American History

Although the most costly conflict in terms of casualties and the most divisive one yet fought by Americans, debate continues about what caused the American Civil War. On the one hand, official statements by the two sides, the United States under President Abraham Lincoln and the Confederacy under President Jefferson Davis, gave preserving the Union and defending states rights respectively as the reason for the war. On the other hand, in seceding from the Union, several states referred to slavery as a valued part of their cultural legacy. An investigation of what was behind both secession and each sides willingness to engage in a bloody, protracted conflict suggests that what made the war worth fighting was slavery, either to defend it or to end it. Following the argument of several historians, the paper argues that slavery was at the root of the war.

The American Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865. Seven southern states seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy, opposed by the non-seceding states that remained within the Union. Jefferson Davies led the Confederacy, the Union by Abraham Lincoln.  The war was the most divisive incident in US history. Some family members fought on opposite sides. More people died than during any other conflict involving US personnel, including the two World Wars. Yet debate continues about exactly why the war was fought. Stampp describes the search for the cause as one of the most absorbing historical problems (Stampp, 1991, p. 16) and after reflecting on the problem of causation suggests that one is driven to the conclusion that historians will never know, objectively and with mathematical precision, what caused the Civil War (p. 17). The cause is, still open to debate (p. 18). For some, the conflict was to restore national unity, and nothing more (Berlin and Field, 1985, pp 1-2).  Despite lack of mention in official statements at the time, even its denial by some as a cause, several scholars argue that what made the Civil War worth fighting was ending or keeping slavery.  In this view, which one proponent calls controversial (MacPherson, 2008, p. 88), the South did fight to keep slaves, the North to end slavery.
The Cause Lincolns Statements

Lincolns official Declaration of War makes no mention of slavery.  It begins by describing the secessionist states as opposing and obstructing the laws of the Union. In order to maintain the honor, the integrity and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government and to redress wrongs that had been long endured war was declared.  Forts and property seized from the Union were to be re-possessed and the law restored. To facilitate this, Lincoln was convening a militia of seventy-five thousand men and was convening Congress (Lincoln and Fehrenbacher, 1989, p. 232).  Haven says that Lincoln repeatedly states that he was fighting to preserve the union and that if he achieved this he did not care whether he freed the slaves (Haven, 2002, p. xiii). From the Union perspective, the war had to be fought to restore law and to preserve the Union.  The cause of the war, according to Lincolns Declaration, was the revolt or secession of the seven states. What did the Confederacy say about the war and why had the seven seceded Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, responded

The President of the United States calls for an army of seventy-five thousand men, whose first service is to be the capture of our forts. It is a plain declaration of war, which I am not at liberty to disregard, because of my knowledge that, under the Constitution of the United States, the President is usurping a power granted exclusively to Congress.  He emphasized that in withdrawing from the Union, the seven states desired only peace and had no desire to expand their territory indeed their only request was to be left alone (Davis, 1990, p. 283). However, any effort to subjugate them by arms would be resisted (p. 284). He then asserted that their cause just and that, relying on the Divine Power, they would struggle for their inherited right to freedom, independence and self-government (p. 284). From Davis point of view, resisting the Unions militia as it tried to capture Confederate forts was in defense of liberty and freedom and the right to self-government.  No mention of slavery here.  Southerners, says Macpherson, compared their secession from the Union with that of the Union from the British Empire.  They were fighting a Revolutionary War to secure their freedom, for the independence of what they called their country for liberty and self-government against invasion from what they now considered to be an alien power that no longer represented their interests (Macpherson, 2008, p. 86).
The Cause Davis Statements

According to Davis, the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident (Davis, 1990, p. iv).  He and others consistently described the birth of the Confederacy as conceived by Divine Principle not by any worldly cause.  Secession was thus a right under God, an exercise of self-determination and of self-government. On the other hand, in passing its ordinance of secession, the State of South Carolina referred directly to slavery
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all states north of that line have united in the election of one man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery  he has Declared that Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction (December 20, 1860. Heidler, et al, 2000, 2242).

  This suggests that it was Lincolns election that caused secession and that this was directly linked with his hostility towards slavery. Lincolns anti-slavery stance was so distasteful to the South that he was not even on the ballot for the Presidential election. The Texas Declaration of Secession also referred to slavery.  The right to retain slavery was of utmost import

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time (Heidler, et al, 2000, p. 2250.)

