On April 12, 1861, the war began when Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor forcing its surrender. In response to the attack, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. While Northern states responded quickly, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas refused, opting to join the Confederacy instead. In July, Union forces commanded by Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell began marching south to take the rebel capital of Richmond. On the 21st, they met a Confederate army near Manassas and were defeated. (Source)
What was the Real Cause of the American Civil War?
The rewriting of history in any area is possible only if: (1) the public does not know enough about specific events to object when a wrong view is introduced; or (2) the discovery of previously unknown historical material brings to light new facts that require a correction of the previous view. However, historical revisionism – the rewriting “of an accepted, usually long-standing view… especially a revision of historical events and movements” 1 – is successful only through the first means.
Over the past sixty years, many groups, exploiting a general lack of public knowledge about particular movements or events, have urged upon the public various revisionist views in order to justify their particular agenda. For example, those who use activist courts to advance policies they are unable to pass through the normal legislative process defend judicial abuse by asserting three historically unfounded doctrines: (1) the judiciary is to protect the minority from the majority; (2) the judiciary exists to review and correct the acts of elective bodies; and (3) the judiciary is best equipped to “evolve” the culture to the needs of an ever-changing society. These claims are directly refuted by original constitutional writings, especially The Federalist Papers. (See also the WallBuilders’ book, Restraining Judicial Activism.)
Likewise, those who pursue a secular public square seek to justify their agenda by asserting that the Founding Fathers: (1) were atheists, agnostics, and deists, and (2) wrote into the Constitution a strict separation of church and state requiring the exclusion of religious expressions from the public arena. These claims are also easily rebuttable through the Founders’ own writings and public acts. (See also the WallBuilders’ book, Original Intent.)
A third example of historical revisionism involves the claim that the 1860-1861 secession of the Southern States which caused the Civil War was not a result of the slavery issue but rather of oppressive federal economic policies. For example, a plaque in the Texas State Capitol declares:
Because we desire to perpetuate, in love and honor, the heroic deeds of those who enlisted in the Confederate Army and upheld its flag through four years of war, we, the children of the South, have united together in an organization called “Children of the Confederacy,” in which our strength, enthusiasm, and love of justice can exert its influence. We therefore pledge ourselves to preserve pure ideals; to honor our veterans; to study and teach the truths of history (one of the most important of which is that the war between the states was not a rebellion nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery), and to always act in a manner that will reflect honor upon our noble and patriotic ancestors. (emphasis added)
Other sources make the same false claim, 2 but four notable categories of Confederate records disprove these claims and indisputably show that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was indisputably the driving reason for the formation of the Confederacy.
[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding [i.e., northern] states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . . . [T]hey have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery. . . . They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes [through the Underground Railroad]. . . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln] whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common government because 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. . . . The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government or self-protection [over the issue of slavery] . . . 3
Following its secession, South Carolina requested the other southern states to join them in forming a southern Confederacy, explaining:
We . . . [are] dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates and seeking a confederation with slaveholding states. Experience has proved that slaveholding states cannot be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding states. . . . The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy. United as a section in the late presidential election, they have elected as the exponent of their policy one [Abraham Lincoln] who has openly declared that all the states of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States. . . . In spite of all disclaimers and professions [i.e., measures such as the Corwin Amendment, written to assure the southern states that Congress would not abolish slavery], there can be but one end by the submission by the South to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South. . . . The people of the non-slaveholding North are not, and cannot be safe associates of the slaveholding South under a common government. . . . Citizens of the slaveholding states of the United States! . . . South Carolina desires no destiny separate from yours. . . . We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States. 4
On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede, announcing:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution [slavery], a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787. [On July 13, 1787, when the nation still governed itself under the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance (which Mississippi here calls the “well-known Ordinance of 1787”). That Ordinance set forth provisions whereby the Northwest Territory could become states in the United States, and eventually the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were formed from that Territory. As a requirement for statehood and entry into the United States, Article 6 of that Ordinance stipulated: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.”
When the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, the Founding Fathers re-passed the “Northwest Ordinance” to ensure its continued effectiveness under the new Constitution. Signed into law by President George Washington on August 7, 1789, it retained the prohibition against slavery.
