[OUR COURSE] [FJU ENGLISH] [COURSE NOTES] [DISCUSSION]

     The Civil War did not really happen out of nothing, but it actually was caused by a myriad of conflicting pressures, principles and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences and pride, and set into motion by a set of political events from the period of 1860-1865.

    The root of the problems of this war, was of course, the institution of slavery, which had been introduced into North America in early colonial times. The American Revolution had been fought to validate the idea that all men were created equal, yet slavery was legal in all of the thirteen colonies throughout the revolutionary period. Although it was largely gone from the northern states by 1787, it was still enshrined in the new Constitution of the United States, not only at the behest of the Southern ones, but also with the approval of many of the Northern delegates, who saw that there was still much money to be made in the slave trade by the Yankee shipping industry.

    At the Constitutional Convention, of course,  there were many arguments over slavery. Representatives of the Northern states claimed that if the Southern slaves were mere property, then they should not be counted toward voting representation in Congress. Nevertheless, it seemed to Thomas Jefferson and many others that slavery was on its way out, doomed to die a natural death. It was becoming increasingly expensive to keep slaves in the agrarian society of the south, particularly due to the fact of the invention of the cotton gin made the cultivation of cotton on large plantations using slave labor as a profitable enterprise in the deep South. Thus, the slave were seen and have become an ever more important element of the southern economy, and so slavery, for the southerner, gradually evolved into an economically based question of money and power, and ceased to be a theoretical or ideological issue at all.

 Hence, nothing but bitterness and bad feeling could come of it. From such a position it was a short step to the proposition that if a state or section of the country no longer felt itself represented in, or fairly treated by, the Federal Government, then it had the right to dissolve its association with that government. It could secede from the Union. In fact, their response was that the Preamble of the Constitution stated that the Union derived its power from the people as a whole, and that they alone could dissolve it. In addition, there was also agitation in the North for the abolition of the slavery on purely moral grounds. Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, holding aloft a copy of the Federal Constitution before a crowd in Massachusetts called it “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.” The abolitionists believed not only that slavery was wrong, but that the Federal government should move to abolish it. This threat, of course,  was greatly magnified in 1859 by John Brown's seizure of the Harper's Ferry arsenal and his call for a general insurrection of the slaves.

    Therefore, the whole mess went up in smoke in the presidential election year of 1860. The Democratic Party split badly, and Stephen Douglas became the nominee of the northern wing of the party. A southern faction broke away from the party and nominated Senator John Breckinridge of Kentucky. The remnants of the Whig party nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Into this confusion, however,  the new Republican Party injected its nominee, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a moderate Republican. He was convinced that the Constitution forbade the Federal government from taking action against slavery where it already existed, but was determined to keep it from spreading further, and even was in victory. Lincoln had gathered a mere 40% of the popular vote, and carried not a single slave state. Thus, South Carolina, true to its word, seceded on December 20, 1860. Mississippi left on January 9, 1861, and Florida on the 10th. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed.

    Simultaneously, the sitting President, James Buchanan felt himself powerless to act. Federal arsenals and fortifications throughout the South were occupied by southern authorities without a shot being fired. Lincoln was elected as the president, and his inaugural address was at once firm and conciliatory. In addition, he then immediately called upon the states to supply 75,000 troops to serve for ninety days against “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee promptly seceded. The war was on in earnest. Ironically, the combination of political events, southern pride, and willfulness succeeded in paving the way to the abolition of slavery; a condition that no combination of legal action on the part of the most virulent abolitionist could possibly have accomplished.

Information taken from Tim Harrison and The Snuff Works. "The American Civil War: The Struggle to Preserve the Union." 31 Mar. 2001. 14 Dec. 2004 <http://www.swcivilwar.com/index.htm>.