Although the American Civil War started after the Confederate States seceded from the Union and fired upon the American flag, was slavery the true cause of the War? If so, how?

It is evident that were we draw comparisons between the Northern and the Southern states in 19th Century American that there were significant differences between the two. In terms of industrialisation, education, society and economy. The North was changing, embracing industrial development, whereas south almost resisted change. The South was rural, and relied on slaves in the plantations. It is also true however that they shared many principles. However their shared commitment to Protestant values had become disruptive rather than a unifying factor. Seeing that the 1840s saw the major Protestant denominations dividing into hostile Southern and Northern branches over the ever-growing turbulent issue of slavery.

Religion, history and anthropology were all used to defend slavery, for the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ“. Pro-slavers suggested that the bible warranted slavery. It is wry that they skimmed over what is written a few chapters after stating: “masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.” 

Pro-slavers also used history in defence of slavery, claiming that all the great civilisations in the past (the Roman Empire being the primary example) were built upon slavery. The social attitudes towards African-Americans at that time, considered them to be inferior, physically, emotionally and intellectually. Many saw blacks as child-like inacapable of looking after themselves.

In the mid 1800s it was dangerous for anyone in the south to express anti-slavery views, with some states passing laws that limited freedom of speech. Slavery in the United States was depicted as the most beneficial form of slavery, therefore abolishionist viewpoint upheld in the north were rendered to be “irresponsible revoulutionaries bent on destroying the American republic.“ This is what provided the basis as to the main difference between the North and South. The white South, slaveowners and non slaveowners alike, was finally amalgamated in its defiance of Northern abolistionist views.

Southern historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips argues that slavery was as benevolent an establishment as slaveowners claimed it to be and that it was essential to the South’s development. Phillips believed that most slaves were content with lives and the fact that their futures had already been decided. Phillips defends slavery in the south, claiming that relationships between masters and the slaves were seeded in ‘gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual loyalty‘. This is very much argument agreed upon by most historians until the mid-twentieth century. It however is very much contradicted by the argument of Kenneth Stampp, a Northern historian who puts forward in The Peculiar Institution a very different interpretation of slavery. Stampp maintains the viewpoint that slavery wan inhumane and believed that the plantation was ‚‘an area of persistent confict between the master and the slaves who were, quite naturally a troublesome property.‘ Perhaps these two different schools of thought, emdoies the division between the South and the North.

Although many believe that the issue of slavery was the primary catalyst if not cause of the American Civil War, it is not the only factor to blame. The impact of the Mexican Civil War also played a pivotal role in the build up to Civil war.  The is another issue that clearly divided the Northern states from the Southern ones. While much of the South supported the war in 1846, the North remained pessimistic. Farmer suggests that the war “gripped the popular imagination and fuelled soaring nationalism“, however believes it played a minor role in the build up to war. He maintains the view that slavery was the primary issue, stating that although the Mexican war heightened tensions between the North and South, the question of slavery was still on which undershadowed that factor, and all the other remaining factors used to blame the lead up to war. As Farmer states that the Mexican war “revived controversy over the extension of slavery and ushered in a period of sectional strife.“ The tensions that already existed from the slavery row was further intensified when Proviso suggested that slavery should be excluded from all the territory gained as a result of the Mexican War. And although the bill never came to pass, for opposed to slavery, the Proviso ‚‘became a rallying cry‘. Many northern states supported it, wheras southern ones denounced it.

On March 4th 1850, Senator John Calhoun exclaimed in a speech read out by Senator James Mason ad Calhoun was too ill to do so that the reasons behind the discontent between the two sectors of the United States can “undoubtedly be traced to the long-continued agitation of the slave question.” However Calhoun also puts forward that there is an underlying issue that is “the fact that the equilibrium between the two sections…the government as it stood when the constitution was ratified has been destroyed.” However his speech end by suggesting that the only hope of the Union being saved is if they can “cease the agitation of the slave question.” Here shows that we are continually being brought back to the slave issue. Calhoun is right is suggesting that the once unified government which has been destroyed is to blame fro the Civil War. However the reason for this divide is found in the question of slavery. Hence suggesting that although other factors contributed to the civil war, slavery was always the true cause of it.

America’s victory in the Mexican war brought on the question of territorial expansion and also anticipated the question of slavery expansion. The subject of expansion within in United States had been a huge problem, with slavery being the issue that underpinned that problem. As the states each applied to join the union, the one fundamental question was: would the new state be a free one of a slave one. Events in the mid 1800s had revealed the dangers expansion proposed for the American Union. It was clear that it would ignite sectional problems. Southerners had already talked about seceding from the Union at this point, talks were ceased with the 1850 Compromise, however the issue of slavery expansion was left unresolved.

The impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is said to have had a profound effect on the lead up to war. Some historians argue that the book heightened the North’s leniency to abolitionism. Farmer argues that the book helped ‘convert 2,000,000 people to abolitionism’. Although it is not possible to determine the books precise impact, many historians agree that it aroused Northern empathy for the slave’s situation. David Potter argues that the Northerners’ outlook on slavery was “never quite the same after Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When President Lincoln met Stowe in 1863 he is reported to have said to her: ‘so you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great War!” Of course it is not Stowe however is to blame the outbreak of War, however we can see that with time, the North and South’s attitudes to slavery are growing further and further apart. Here we see the North becoming more inclined to abolitionism.  