As more territory was gradually ceded to the United States (the Southern Territory – Mississippi and Alabama; the Missouri Territory – Missouri and Arkansas; etc.), Congress applied the requirements of the Ordinance to those new territories. Mississippi had originally entered the United States under the requirement that it not allow slavery, and it is here objecting not only to that requirement of its own admission to the United States but also to that requirement for the admission of other states.]. . . It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves and refuses protection to that right on the high seas [Congress banned the importation of slaves into America in 1808], in the territories [in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854], and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction. . . . It advocates Negro equality, socially and politically. . . . We must either submit to degradation and to the loss of property [i.e., slaves] worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers to secure this as well as every other species of property. 5
Following its secession, Mississippi sent Fulton Anderson to the Virginia secession convention, where he told its delegates that Mississippi had seceded because they had unanimously approved a document “setting forth the grievances of the Southern people on the slavery question.” 6
On January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede. In its preliminary resolutions setting forth reasons for secession, it acknowledged:
All hope of preserving the Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the Slaveholding States has been finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment in the Free States. 7
On January 11, 1861, Alabama became the fourth state to secede. Like the three states before her, Alabama’s document cited slavery; and it also cited the 1860 election victory of the Republicans as a further reason for secession, specifically condemning . . .
. . . the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America by a sectional party [the Republicans], avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama . . . 8
Georgia similarly invoked the 1860 Republican victory as a cause for secession, explaining:
A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the federal government has been committed [i.e., the Republican Party] will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia [in favor of secession]. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican Party under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. . . . The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its [Republican] leaders and applauded by its followers. . . . [T]he abolitionists and their allies in the northern states have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions [i.e., slavery]. 9
The South did not intend to take control of the United States government, but to peacefully form their own sovereign nation. They had no more intention of conquering Washington than the patriots of 1776 had in conquering London. This was, in fact, a war between two nations and cultures, the South having declared her independence from the North just as the thirteen American Colonies had done from England, and Texas had done from Mexico. The right of a State to secede from the Union had been widely assumed, though untested, in both the North and South, from the time the Constitution was written and ratified, until South Carolina took that bold step on December 20, 1860. Drawing heavily on the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence one people declared their independence, and another determined to use all necessary measures to forcefully restore the former Union. Under the cover of war and through bullets and bayonets, the relationship between the States and the Federal government would be radically changed. The term “union,” having once been understood to mean voluntary cooperation for the mutual benefit of each State, had taken on the notion of indivisible–held together by force, and at all costs. It became clear that “government of the people, for the people,
[and] by the people” as well as the noble idea of “the consent of the governed” was now defined by those who wielded the greater military force, relegating the defeated peoples to the status of “rebels” and traitors. In short, a declaration of independence became laudable only if those desiring independence win in their struggle – a philosophy of “might makes right.” Finally, the victors write the prevailing history.We must look into history to find the true roots of that tragic War. Care must be taken to draw a distinction between the causes of the secession of the Southern States, and the reasons why war broke out between the North and South. History reveals the likelihood of a great conflict between the North and South–two distinct peoples and cultures. Many of the differences between the North and South coalesced in the issues of sectional political struggles for power in Congress, Federal encroachment on the rights reserved and retained by the States, differing regional economic interests, regional cultural differences, the moral question of slavery, and the regional effects of federal tariffs. It all came to a head as political power shifted in Congress and then in the Presidency. The South, feeling her back was against the wall, declared herself to be an independent nation, just as the Founding Fathers had done as they broke away from England, and the Texans had done when they broke away from Mexico.
Unfortunately, the topic of slavery has served as a red herring to distract from the more fundamental reasons for the conflict between the North and South that led to secession. To understand the role of slavery in this conflict, one must ask why it was an issue, both for the North and the South. But first, because we are so far removed from that time in history, it is also important to remember that the institution of slavery had widely acknowledged constitutional protection, being an issue for each State, North and South, to deal with as it’s citizens saw fit. A basic principle in understanding the people and events of history is to interpret them within their historical context. In historical context, prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, slaves were held in legally binding servitude. While such a notion is shocking to modern ears, it was the law and sentiment of the land with a strong constitutional argument. Abraham Lincoln openly shared these sentiments.
Most modern observers cannot–or will not–see beyond the issue of slavery to the many foundational issues of the growing division between North and South, many of which had simmered from before the birth of the Nation. Though a growing point of contention, slavery was but one of the differentiating factors between the agrarian economy and culture of the South, and the increasingly industrial economy and culture of the North. Slavery, in and of itself, was not the reason for Southern secession nor the cause of the War for Southern Independence. The citizens of the Northern States were not willing to fight and die to end slavery, nor did they do so. Lincoln himself had made this clear. The abolitionist’s voice at the national level was still a small political minority. Besides, the voices of Northern racial prejudice and white laborers who feared the loss of jobs through an influx of emancipated slaves rang in the ears of Northern politicians.
The mostly one crop economy of the South was itself a slave to slavery, for mechanization had not yet embraced the growing of cotton. The terms “Cotton States” and “Slave States” encompassed Southern interests in general, whether economic, political, or cultural. To control slavery through national politics was perceived by the South as a threat to her economic interests, her influence in national politics on a wide range of other issues vital to her agrarian foundations, an assault on the Constitution, and a threat to historic States’ rights.
