This appeared as a comment from Nick Forte in the largely humorous article about the brouhaha relating to the State Flag of Georgia. As Nick makes some very interesting points about an endlessly debated subject, we thought it was worthy of appearing as a Samizdata.net article in its own right
I fear the debate over the cause of the Civil War will never be resolved. This is because there was no single cause. There was not even a predominant cause. The various participants in the war fought for a myriad of different reasons. On the Southern side, it is true that many advocates of secession argued that slavery was threatened if the South remained in the Union. This view was strongest in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), were most of the slaves were located.
But is must be remembered that there were two waves of secessions. The states of the Deep South seceded in the early months of 1861 and many of their articles of secession did claim slavery as a major issue.
The Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) did not secede until after Lincoln called for a levy of state militias to put down the “rebellion”. It was their view that the Federal government was abusing the sovereign rights of the seceding states that drove the Upper South out of the Union. In fact, prior to Ft. Sumter, Virginia voted against secession. Also, both Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, two Virginians who were unarguably the Confederacy’s two best generals, viewed slavery as an abomination and wouldn’t have taken up arms simply to fight for slavery. They were fighting to defend their home and hearth from what they viewed as a foreign invasion.
Even this dichotomy between the motivations of the Deep South and Upper South over simplifies the issue. The South also had other grievances against the North, particularly over the tariff. The Republican Party, representing the manufacturing interests of the North-Eastern States, was highly protectionist at that time. Lincoln had written quite extensively on the benefits of high tariffs. The South, with few manufacturers, generally supported free trade. Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration, the new Republican dominated Congress passed the notorious Morrill Tariff, which raised the average tariff rate from 20% to 47%. Nine days later the Confederate Congress adopted a 10% tariff.
Although a low tariff was good economic policy for the Confederacy, it was terrible politics for the South’s goal of independence. Overnight it changed the reaction of the North to secession. Prior to the passage of the 10% tariff, most Northern newspapers editorialized in favour of letting the South go. Even abolitionist papers took this position, believing that Southern independence would allow the North to eliminate all vestiges of the fugitive slave acts, making slavery unsustainable in the Confederacy. The passage of the 10% tariff was viewed a direct economic challenge by the North and eliminated Northern tolerance to Southern independence. After its passage, most Northern papers changed their editorial positions and called for the military subjugation of the South. With a little more discretion by the Confederacy on the timing of the passage of the tariff and Lincoln may not have been able to sustain Northern support for the war.
As for abolition, this didn’t become a part of the North’s war aims until the war was already half over. Lincoln not only denied that he was fighting the war to free the slaves, he even supported the passage of an irrevocable amendment to the Constitution that would preserve slavery were it already existed in perpetuity. Very few people realized that this proposed amendment was actually approved by the House of Representatives after the Southern delegations had already departed.
Add to the above a strong cultural mistrust between dour Puritan Yankees and Southern “cavaliers” and you have a complex cocktail of “causes” for the Civil War. Trying to divine a single cause of the war, although understandable, is simply a misguided act of foolishness.
Nick Forte
I think it’s pretty clear that slavery was what lawyers would call a ‘but-for cause’ — that is, if slavery had been magically abolished in 1859, the 1860 election would not have resulted in secession and war.
Tangentially related but very interesting:
I started reading David Levy’s How the Dismal Science Got Its Name. It is a book on how Carlyle, Ruskin and the other Victorian sages opposed classical economics because they thought the analytical style of classical economics, which featured free and atomistic individuals, was hostile to hierarchical systems, including (in particular) black slavery. To quote Carlyle, in what is apparently the first real usage of the phrase “dismal science” (not the one typically proferred):
This leaves me wondering to what extent the American Revolution permitted the abolitionists in Britain to carry the argument against slavery, since they no longer had cotton interests pushing for the other side.
