Hidden in Plain Sight: Slavery, The Root Cause of the American Civil War
The American Civil War lasting from 1861 to 1865 was a bloody conflict between brothers over the contested fate of the future of a once unified nation. The Union fought for preservation, and the Confederacy seceded in protest of state rights, but at the heart of the issue, the main cause of the American Civil War was the institution of slavery.
Besides the war that won the United States its independence, the American Civil War stands as one of the most defining moments in American history. The period between these two historical moments in American history provided enough time to further breed political anguish between two competing ideology systems that developed well before the American Revolution.
Arguments for the causation of the American Civil War being purely the result of disagreements over states’ rights or acts of northern aggression are emptily filled, for a primary division in American politics has forever been present and further influenced by international events that helped to shape expectations of the abolitionist movement in the United States of America and policies that guided its westward expansion.
The American Civil War lasting from 1861 to 1865 was a bloody conflict between brothers over the contested fate of the future of a once unified nation. The Union fought for preservation, and the Confederacy seceded in protest of state rights, but at the heart of the issue, the main cause of the American Civil War was the institution of slavery.
The United States Struggle With Slavery
There has not been a moment in the existence of the United States of America when an individual or group of people did not question both the sanctity and practicality of such a system that primarily riddled the American South, the institution of American slavery.
Abolitionist politics long predates what many may associate with its heightened recognition as the work of William Lloyd Garrison and his founding of the Liberator in 1831. Its closest example to the American Revolution was the establishment of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775.[1]
Additionally, accounts of abolitionist ideologies can be traced back to the earliest introduction of African slavery through the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the American colonies. More directly the movement’s growth can be attested to the influences of international politics most notably the Haitian Revolution and the emancipation of the British West Indies.
The Haitian Revolution impacted both abolitionists and proslavery partisans by creating the idea of a committed process in which emancipation should be carried out in the United States that inadvertently grew frustration amongst abolitionists in the 1850s because it showed abysmally slow progress which eventually brewed a violent confrontation between both parties who were unhappy with what they perceived would be the eventual outcome.[2] Beyond disputes over the moral implications of the institution of slavery, the country remained divided over the matter in both the political and economic sense.
America’s expansion further westward into territories gained as a result of the Mexican-American War once again brought forth contentions over the balance of free states versus slave states and the political implications that were once maintained by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Henceforth, any attempt to limit slavery’s expansion into the newly acquired territory was perceived as a direct attack on what Southerners believed to be their property rights, and therefore the attention on the issue of slavery expanded with the country from a local issue to a national one.[3]
The unwillingness from both sides of the issue, the North and South, to stand idly by both for their respective reasons, the North with the fear of nationalizing slavery, and the South angered with the attack on their believed property rights that would affect their primary source of wealth and income, would briefly settle in compromise.[4] However, the compromise brought further disgust for the institution of slavery when it directly exposed those of the North who were once separated from the issue by now asking them to be directly involved with upholding it.
The Compromise of 1850, although heavily anti-slavery, as a compromise put the North in a precarious position requiring them to support the institution of slavery by defending its practice through the Fugitive Slave Act.[5] This single addition to the compromise left more of an impact on the sectional rift of the country than any of the other policies introduced that allowed the admission of free territories into America’s expanded west.
Although a fugitive slave clause had been established with the birth of the country and often ignored with little repercussions, this compromising act made the introduced responsibility personal. Now Northerners, many with abolitionist-based ideologies were bound by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to participate in the act’s requirement to return escaped slaves to their owners or face prosecutions on both a federal and local level of law or be subject to imprisonment and a fine.[6]
Moreover, any lack of effort in these measures was seen as non-compliance to the Compromise of 1850 transcending the country into a further division that in turn set the country up for its breaking point with the election of 1860 that the South regarded as the ultimate threat against their way of life.
The Importance of Slavery to the South
By the time of the American Civil War, the North and South were nearly complete opposites in their political motivations and approach to economic systems.
Over the decades leading up to the Civil War, the North experienced rapid industrial growth through the method of a free labor system as the South held strong to its identity as an agriculturally based economy bound by slavery. Despite the identifiable differences, there was no shortage of business relationships between the two defined regions.
Both played a part in establishing a strong foothold in the global economy with its cash crop, coined “King Cotton;” the South with its production of raw cotton, and the North with the responsibility of finished goods and international transportation.
Ever since Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, American cotton production with its seemingly endless supplies of labor and available land swiftly replaced early suppliers of the commodity from Brazil and the West Indies so much so that by the 1850’s the United States accounted for a full 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain, 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the German Zollverein, and as much as 82 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.[7]
Despite the undeniable success at a global level, ill feelings remained in the balance of contention of the sanctity of the root factor of its success. The dispute over the issue of American slavery as the Civil War dawned, threatened the prosperity it had helped to create as the North favored the political economy of free labor and domestic industrialization it had come to embrace.[8]
Just as the global relevance of American cotton, the United States’ disagreement was not absent from global attention as exemplified by John Marshman’s statement in the Friend of India newspaper amid the American Civil War in March of 1863, “It may be said that the prosperity of the South has been based on the gigantic crime of holding three or four millions of human beings in a state of slavery, and it is difficult to divest the mind of the conviction that the day of reckoning from the throne of the Eternal has come.”[9]
Furthermore, despite this mid-war recognition of the damnation of the institution of American slavery as relevant political feelings even before the war, this did not cease the Confederacy’s false sense of confidence in the ability to sway global allies as it planned to rage war against the Union on the pretense of the power of “King Cotton.”
