“These slaves constituted a peculiar rand powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of war,” Abraham Lincoln stated in his second inaugural address according to Major Problems (2). That single speech succinctly explained the cause of the Civil War fought from 1861 through 1865 – slavery. Slavery and the economic, political and social implications that were inseparable from it fractured the United States into a Union and Confederacy. Over 3 million men fought, and 600,000 men died over the conflict over states’ rights to slavery as new states began joining the union Northern abolitionists felt slavery was antithetical to republican values such as “liberty and equality” that it was an “absence of republicanism,” fearing slavery might expand West (118). Historical documents support that the Civil War was sparked over a lack of nation-wide resolution on the issue of states’ rights to slave ownership.
While Southerners feared the North might forbid their self-proclaimed right to slavery and sought to protect their economic prosperity deeply intertwined with slave labor. The Civil War was sparked over a lack of resolution on the issue of states’ rights to slave ownership.
In the mid-19th century four million Americans were slaves (5). Decades before the Civil War began, Northern abolitionists already saw an evil in this institution. In document six, An Abolitionist Journal Condemns Slavery and the Slave Trade September 1837, one describes it, “Heathenism is a faint term for the description of that moral degradation which slavery has produced all over the south (38).” Pointing out the cruelty, degradation, and evil it produced, “If the hunger and nakedness, the hopeless toil and the bitter physical sufferings were the worst of slavery, it might perhaps be true that slaveholding would not be in all cases sinful. But these evils, large and horrible as they are, are not the worst of slavery (39).” But rather the “turning of men into merchandise (39).”
This legal fight between abolitionist politicians and pro-slavery Southerners is evident in documents in Major Problems such as J.D.B. DeBow Exlains Why Nonslaveholders Should Support Slavery, 1860 (37). In the document, DeBow argues for the preservation of slavery based on economic profit in the Southern economy. To the South, the fight for state rights was the fight for their legal sovereignty to own slaves. This was fueled by economic profitability. He argues for this Southern economic superiority stating, “to compare the value of labor in the Southern cities with those of the North, and to take note annually of the large number of laborers who are represented to be out of employment there, and who migrate to our shores (37).”
Northerners’ opposition to slavery caused much legal strife which later led to war. In Major Problems’ document titled Histon Rowan Helper Exposes Southern Economic Backwardness, Rowan views the aforementioned economic pro-slavery argument as a disgrace, stating that “[slavery] brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized and enlightened nations (p. 33).” The document points out their “ignorance or..wilful disposition to propagate error, contend the South has nothing to be ashamed of..and that her superiority over the North in an agricultural point of view makes amends for all her shortcomings (33).”
Charles A. Beard have given the Civil War as the “Second Revolution.” In Major Problems Beard supports this “revolution” label by pointing to the “..unquestioned establishment of a new power in government, making vast changes in arrangement of classes in the distribution of wealth, in the course of industrial development (6).” Barrington Moore also supports this view of the Civil War arising out of conflict from economic interest supported by slavery of plantation owners, calling it “the last capitalist revolution (7).” Pointing that it was “not simply about triumph of freedom over slavery, or industrialism over agriculture, or bourgeoisie over plantation gentry – but as a combination of all these things (7).”
This strife born out of vested economic interests in slavery heightened as new territories began joining the country and Senator Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska proposal. It suddenly transformed a human rights argument into a matter of states’ rights, the right for new states to preserve the institution of slavery or not (66). Kansas was infuriated, and later 5,000 pro-slavery citizens invaded the territory. A minority group of Independent Democrat abolitionists angrily responded to the Kansas-Nebraska proposal in The Indepedent Democrats Protest the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, January 1854 document in Major Problems. The abolitionist Southerners vehemently opposed the new Nebraska bill could “open all unorganized Territories of the Union to the ingress of slavery (67).” Abolitionists saw this as an eradication of the inherent human right to freedom stated in the Constitution, calling it a “criminal betrayal of precious rights” seeking to convert new regions “into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves (67).”
The war ultimately was waged by those fighting to preserve “Democracy— EQUAL RIGHTS AND EXACT JUSTICE FOR ALL MEN (68),” and those who fought to preserve slavery and their economic interests which abolitionists labeled as “ legalized oppression and systematized injustice over a vast territory yet exempt from these terrible evils,” in The Indepedent Democrats Protest the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, January 1854.
This occurred while pro-slavery Southerners sought to protect slavery in the territories. In 1856, Senator Toombs of Georgia felt it was a states’ right to choose to preserve slavery. In Major Problems, the document titled, Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia Insists on Congress’ Responsibility to Protect Slavery in the Territories, January 1856, he argues that, “The States of the Union are all political equals—each State has the same right as every other State.. The exercise of this prohibition [of slavery in new territories violates this equality, and violates justice (69).”
Ken Burns’ The Civil War documentary displays how the opposing views on slavery between the North and South morphed into a legal debate on states’ rights which fundamentally challenged the full faith and credit Article IV clause of the Constitution. Failure to decide whether new states would follow the legal institution of slavery of other states would ultimately result in the deathliest armed conflict for American soldiers. The documentary contends war began over Southerners’ fear of the North forbidding slavery and, “Northerners [fearing] slavery might move West” as new states were added to the Union. It offers a realistic portrayal of how a “bitter dispute over Union and states’ rights ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America.” Contending that, “The war was about a new birth of freedom.” It is an effective and informative episode which portrays multiple grueling realities – that of the slaves who worked for 14 hours straight and that of the over 600,000 casualties of both sides combined.
According to Major Problems, secession had been supported for about a decade before the war by a group of Southern politicians who saw no Union support for the South’s way of life. Lincoln’s election and vocal anti-slavery views deepened the divide. Lincoln once said “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended: we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted (100).” These deepened opposing sentiments led to South Carolina seceding, then six more states after Lincoln’s election.
In South Carolina Declares and Justifies Its Secession, December 1860, the state points to their view on the sovereignty of their state to own slaves as the cause. The document states, “Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions, and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery (105).”
James M. McPherson in Major Problems offers a critique of the Antebellum Southern exceptionalism. McPherson points to the South’s perceived superiority on “abundance, free land on the frontier, the absence of a feudal past, exceptional mobility and the relative lack of class conflict.” It accurately portrays the Southern attitudes, the James Henry Hammond Claims Southern Cultural Superiority, 1845 document describes, stating, “Nature must have been unusually bountiful to us, or we have been at least reasonably assiduous in the cultivation of such gifts as she has bestowed (34).” This is a viewpoint also corroborated by the George Fitzhugh Praises Southern Society, 1854 document in Major Problems.
Overall, Civil War historical documents support the that the Civil War was sparked over a lack of nation-wide resolution on the issue of states’ rights to slave ownership. The existence of slavery, “seemed to pose the greatest threat for many of the more conservative Northerners” because slavery stood as the antithesis of Republican Constitutional ideals, implying the “subordination to tyranny, the loss of liberty and equality, [and] the absence of republicanism (118).” Lincoln elaborated on this opposition in an 1854 speech stating, “I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites (118).”
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