Editor’s note: This is the 41st in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. The essays in this part, which resumes the series that left off at the end of October, will begin with the Civil War and continue through the New Deal.
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Of all the episodes of American history the Civil War is the most problematic, the most studied, and yet in spite of that, the least understood. It looms large in the American historical landscape, surrounded by a rich mythology designed to conceal its horror and, even more, its shame. It is not merely a thing of the past; it is ongoing; its end is not in sight.
The hot war began on April 12, 1861, and was officially concluded with Lee’s surrender to Grant on April 6, 1865. It was a savage war, “fought altogether without moderation,” as the late Middlebury historian William Catton aptly put it. Estimates of war dead range from 650,000 to 850,000, counting North and South together. This is more than from all other U.S. wars combined. Many thousands more were wounded and disabled for life, and the shock of battle may never have left those who fought and survived. The South was defeated, its cities and farms devastated, its economy destroyed, and its fate uncertain, its reconstruction necessary.
Why did it happen? Was it inevitable? What was its outcome? What is its meaning?
The American Civil War was occasioned by the secession of seven southern states. South Carolina was the first to secede. At a state convention in December 1860, it declared itself a sovereign and independent state, mimicking the Declaration of Independence. Six other states followed suit during the next few months: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. They formed themselves into a Confederation, adopted a constitution and a flag with seven stars, and formed a government. They called themselves The Confederate States of America (CSA) and pretended to be a new nation. After the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., four more states seceded and joined the Confederacy: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Why did these states secede? All were slave-holding states, and they were a minority in the federal union. The majority of states (19 of 34) had abolished slavery. The slave states feared that abolition would be forced upon them. Their economy was dependent upon slavery; plantation owners invested heavily in it. Furthermore, slavery, although morally abhorrent even to some slave holders, was essential to their way of life, to their presumed gentility, to their culture. Besides, slavery brought them great wealth. Cotton was a major world commodity, and the South was a major producer of it; it supplied the booming textile industry in Great Britain and New England. To grow and harvest cotton required cheap and abundant labor. African slaves were abundant and cheap. Besides they looked different; they were Black, which was taken by many who were White to mean that they were inferior creatures, not created to be free and equal persons, not fit for citizenship.
The institution of slavery in America was premised on the false belief that not all human beings are free and equal, that some by nature are fit only for servitude, strong in body but weak in mind, that therefore they may be treated as a commodity, as property that can be bought and sold and used at the pleasure of the owner. It was supposed that the Bible sanctioned this monstrous prejudice, as well as Greek and Roman economic theory.
Yet, by the 18th century, it had come to be generally recognized here and abroad that slavery was morally wrong and should be abolished. It became evident that it contradicted the very principles of liberty and equality on which the nation was founded. Even some slave owners acknowledged this.
To justify continuing the practice of slavery, its defenders invented the false ideology of race and privilege. In his inaugural address as the first and only vice president of the CSA, Alexander Stephens declared slavery to be the cornerstone of Confederacy, founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — the subordination of an inferior to a superior race — is his natural and moral condition.” This was a widely shared prejudice among Whites, North and South; it persists today.
The Confederate states even imagined themselves victims of abolitionists and of their moral sentiments, which is to say, victims of a self-evident moral truth. The South Carolina legislature complained of the “increasing hostility of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery had led them to disregard their obligations.” The “obligations” pertain to the apprehension and return of escaped slaves. Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution, and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, required states, whether slave or free, to apprehend and return fugitive slaves to their owners. Many free states, among them Vermont, refused to comply.
In the same vein as South Carolina, a Mississippi convention declared, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery … a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization … there was no choice left but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles have been subverted to work our ruin.” Alabama accused the federal government of refusing to recognize the constitutional right of its citizens to possess slaves. Texas followed suit, expressing the belief that “all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these states, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free.” Secessionists accused non-slaveholding states of bad faith in demanding abolition, never bothering to examine the immoral grounds of their own pretended faith.
President Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan (1791-1868), although a Northerner, sympathized with the Southern states while also condemning slavery in the abstract. In December 1860, in an address to Congress, he blamed the North for the secession of the Southern states. “The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.” Like many in the North and South, he believed slavery to be morally wrong, yet protected by the Constitution. He also advocated an amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit Congress from passing laws that would abolish slavery or interfere with its practice.
Abraham Lincoln took a conciliatory stance pledging in his inaugural address that he would not try to end slavery in those states where it already existed. He opposed only the expansion of it. He also stated that the Union established by the Constitution was perpetual, which was a warning.
Thus, among the causes of the Civil War were differences over two issues: the institution of slavery and the right of states to secede from the federal union.
Lincoln and Buchanan were conciliatory on the former, but firmly against the latter. They were also obliged to defend the property of the United States and maintain the union. When forces of the CSA demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter and proceeded to bombard it, Lincoln called it an insurrection and issued a call up of troops, and the real war began.