The South’s “King Cotton” rhetoric was a hopeful win-all due to its belief that the enormous economic power embedded within would be an underlining element that would lead the future Confederacy to a Civil War victory. This belief was postulated in the mid-1850s as a defense of the institution of slavery and the Southern way of life that had helped build America’s global economy as a platform to preserve Southern ideology.
Southern author and economist, David Christy first promoted this idea in 1855 in his published book Cotton is King: or Slavery in the Light of Political Economy, and his theory was widely accepted by Southerners who further expanded upon the belief of the potentially enormous economic power in which they held promoting another belief that it was the key to Confederate independence.[10]
However, when put to the true test, the world did not feel the same about preserving the institution of slavery that had defined the American South. When the Confederacy tried to coerce its biggest customers, Great Britain and France with embargoes put in place by the King Cotton Diplomacy, both found alternative means of fulfilling their own needs.
The British, more dependent of the two, when faced with the Confederacy’s embargo thrived through alternative measures by looking to Egypt and India as their primary source of cotton mainly for the political reasoning that British mill workers were not willing to support the side of the American Civil War that was hellbent over the preservation of the institution of American slavery.[11]
Proof in Reasons for Secession That Slavery was the Root Cause of the American Civil War
The Election of 1860 served as the breaking point for the long-divided United States over issues that surrounded the institution of slavery and led to the inevitable outcome, the American Civil War.
The Southern leaders saw the election of President Abraham Lincoln as the ultimate determination, in a sense a threat from the North, that any say they held in preserving and further expanding their way of life would immediately cease to exist as they prepared to face political and economic hardships. Before the Southern states adhered to South Carolina’s declaration of secession, one last attempt to preserve the relationship between the divided nation was introduced known as the Crittenden Compromise but fell flat in Congress.
Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden introduced the Crittenden Compromise to Congress on December 18, 1860, which heavily called upon the previous Missouri Compromise as a last-ditch effort to find balance and resolution between the North and the South. In the compromise, a series of articles reflected upon the previously defined dividing line between the North and the South outlined in the Missouri Compromise and decided that anything on the Northern side of the line would be subject to the territorial government and its decision on whether the institution of slavery would exist, as for South of the line, slavery should exist in such territory not to be interfered by Congress and slaves would be protected as Southern property.[12]
The compromise gained no momentum in Congress. Two days later on December 20, 1860, South Carolina would lead the Southern states into secession further exemplifying the preservation of slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War in proceeding justifications of secession from each of the Confederate states.
Furthermore, President Abraham Lincoln’s election in the Election of 1860 threatened the South financially. President Abraham Lincoln’s election and the looming possibility of emancipation without compensation to Southern slave owners decreased the value of slaves which the South viewed as their property, creating a determination to preserve the institution of slavery to maximize its potential value through secession risking the potential outcome of a Civil War.[13]
This risk-for-reward attitude can be viewed as stemming from programs like Georgia’s 1832 land lottery that allowed Southern families to increase their wealth by owning more slaves, making these family lines more likely to fight for the preservation of slavery for the Confederacy in the American Civil War.[14] Datasets that were later studied after the Civil War proved this theory to be true and that showed of the roughly 3.9 million free citizens of the South before the Civil War, households that owned slaves fielded more Confederate Army soldiers than those who did not.[15]
If the previous evidence presented is not enough clarification for slavery being the root cause of the American Civil War, the official justification of each Southern state’s reason for secession should close any gaps. Not a single justification lacked slavery as its main reason and further encompassed the root cause in a plethora of sub-grievances related to the same matter.
Most notable statements regarding the institution of slavery directly came from Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia. Mississippi claimed “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth… These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. 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.”
Texas claimed, “The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.”: South Carolina claimed, “Those Union 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; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States.”
Lastly Georgia claimed, “That reason was the North’s fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.”[16]
Moreover, further grievances against the Union and the institution of slavery were captured in the seceded states’ arguments for the expansion of slavery, abolitionism’s influence on violent uprisings, the potential destruction of the Southern economy, the North’s failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and the argument that it was a state right to decide whether or not slavery should exist within its territorial bounds.[17] Furthermore, the total attitude of the South and the Confederacy in their willingness to secede from the Union at the risk of causing a Civil War was capsulized by its Vice President Alexander H. Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech.
Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens in his Cornerstone Speech left no room for misinterpretation as to what the true intent of the Confederacy was. In his March 21, 1861, Cornerstone Speech, he compelled the South to launch a Civil War against the Union when he used a slew of racial rhetoric to defend the institution of slavery that condemned African Americans as a class of inferior human beings and defined the key differences between the North and South that would no longer allow the two to exist as a union.