The issue of the arming of black troops in the Confederacy supports the idea that the South was divided over what they wanted. Dixie cutlural nationalists like General Patrick Cleburne argued as the war dragged on “not necessarily to the CSA’s advantage” (to paraphrase Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast) it would be essential to arm large numbers of black troops to achieve independence. Cleburne, a realitic man, knew that this step would entail the end of slavery. He circulated a classified letter arguing for this step, which set off a furious debate in high Confederate circles. Some took the position that it was worth the abolition of slavery to achieve independence; others felt that maintaining slavery *was* the point of independence. Enough of the latter felt that way that the idea was killed, until the very end fo the war, when it was implemented way too little, way too late. This story has been told twice recently, once in Jay Winik’s April 1865, the second in Freehling’s The South vs. The South, a very worthwhile and eye-openng book about Southerners who fought against independence.
As for the question of whether abolition would haevb happened as soon in the British Empire if America hadn’t become independent, it seems very likely so to me. Money spoke very loudly in Parliament in those days, more so than today, and the slave economy of the South would have had lots to spend to lobby against abolition. It’s one of those real wild-card questions that makes it impossible to say “This would have happened” rather than “This might have happened”.
It’s not so clear that the war would have been adverted if slavery was magically abolished in 1859. There was still the issue of the tariff, which almost split the nation in the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Early emancipation would have still left the South primarily agrarian and with an interest in low tariffs. The difference in the Union and Confederate tariff rates shows how far apart the North and the South were on this issue. What the South feared the most was that the North, with its growing population, would be able to dictate the terms of its economic relations inside the Union. This fear was born out in the post-war period.
Up until 1952, the Interstate Commerce Commission maintained a system that charged higher railroad freight rates for manufactured goods shipped from the South to the North than those shipped from the North to the South. Conversely, raw materials shipped from the South to the North were charged less than those shipped in the other direction. In effect, Northern manufactures received a subsidy for the import of Southern raw materials and an effective internal trade barrier against competition from Southern manufacturers.
The fear of just this sort of economic discrimination by the North likely would have led to Southern secession, perhaps not in 1861 but certainly by the turn of the century. The election of Abraham Lincoln without a a single electoral vote from the South showed the South that it was losing its political position within the Union and with growing immigration in the North and more Northern settled states being carved out of the Western territories, the South’s political position in the Union was growing weaker by the year. It was only a matter of time, IMHO, before the South would seceed, slavery or no slavery.
I dunno, Nick. I’ve been arguing that the whole “It wasn’t about slavery, it was about ‘State’s Rights’ ” argument is hogwash.
Would secession have happened if slavery was abolished in 1859 is an interesting question, but I think a more illuminating one is to ask if it would have heppened if slavery had been abolished in 1830, or before.
I believe all the complexities of this question do boil down to slavery… period. It’s just that it’s exisitence could not help but produce two entirely different societies, and to simply magnify their differences with each progressing year until the breaking point was reached.
The economic differences were indeed caused more by industrialization than slavery, but why was the that inevitiable ‘Second Wave’ of industialization so stymied in the South? Basically, slavery (OK, 80% of the reason, etc). Why was immigration virtually zero in the South? Slavery (same). Virtually all of these complexities boiled down to two radically different societies sharing one government. And when vast territories came to be added to that government, what issue really divided the sides that was NOT slavery? While that one issue itself was so overriding everything that Kansas and Missourri (and beyond) bled rivers of blood over one and only one issue… slavery.
Now add the obvious moral dimension. This isn’t an argument like “big government vs. small government”, or “should we be involved in Country X”. For the growing body of abolitionists, and surely we all can see the moral heart of abolitionism, slavery was an abomination beyond description, and for our own government to sanction it was a crime of the millenium. Meanwhile, Southerners saw (correctly) that the very foundations of their world would go with slavery should it be abolished. (Which was why Southern pro-slavery sentiment was much higher in 1855 than 1835.) And what was that unsolvable, intractable, Gordian knot about? The one that drove these societies apart, morally, economically, politically, and even spiritually? One thing and one thing only… slavery.
No, all roads… ALL roads… let to the same source in that conflict. All else were just branches leading to the same trunk.
But I’m sure we will still be arguing this on the bicentennial in 1861. And beyond. And beyond, and beyond…..
That’s “bicenntennial in 2061!” Duh.
Does anyone else find the debate over the Confederate flag absolutely bizarre? On what planet, do people think it’s ok to put the flag of a country conquered in war on the flag of the conqueror? I’ve often wondered if the Confederate flag could be removed on those grounds. It’s the flag of a nation this nation conquered in war.