In a latter dated January 18, 1861, Davis stated that Lincolns election was not the cause of secession but could be seen as the last feather which you know breaks the camels back (Hilton, 1999 49).  What did Davis mean by the last feather This almost certainly refers to the general feeling in the South that their way of life was under threat. The North was developing as the industrial region, while the South remained heavily dependent on agriculture. The North was imposing high export tariffs on the South as well as buying Southern goods at very cheap prices. The only way the South believed it could afford to grow produce was by using free slave labor.  Building on this economic reality, Haven argues that while the civil war was fought both to preserve the union and to defend states rights these issues only flared into war because underneath them lay the issue of slavery (Haven, 2002, p. xiii).
Slavery The Unsolved Issue

Slavery was the issue left en resolved by the US Constitution.  As some states abolished slavery (every Northern state by 1810) while some resisted this and defended slavery and also as new states joined, the issue became all the more toxic.  Would any new states be admitted that retained slavery, or would only free soil states be admitted to the Union. The slave states and the free states vied for power in the Senate, each trying to make sure that the other side did not dominate (Haven, 2002, p. 4). The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to diffuse tension by allowing California to accede as a free state but New Mexico to decide the slavery issue by free vote.  All US citizens were also required to return runaway slaves to their owners, making assisting them a crime (Haven, 2002, p. 2). However, when Kansas was admitted to the Union on the basis of the Compromise of 1850, that is, that it would vote on abolition, both sides rushed to secure victory at the polls. Abolitionists paid settlers to flood Kansas with anti-slavery voters while opponents of abolition used illegal votes as well the point of the gun to prevent free staters from voting (Haven, 2002, p. 4). The pro-slavery voters easily won the election of 1855. The slave states enjoyed the upper hand until Lincoln, hostile to slavery, won the Presidential election of 1860.

Slavery was deeply entrenched in the South, where it had existed for more than 200 years and there were at least four million slaves when the Civil War began.  The seven states saw slavery as essential to Southern culture and economic success (Haven, 2002, p. xiii).  Use of household slavers to maintain the quality of plantation life, for example, was regarded as the backbone of a whole way of life. Religious sanction was cited, the contention that God had created the black race  descendants of Ham  to serve the white race. In the 1840s, southerner writers and even politicians recited the story of the curse of Ham as if, in itself, it explained both the legality and origins of modern American slavery (Guyatt, 2007, p. 238). See Genesis 920-27 for the curse of Noahs son, Ham. Racists in South Africa also based their treatment of Africans on this text.

Macpherson says that Southerners became defensive about slavery, so even though Lincoln advocated gradual abolition saw the handwriting on the wall when he became President (Macpherson, 2008, p. 84).  In his view, which he describes as controversial, slavery was the root cause of the war
If I were to take on a controversial stand, I would be on the relationship between slavery and the coming of the civil war. I would argue that slavery was at the root of what the civil war was all about.  If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war.  Ultimately what the Confederacy was fighting for was to preserve a nation based on a social system that incorporated slavery. Had that not been the case, there would have been no war (Macpherson, 2008, p. 88).

After discussing the stated reasons for going to war against each other, Haven suggests that despite everything that was aid about preserving the union verses states rights, what made fighting worthwhile for the South was slavery, thus without slavery there would have been no civil war and slavery made the war worth fighting (Haven, 2002, p. xiii).
Slavery as the Root Cause

In this view, the Confederates were indeed fighting, regardless of what they argued about states rights and the right of self-governance because they wanted to keep their slaves.  Did Union soldiers fight because they wanted to preserve the Union or to end slavery  Arguably these were so closely linked that they went hand in hand.  The Northern states has all abolished slavery and were opposed to slavery.  In fighting to preserve the Union, the question for them was the same as it was for the South  what type of society were they fighting for  One that enslaved some or one that honored all men as created equal and free  Lincolns Proclamation of 1863 may well have made explicit what had always motivated the war, that it was being fought to keep or to end slavery. Listing the slave-states, he stated, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free (Lincoln, 1863. Emancipation Proclamation, January 1.)   The Proclamation, though, did not include those states that had slaves that were on the side of the Union (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri) known as the Border States. Slavery continued in two of the border-states until outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 (Berlin and Fields, 1985, p. 3). Lincoln may have said that if the Union was preserved, slaves might go free or remain in bondage but he later wrote that the question of Slavery was more important than any other indeed, so much more important  that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present (Lincoln, Nicolay and Haye, 1907, p. 617).

Some argue that if the Civil War had not been waged, the South would eventually have ended slavery peacefully.  This can be challenged.  After the end of the war, Southern States found ways of perpetuating the exploitation of freed slaves, passing a series of Jim Crow laws that segregated whites from blacks and condemned African-Americans to another century of oppression, slavery in all but name.  It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that anything like full equality was achieved, after the Civil Rights struggle led by Martin Luther King and others. Racism continued to be justified by many in the South and during the Civil Rights struggle some in the South were still prepared to fight to retain segregation.   Was the War fundamentally about slavery From the Confederates perspective, yes, it was fought to keep slavery.  From the Union perspective, it can be argued that preserving the Union was the main reason for starting the war, as stated by Lincoln. Yet, at the same time, many of the men who fought to preserve the Union also wanted the Union to honor all peoples liberty. Some argue that the slave issue became central during the war, thus Emancipation represented a shift in Union policy making what had been lacking at the start become a fundamental war aim (Berlin and Fields, 1985, pp 1-2 ). Union soldiers may not have started but they did finish fighting to end slavery. It is likely that ending slavery was always in their hearts, however, so for many the officially stated causes for war did not represent their real motives for fighting.