The collapse of the Whig party is another contributing factor to what culminated in Civil War. The collapse could be seen as a result of the sectional crisis caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It is clear that this divided Northern Whigs from Southern ones. It is without doubt that slavery played a crucial role in the collapse of the party. However it is also clear that other factors were important. Farmer states that “Whig decline began in several northern states well before the debates over Kansas-Nebraska” Farmer furthers this point by arguing that the Whigs had bad results in the 1853 local elections. William E. Gienapp argues that the problems that the Northern Whigs and the Democrats faced ain the 1850s was not the question of slavery, but instead was ‘ethnocultural’ issues; such as immigration, anti-Catholicism and temperance. Anti-alcohol. Gienapp here suggests that those who blame the breakdown of the Whig party solely of slavery are wrong. Instead he believes that at that time, Americans were faced with other problems, Gienapp furthers this point by claiming that the anti-immigrant attitude of many Northerners ‘generated disruptive economic and social forces. The political crisis and the collapse of the Whig party reshaped the nature of American politics and further sharpened the divide between the North and South. As consequently a Northern Republic Party and Democrat party emerged. This played a very important role in the build up to the Civil War, although Gienapp suggests that the Whig decline was inevitable, and other factors not just slavery were responsible for it. It is clear that the Nebraska-Kansas act was the final catalyst that resulted in the collapse of the Whigs.

Slavery, in Abraham Lincolns view ‘somehow’ was the cause of the war, when we look at the historiographical debates that surround this issue it is apparent that very few historians after the war dissented from this opinion. James Ford Rhodes is a primary example as he argues that: “of the American Civil War it may safely be asserted that there was a single cause, slavery.” However this historian Alexander Stephens suggests that the South’s decision to go to war was to defend state sovereignty and not slavery. This view is similarly held by Jefferson Davis, who argues that the South fought “for the defence of an inherent, unalienable right…to withdraw from a Union which they had…voluntarily entered. The existence of African servitude was in no wise cause of the conflict, but only an incident’. Here Davis is suggesting that the Civil War was a conflict where Southerners were simply protecting their rights against Northern aggression, and the issue of slavery was merely an incident that put extra pressure on the growing, inevitable division between the sectors. This was the view generally held by most in the South, perhaps it is true that Civil War was inevitable as the North and the South’s differences provided constant conflict. Perhaps we could go as far as saying the slave rights simply brought the inevitability of Civil War quicker. The argument that it was the sectional differences that brought on war is one maintained by Charles Beard, who represents the progressive historian view the war was a conflict between plantation agriculture and industrialising capitalism. Beard suggests that it is too narrow minded a view to call the War simply a battle between the North and South, instead he writes: “Merely by he accidents of climate, soil and geography was it a sectional struggle.” Beard argues that it was purely by coincidence that slavery was the labour system in the South’s plantation agriculture, just as wage labour was in the North’s industry.

The revisionist argument on whether Slavery is solely to blame for the Civil War also dismissed the view that the war was a sectional conflict. Revisionist historians like James G. Randall and Avery Craven argued that the United States was actually more united than divided as is often pointed out.  Historians such as Avery Craven suggests that the North and the South actually shared more similarities than they did differences, when we look in terms of the fact that they shared the same language, religion, culture and heritage. Even their attitudes towards African-Americans were similar; they both believed that they were an inferior race. Craven maintains the view that the minor differences, which divided the North and South, could have been resolved amicably, that Civil War was not an inevitable result, thus suggesting that the Civil War was a repressible conflict. Craven suggests that the war was not brought on by any singular issue, more that it was as a result of extremists from both sectors. In the North’s case it was the abolitionists and in the case of the South; the fire-eaters. Who both share the responsibility of unnecessary heightened emotions. 

Despite the varying historiographical arguments, historians now generally agree with Abraham Lincoln’s allegation that slavery was ‘somehow’ the true cause of the American Civil War.  Farmer argues that the revisionist and progressive schools of thought “are presently dormant, if not dead.” It is true, the rural, agricultural South and the urban industrialising North did display different economic interests, however the Civil War was not fought over issues of industrialism verses agrarianism, or was it war between the fanatics. It is safe to conclude that the true cause of the Civil War was slavery. Farmer puts forward the argument that “to say that only slavery divided the North from the South is akin to saying that only religion divides people in Northern Ireland.” It was not the only thing that divided people in America, however the issue lay at the core of the antagonism that existed within America in the 19th Century. It was the only establishment not shared by the North and the South. This argument is epitomised by the words of William Seward who said that the friction between slave labour and free labour “is an incompatible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labour nation. By the 1850s many agreed with Seward, and so the United States split into two schools of thought. Exacerbated tensions between the two, is what caused the war. More and more, the North became more anti-slavery and the South stauncher in the pro-slavery views. Hence the gap bridging the two grew further and further apart. However it is important to stress the fact that it was not the existence of slavery, more the expansion of slavery, which polarised the north from the South. The arguments aroused over expansion evidently lead Northerners to support the Republican Party, and it was the success of the Republican Party that provided the most crucial step towards war. The election of Lincoln demonstrated that the South was a minority, and the fact that the government was to be lead by a man who believed that slavery ‘should be placed in the course of ultimate extinction” was the thing that broke the camels back, after a long succession of conflict after conflict.

Ultimately, slavery was the true cause of the Civil war. It was the one thing that initiated all the conflicts that lead up to the Civil War. Conflicts like the Kansas-Nebraska, the development of the Republic Party and the Compromise were all sparked off from one resounding conflict; slavery.

Bibliography

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An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

(Dover Publications Inc. New York 2004)

DAVID M. POTTER.

The Impending Crisis: 1848 – 61.

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American Negro Slavery.

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