If slavery had been abolished in the 1830s, we (Americans) would probably still have a Whig party instead of a Republican party. The Whigs essentially self-destructed over the debate on slavery, and the Republican party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. (Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President; the first Republican candidate for the role was John Fremont– whose wife, Jesse, was actually the politician and who managed him to a good percentage of the vote.)
A somewhat tangential book on the subject is H.W. Brands’ The Age of Gold. It shows how the California Gold Rush both delayed and exacerbated the tensions that resulted in the American Civil War.
As a southerner who lives in New England, this subject does come up on a regular basis during my interactions with various people. The problem with the debate is that like abortion, both sides (states rights vs slavery) refuse to acknowledge that there are inherent truths posed by the other side.
If the War had been about slavery, Lincoln would have freed the slaves sooner, instead of waiting and using it for bolstering his mid-term prospects of a republican pro war congress. The south, was upset about the tariffs, they were also upset about the stranglehold on trade being through northern cities.
Both sides consistently forget that good men, honorable men in the south, and north died during this bloody war.
Alright Andrew, I’ll take the bait. What would have happened if a peaceful emancipation came in 1830? Would the North’s and South’s economic interests converged? What would have the South’s economy looked like?
First, its climate and soil conditions would have still given the South a comparable advantage in the raising of cotton. Although the labor system would have been organized differently, it is likely that cotton production would have still dominated the economies of the Deep South.
Would the South have been more industrialized than it was? The freed slaves would certainly given the South a large pool of low wage workers to compete against the immigrant laborers in the North. The extent that labor was moved from cotton to manufacturing would have been dependent on the relative profit margins between cotton production and manufacturing. But this is also true in a slave society. The hiring out of slaves for use in Southern industry was not uncommon. Thus the South already had a means to shift labor to manufacturing if it were more profitable than cotton production.
Although the elimination of slave gangs would have reduced the profit margin on cotton production, a wholesale shift of resources away from cotton would be unlikely. The importance of cotton to the entire world economy of the time was just too important. Textiles was the main manufacturing industry in both the North and Britain. Cotton was a vital imput to these industries and held the position similar to oil today. Thus we can postulate that the South may have been somewhat more industrialized by 1860 than it actually was, but would have remained dependent on cotton production.
If my analysis is correct, the economic differences between the North and the South would have remained and the South would have still seceeded at some point.
You could, I suppose, argue what would have been situation if slavery had never been introduced. Could a cotton economy have started without slaves? If yes, then the economic divergence remains. If no, then the entire industrial revolution comes into question. Although we generally credit the steam engine as the main driver behind the industrial revolution, this begs the question for what were these steam engines used. Mostly for the running of textile mills. No cotton, no textile mills, no demand for steam engines, no industrial revolution. But I could be wrong.
Nick, my belief, and it is just that as it can never be proven, has always been that while the differences between North and South were real, as you write, and most certainly did go beyond slavery, I simply believe that there was enough reluctance on both sides to secession that such differences could have been worked out peacefully were it not for the absolute intractablilty of the slavery question.
Note that what really fired up the boilers for war was not North or South, but West. It was the dispostion of slavery in the Western territories that really got everyone seriously nuts, and showed that this question simply was virtually unsolvable. Every sqare inch of new slave territory in the West would threaten the North, and every square inch of new free territory there would threaten the South. History records that no one even got close to solving that conundrum. Had there been no slavery, who is to say that the West would not have suffered the same issues you speak of with the South? But then, they wouldn’t secede, they would have simply owned Congress largely in a West/South coalition, and, heck, maybe the NORTH would secede then… but then THEY would likely still have enough clout to keep from getting run over by South/West, etc. Who knows? The point is, their differences would have been in all shades of grey distributed around various interests, rather than an absolute black/white, on/off binary question between two and only two sides, a recipe for disastrous conflict.
Obviously, we are now on planet Hypothetica, so who really knows. But in one sentence, I absolutely stand by my assertion that, minus the intractablilty and moral horror of slavery, the interests of the regions, North, South, AND West, could have been settled peaceably, and that, as the nation grew, such potent regionalism would simply gradually dilute, much as we have seen in actuality since the seccession/slavery question was settled on the battlefield.
