broken. For example the major Protestant denominations split along North-South lines over the issue of slavery. Fewer travelers or students or businessmen went from one region to the other. The last common

Slavery as a cause of the War

Focus on the slavery issue has been cyclical. It was considered the main cause in the 1860–1890 era. From 1900 to 1960, historians considered anti-slavery agitation to be less important than constitutional, economic, and cultural issues. Since the 1960s historians have returned to an emphasis on slavery as a major cause of the war. Specifically, they note that the South insisted on protecting it and the North insisted on weakening it.

For Southern leaders, the preservation of slavery emerged as a political imperative. As the basis of the Southern labor system and a major store of Southern wealth (see "Economics," below), it was the core of the region's political interests within the Union. The section's politicians identified as Southern "rights" the equal opportunity to introduce its labor system and property (i.e. slaves) into newly opened territories, and to retrieve escaped slaves from the free states with federal assistance.

Northern resistance to slavery fell into the categories of self interest and moral (largely religious) opposition. In the small-producer economy of the North, a free-labor ideology (see "Ideologies," below) grew up that celebrated the dignity of labor and the opportunities available to working men. Slavery was seen as unfair competition for men attempting to better themselves in life. Slavery was also seen as a threat to democracy; Northerners believed that a corrupt oligarchy of rich planters, the Slave Power, dominated Southern politics, and national politics as well. Northerners also objected on moral grounds to being legally required to enforce fugitive slave laws.

Abolitionism as a cause of the war

By the 1830s, a small but outspoken abolitionist movement arose, led by New Englanders and free blacks, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Lucretia Mott. Many people North and South considered slavery an undesirable institution, but by the 1840s the militant abolitionists went much further and declared that owning a slave was a terrible sin, and that the institution should be immediately abolished. Southerners bitterly resented this moralistic attack, and also the stereotypical presentation of slave owners as heartless Simon Legrees in the overwhelmingly popular (in the North) book and play by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852). Historians continue to debate whether slave owners actually felt either guilt or shame (Berringer 359-60[1]). But there is no doubt the southerners were angered by the abolitionist attacks. Starting in the 1830s there was a widespread and growing ideological defense of the "peculiar institution" everywhere in the South. By the 1850s Northern teachers suspected of any tinge of abolitionism were expelled from the region, and abolitionist literature was banned there as well. The secessionists rejected the denials of Republicans that they were abolitionists, and pointed to John Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a slave uprising as proof that multiple northern conspiracies were afoot to ignite bloody slave rebellions. (No evidence of any Brown-like conspiracy has been discovered by historians.)

Economics

These contrasting economic interests led to sectional agendas that, at times, competed in Congress. Pennsylvania politicians, for example, pushed for a protective tariff to foster the iron industry. Southerners, tied to an export economy, sought free-trade policies. There was some demand in the West for federally funded improvements in roads and waterways, but less support in the agricultural South. However, there was no unanimity of support for such programs even within each region. Northern farmers also depended upon exports; early railroad managers desired reduced tariffs on imported iron; many Northern Democrats opposed any federal role in the nation's infrastructure, while Southern Whigs favored it. As a result, the significance of economic conflict has been exaggerated: North and South did not compete but were complementary. Each depended on the other for prosperity. King Cotton's greatest importance may have been in fostering the secessionist belief that it would prove a sufficient support for an independent Southern nation. Many believed that British prosperity depended on cotton, and that surely Britain (and possibly France) would help protect cotton supplies by helping the Confederacy gain independence. This analysis proved a delusion during the war, but it seems to have been influential in 1860-61 during the debates.

Ideologies

The economic and social differentiation of North and South found expression in ideologies that were highly refined by 1860. Historian Eric Foner (1970) has argued that a free-labor ideology dominated thinking in the North. The economy of the free states consisted largely of small producers, ranging from farms to workshops to retail and mercantile establishments. Large corporations were few; wage labor was seen as an honorable (but temporary) condition. Northern society celebrated the dignity of free labor, and emphasized the capacity of a working man to lift himself up by his own efforts.

In the South, Quaker and other religious voices for the abolition of slavery, heard soon after the American Revolution, were increasingly replaced by defenders of the "peculiar institution." As the early nineteenth century proceeded, white Southern writers attacked the sharp-dealing, commercially-minded society of the North. Only in a slave-owning society, some argued, could a white man truly be free, to pursue education, cultural refinement, or political participation. They depicted slavery as a positive good for the slaves themselves, especially the Christianizing that had rescued them from the "paganism" of Africa.

These emerging ideologies polarized the nation. Republicans argued that a clique of wealthy planters, the Slave Power, dominated the South, and the nation as a whole. (Indeed Southerners played a predominant role in the federal government, supplying most of the nation's Presidents, Speakers of the House of Representatives, and Chief Justices of the Supreme Court.) Though historians have recently emphasized that the South was much more democratic than Northerners believed, the Slave Power image gripped the Northern imagination. White Southerners, by contrast, seeing a threat to their society by fanatical and conspiratorial abolitionists, the underground railroad, and, most ominously, the violent activities of John Brown, felt a sense that they were under siege.

Both North and South believed strongly in republican values of democracy and civic virtue. But their conceptualizations were diverging. Each side thought the other was aggressive toward it, and was violating both the Constitution and the core values of American republicanism.

Slavery in the Territories

The specific political crisis that culminated in secession and civil war stemmed from a dispute over the expansion of slavery into new territories. Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress had agreed to admit Missouri as a slave state, but bar slavery in the territory west and north of Missouri. The acquisition of vast new lands during the Mexican War (1846–1848), however, reopened the debate. Free-state politicians such as David Wilmot, who personally had no sympathy for abolitionism, feared that unpaid slaves would provide too much competition for free labor, and thus effectively keep free-state migrants out of newly opened territories. Slaveholders felt that any ban on slaves in the territories was a discrimination against their peculiar form of property, and would undercut the financial value of slaves, the institution itself, and their national political dominance. In Congress, the end of the Mexican War was overshadowed by a fight over the Wilmot Proviso, a provision that Wilmot tried (and failed) to enact to bar slavery from all lands acquired in the conflict.

The dispute led to open warfare in the Kansas Territory after it was organized in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act repealed the prohibition on slavery there under the Missouri Compromise, and put the fate of slavery in the hands of the territory's settlers, a process known as "popular sovereignty." Proslavery Missourians expected that Kansas, due west of their state, would naturally become a slave state, and were alarmed by an organized migration of antislavery New Englanders. Soon heavily armed "border ruffians" from Missouri battled antislavery forces under John Brown, among other leaders. Hundreds were killed or wounded. Southern congressmen, perceiving a Northern conspiracy to keep slavery out of Kansas, insisted that it be admitted as a slave state. Northerners, pointing to the large and growing majority of antislavery voters there, denounced this effort. By 1860, sectional divisions had grown deep and bitter.

Southern fears of Modernity

Southern secession was triggered by the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln because regional leaders feared that he would make good on his promise to stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. If not Lincoln, then sooner or later another Yankee would do so, many Southerners said; it was time to quit the Union. The slave states had lost the balance of power in the Electoral College and the Senate, and were facing a future as a perpetual minority. In a broader sense, the North was rapidly modernizing in a manner deeply threatening to the South. Historian James McPherson (1983 p 283) explains:

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