For one thing, limiting slavery to the existing Southern States, while the United States continued to spread West and the population growth in the North outpaced that of the South, would reduce Southern political influence in many areas of unique concern to her to a hopeless minority position. Yet, by favoring the protection of slavery where it currently existed, the Republicans could cloud partisan and sectional debate by claiming not to be an enemy of the South. But the Republicans did not have to end slavery in the South. All they had to do was contain it where it was in order to stifle Southern political and economic power as Congressional representation from the West and North grew in strength.
No doubt, their were those few in the North did not want to see slavery spread for moral reasons. However, this would not move beyond a minority position until Lincoln used abolition as political a tactic midway through the war. Yet the real reason for the opposition to the spread, not only of slavery, but even of free black settlers to the frontier was to reserve these lands for white settlers.
It was these threats to the South through the institution of slavery that were among the many contributing factors leading to the secession of the first seven Southern States, but to simplistically raise up slavery as the reason both distorts and obscures the truth. After all, the North shared in keeping slavery viable by her growing appetite for Southern cotton and tobacco, and by providing direct financing for slave ownership.
The opposing sides in debates over tariffs followed this same division, as did other issues of a sectional nature as Northern industrial influence in national politics grew. The Southern Democrats had long been a thorn in the side of Northern industrial interests by fighting import tariffs–tariffs that protected the Northern industrial economy from foreign competition. To reduce Southern influence in national politics would mean smoother sailing for protectionist trade legislation. But, at the same time, those same tariffs collected at Southern ports were the major source for all Federal revenue–most of which was spent on the burgeoning industrial infrastructure of the North. This last point would figure prominently in shaping Northern opinion and sentiments over Southern secession.
Had the South threatened the roots of Northern economics and culture from a position of superior political strength, the North would have reacted similarly. Indeed, this scenario had been played out in the Nation’s past on numerous occasions. Political and economic grievances such as these were not new, for New England had voiced similar ones at various times throughout American history, threatening secession herself multiple times.
Finally, history records that the secession of the remaining Southern States of the Confederacy was precipitated by Federal aggression mobilized against the first seven States that had already seceded.
The major companion question to the one regarding slavery that must be answered is, “Why did Lincoln deem it worth ‘preserving’ the Union at the cost of over 600,000 lives and the near total destruction of the Southern economy and infrastructure–which would take over 100 years to recover; by what legal or moral grounds did he do this?” In the months just prior to Lincoln’s decision to march on the South, the voice of Northern merchants and financiers grew more desperate at the prospect of entering into a trade and tariff war with the South. With the high import tariffs of the North and the low tariffs of the South, foreign manufactured goods would naturally enter through the South. It was also feared that the Southern market for Northern manufactured goods would shrivel, if not dry up. On this issue, the agrarian South had nothing to lose and everything to gain, while Northern merchants, financiers, and the Federal coffer stood only to lose. The South did not need the North for their economic well being nearly as much as the growth and prosperity of the North depended on the South’s continued membership in the Union. Surely it is not hard to believe that economics was a major factor in both the secession of the Southern States and the ultimate cry from the North for war once the economic realities settled in. And surely it is not unrealistic to think that the combined outcry of powerful Northern capitalists was heeded by Lincoln and the Republicans, especially with the threat of economic catastrophe should the South be permitted to remain out of the Union. In short, the North feared it could not survive in the competitive arena of free trade.
While slavery was legal in the Confederate States of America for 4 years (1861-1865), slavery was legal in the United States of America for 89 years (1776-1865). But, does the existence, practice and acceptance of slavery in 1776 America nullify the honor and valor associated with the spilling of Patriot blood in the struggle for independence from our mother country? Likewise, does the existence, practice and acceptance of slavery in 1830’s Texas strip the honor and valor from those Texans who died at Goliad and at the Alamo as they fought for independence from Mexico? Did the words and sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer apply to people in the several States of the United States once the Constitution was ratified? Are these struggles for independence any less legitimate because political unions were torn apart? Nor should the South be judged any differently for its own struggle for independence in 1861-65. As economist, professor, author, and columnist Walter E. Williams wrote in his December 2, 1998, article The Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery, “the only good coming from the War Between the States was the abolition of slavery.“
Should you find the preceding analysis too alien to what you were taught and had always believed, at least read and consider the following chronology of lesser known excerpts of American history related to the long standing tension between the North and South. Be open to the possibility that politics, competing philosophies of government, and money might have been much greater factors in both Southern secession and the war cry of the North than are commonly acknowledged, and that the insistence of the unconditional and immediate abolition of slavery was a minority position in the North.
According to the Declaration of Independence, political unions are not sacrosanct. Truly precious is liberty and government instituted by the people that remains under the consent of the people.
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation […] That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to altar or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness” (The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776).