No slavery, no war.
The arguments against the American Civil War sound remarkably like the arguments against Gulf War II—complete with accusations of violating the soverignty of a non-democratic regime and paranoid theories about alleged capitalist conspiracies.
It was all about COTTTTTON!!!!
Actually Joseph, I have long argued that the entire War on Terror resembled our Civil War more than anything.
Replace “industrialization” with “globalization/tech revolution”, replace “slavery” with “theocracy” and /or “one-man psycho dictatorship” and you most definitely see that the latter in both cases is inherently threatened by the former, as the former really is “the way of the future” whether one likes it or not. And, to the latter, the former cannot help but look like an inherently aggressive juggernaut of great technological savvy, economic productivity, and ideological attraction, one that cannot be contained, and threatens to socially bulldoze those societies in the latter category that can never compete directly because of the very system(s) they then decide to fight to protect. (I would argue that freedom and liberty are just such a juggernaut. Don’t like it? Too bad. That’s were the future is, regardless of opinion.)
Does that make George W. Bush an Abraham Lincoln?
Heh.
Suffice to note that, hands down, more American citizens despised and loathed Mr. Lincoln with literal murderous passion than any other President in history, and eventually took his life because of it. Southerners yes, but still Americans. Now, bump that up to global citizens…
What did Churchill say? “You have enemies? Good. That means you actually stand for something.”
Dear cousin Wayne, please note that the South seceded following the results of a fair election in which they participated and lost. Secession happened even before Lincoln was sworn in. One does not do that in a democracy, but the south was profoundly anti-democratic. The presidency had been the preserve of the Democratic party, and served as one of the South’s protective devices. With that removed, they saw that slavery was going to be ended — by democratic means. Rather than take the loss and hope for better days, they shelled Ft. Sumter.
If I had a time machine, I would assassinate Walter Scott and Eli Whitney — the former for furnishing the South with the mythic basis for their silly aristocratic nonsense, the latter for furnishing the economic basis.
As a native of Virginia raised in the North, I would like to see Richmond put up a few more statues on Monument Ave. alongside those of Lee, Jackson, et al. How about Adm. David Farragut, Gen. George Thomas, and Gen. Winfield Scott, all Virginians? Not likely.
Mitch Townsend
I’ve got to admit that I haven’t studied the American Civil War as closely as I should, but I think it’s quite worth noting that virtually every contemporary or near contemporary account I can recall about the war was convinced that slavery was the single biggest issue, even if the source was pro-slavery.
John, the reason that virtually every contemporary account about the war that you can recall states the slavery was the single biggest issue is because that is what is taught today. In fact, there were many contemporary writings that claim the slavery was not the issue. Here are few you should know about.
Lord Acton to Gen. Lee after the war: “Secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoiced over that which was saved at Waterloo.”
Karl Marx, 1861: “The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty”
Charles Dickens, 1861: “The quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.”
The (London) Times, 7 Nov. 1861: “The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South….”.
One must give pause when Lord Acton, Karl Marx, and Charles Dickens all agree on a subject, in this case that slavery was not the issue. This was not just a British view. Here are a few editorials from Northern newspapers. I could give you similar editorials from Southern newspapers.
Chicago Daily Times, 10 Dec. 1860: “In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what is now. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt a free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenues, and these results would likely follow.”
Philadelphia Press, 18 Mar. 1861: “Blockade the Southern ports” . . . otherwise “a series of custom houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper.”
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now “the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports….by a revenue system verging on free trade….”
North American Review (Boston), October 1862: “Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ….Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern Heart’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced….Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation”
All of these quotes can be found in the excellent book by Charles Adams, “When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession.”
This thread began about a flag, and we’re near to igniting the whole thing again…
I hope we can all agree, if on little else, that slavery AND the lifestyles it allowed and engendered AND the fiscal questions it raised AND the monetary realities it promoted and supported AND the racist fears it engendered AND the rallying point issue it provided AND its north/south implications AND its divisive, corrosive nature…
were leading causes of the American Civil War.
This alone would be a small Eye Opener…