Just weeks later on April 12, 1861, the Confederate Army initiated the Civil War when it attacked Fort Sumter. Stephens’ racial rhetoric claimed, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition,” and that “our government is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth… like all other truths in various departments of science.”[18]
Stephens defended the South against Northern abolitionists by stating, “Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.”[19]
In conclusion, the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens essentially defends the Southern secession and the forming of the Confederacy over the cause of slavery and determines that Northern anti-slavery abolitionists were completely insane for believing that African Americans were not an inferior race to the white man making the Civil War completely over the institution of slavery.
The American Civil War stands the test of time as one of the United States of America’s most defining moments. The war was the result of political and moral anguish as one side of the divided nation condemned the other for immoral acts as the country’s government continued to kick the issue down the metaphorical road in an attempt to prolong the sanctity of the union.
When the problem could no longer be avoided, the resolution resulted in brotherly bloodshed. Despite how one might try to disguise the cause of the American Civil War, no one can ignore the root cause of the nation’s bloodiest war. The Union fought for preservation, and the Confederacy seceded in protest of state rights, but at the heart of the issue, the main cause of the American Civil War was the institution of slavery.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post!
Footnotes
[1] Michael E. Woods, “What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature,” The Journal of American History 99, no. 2 (2012): 415–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44306803.
[2] Ibid.
[3] James L. Huston, “Property Rights in Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War,” The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 2 (1999): 249–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/2587364.
[4] Ibid.
[5] “Compromise of 1850 (1850),” National Archives and Records Administration, accessed June 16, 2024, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/compromise-of-1850.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sven Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” The American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (2004): 1405–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/530931.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] J. Boone Bartholomees, “King Cotton Doctrine: American Civil War,” In World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society, ABC-CLIO, 2024. Accessed May 30, 2024. https://worldatwar2-abc-clio-com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/Search/Display/757831.
[11] Ibid.
[12] John J. Crittenden, “Crittenden Compromise: Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden: December 18, 1860,” American Battlefield Trust, December 18, 1860, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/crittenden-compromise.
[13] Charles W. Calomiris, and Jonathan Pritchett, “Betting on Secession: Quantifying Political Events Surrounding Slavery and the Civil War,” The American Economic Review 106, no. 1 (2016): 1–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43821395
[14] Andrew B. Hall, Connor Huff, and SHIRO KURIWAKI, “Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War,” The American Political Science Review 113, no. 3 (Aug 2019, 2019/08//): 658–673. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000170. http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwealth-slaveownership-fighting-confederacy%2Fdocview%2F2253063784%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289.
[15] Ibid.
[16] John Pierce, “The Reasons for Secession: A Documentary Study,” American Battlefield Trust, October 3, 2023, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/reasons-secession#:~:text=Two%20major%20themes%20emerge%20in,in%20some%20of%20the%20documents.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech: Savannah, Georgia, March 21, 1861,” American Battlefield Trust, March 21, 1861, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech#:~:text=In%20his%20March%2021%2C%201861,in%20the%20American%20Civil%20War.
[19] Ibid.
Bibliography
Bartholomees, J. Boone. “King Cotton Doctrine: American Civil War.” In World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society, ABC-CLIO, 2024. Accessed May 30, 2024. https://worldatwar2-abc-clio-com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/Search/Display/757831.
Beckert, Sven. “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War.” The American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (2004): 1405–38. https://doi.org/10.1086/530931.
Calomiris, Charles W., and Jonathan Pritchett. “Betting on Secession: Quantifying Political Events Surrounding Slavery and the Civil War.” The American Economic Review 106, no. 1 (2016): 1–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43821395
“Compromise of 1850 (1850).” National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed June 16, 2024. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/compromise-of-1850.
Crittenden, John J. “Crittenden Compromise: Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden: December 18, 1860.” American Battlefield Trust, December 18, 1860. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/crittenden-compromise.
Hall, Andrew B., Connor Huff, and SHIRO KURIWAKI. “Wealth, Slaveownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War.” The American Political Science Review 113, no. 3 (Aug 2019, 2019/08//): 658–673. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000170. http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwealth-slaveownership-fighting-confederacy%2Fdocview%2F2253063784%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289.
Huston, James L. “Property Rights in Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War.” The Journal of Southern History 65, no. 2 (1999): 249–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/2587364.
Pierce, John. “The Reasons for Secession: A Documentary Study.” American Battlefield Trust, October 3, 2023. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/reasons-secession#:~:text=Two%20major%20themes%20emerge%20in,in%20some%20of%20the%20documents.
Stephens, Alexander H. “Cornerstone Speech: Savannah, Georgia, March 21, 1861.” American Battlefield Trust, March 21, 1861. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech#:~:text=In%20his%20March%2021%2C%201861,in%20the%20American%20Civil%20War.
Woods, Michael E. “What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature.” The Journal of American History 99, no. 2 (2012): 415–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44306803.