“The Declaration was the outcome of prolonged discussion, and of hopelessness in resisting arbitrary measures, while in union with the mother country. When no other course was compatible with self-respect, the pressure of liberty compelled the tearing asunder of the ties of allegiance and union, and Virginia and Massachusetts went hand in hand in leading the rupture” (JLMC p. 33).
The members of the Second Continental Congress were not members of a governing body, but were delegates and ambassadors sent by governors and legislatures of the thirteen States–independent States that tenaciously asserted and guarded their respective sovereignty (WEW p. 232; JLMC p. 64-65, 68-82).
John Adams, Massachusetts delegate to the Second Continental Congress, wrote to his wife of the stark differences between the two peoples of the Northern and Southern colonies, and that the proposed union could not be held together “without the utmost caution on both sides” (JRK p. 24).
The sovereignty and independence, not of one nation, but of each of the individual thirteen States was recognized by King George III after the “Articles of the proposed Treaty” of peace were signed between England and “Commissioners of the United States of America” in Paris on November 30, 1782. As stipulated by Benjamin Franklin in the preamble of the treaty with England, and in cooperation with France, formal independence from and peace with England for each of the thirteen individually recognized States was finalized as peace was made between France and England. This definitive “Treaty of Peace” between England and “the United States of America” was signed on September 3, 1783. The entire transaction for peace was referred to as the “Peace of Paris” (WEW p. 212-13; SEM p. 266-67; JLMC p. 35). Article I of both documents contain these words:
“His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz. New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, [Delaware,] Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent States; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof.”
Given their history of inter-colonial rivalries, many observers doubted that any compact between the newly independent thirteen States would last. “Josiah Tucker, dean of Gloucester, who was one of the leading economic and political authorities of Great Britain, said, ‘The mutual antipathies and clashing interests of the Americans […] their difference of governments, habitudes, and manners, indicate that they will have no centre of union and no common interest. They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever’” (WEW p. 213).
Alexander Hamilton, a staunch Federalist strongly opposed to democracy, and even a republican form of government, lobbied during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 for a government patterned after the European monarchies. He proposed that the government of the United States consist of a president and senate who were to be elected by electors, with the members of the senate serving for life, and a lower house consisting of persons elected by popular vote for a three year term. He also proposed that the governors of the States be appointed by the federal administration and that the president or congress have veto power over the State legislatures (WEW p. 234-35, 294). In summary, the Hamiltonians, or Federalists, distrusted the individual State governments’ for judicious self-government, and argued for a strong central government with a corresponding decrease of States’ rights (WEW p. 267; SEM p. 328-29; MLD p. 62-63, 69-70).
Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican and staunch advocate of democracy, and believing that the Union was a group of sovereign States that had carefully delegated specific powers to an administrative agent, stated his view of States’ rights within the Union as follows, “My plan would be to make the states one as to everything connected with foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic” (WEW p. 294). In summary, the Jeffersonians, or Antifederalists, considered the United States as a league of sovereign States that had delegated a few of the States’ inherent and inalienable powers to a federal authority, that Government was regulating force imposed upon the people from without, and that there should be as little of it as possible (WEW p. 267; SEM p. 328-29; JLMC p. 93).
The Antifederalists of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Constitutional Convention opposed ratification saying that “the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states and produce from their ruins one consolidated government, which from the nature of things will be an iron-handed despotism” of the central government (MLD p. 123).
On October 25, 1787, George Clinton, Governor of New York, himself quite sectional in his sentiments and exhibiting hostility toward the Southern States, wrote as “Cato” in Antifederalist No. 14 in The New York Journal. Here, he states his trepidation over forming a union whose federal government is granted so much power over States with such dissimilar interests. He fears that such a diverse union can, ultimately, only be held together by force, and at the cost of liberty. He even warns of the necessity of a standing army to enforce collection of federal revenues from the States–a fear that would become a reality as sectional battles over tariffs became increasingly contentious during the 1800’s.
“[…] whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and politics, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity, for to these objects it must be directed. This unkindred legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be like a house divided against itself.
“[…] Will this consolidated republic, if established, in its exercise beget such confidence and compliance, among the citizens of these states, as to do without the aid of a standing army? I deny that it will. The malcontents in each state, who will not be a few, nor the least important, will be exciting factions against it. The fear of a dismemberment of some of its parts, and the necessity to enforce the execution of revenue laws (a fruitful source of oppression) on the extremes and in the other districts of the government, will incidentally and necessarily require a permanent force, to be kept on foot. Will not political security, and even the opinion of it, be extinguished? Can mildness and moderation exist in a government where the primary incident in its exercise must be force?
“[…] Is it, therefore, from certainty like this, reasonable to believe, that inhabitants of Georgia, or New Hampshire, will have the same obligations towards you as your own, and preside over your lives, liberties, and property, with the same care and attachment? Intuitive reason answers in the negative….” (Antifederalist No. 14)
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