The Civil War

II - Causes

There are different ways you can look at this issue:

1. You can analyse the underlying, structural issues which set the two sides at odds. Historians' suggestions differ in the details, but they are substantially alike. 

2. You can build a timeline of key events, seeing how each one added to the tension until the whole thing exploded into civil war.

3. You can see what historians in the past have blamed, and let their insights inform your opinion.

Underlying Causes of the American Civil War [STEPS]

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Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts from BBC Bitesize

Voices  - IWM

YouTube

Declaration of War

• Sectionalism: North v South

  ‘Sectionalism’ is putting your region before any other.

  • By 1861, North and South USA had grown into very different places.
  • The North was much more populated, more urban, more industrial – it had as many factories as the South had factory-workers. Its model citizen was the free-born farmer, and its workers: ‘free labor’. There were strong reform movements for temperance, public education and the abolition of slavery.
  • The South had fewer people and no large cities. 80% of the population worked on the land, and the economy was based mainy on the slave cotton plantation. Although only a quarter of the people owned slaves, slavery was vital for Southern society because poor whites could value themselves as better than the slaves. At the same time, white Southerners were terrified of a slave uprising.
  • Both were mainly Protestant, both believed in the Constitution and that they best represented the Constitution, and both believed that the other was trying to ‘do them down’. The hatred was mutual; Professor Gary Gallagher comments: “By 1859, a great many people, both North and South, had worked themselves into such a state that compromise would be very difficult if a great crisis arose”.

• Tariffs, Nullification and State’s Rights

  Clashes between Northern and Southern led states to claim the right to opt out of federal laws.

  • The South’s wealth depended on huge exports of Cotton; the plantation-owners wanted international free trade. The North’s growing industries wanted high tariffs (customs duties), to protect them against Europe’s much-more-powerful industries.
  • In 1828, Congress agreed what became known as the 'Tariff of Abominations' – a raft of very high tariffs at 30-50%.
  • The state of South Carolina did not agree, passed an Ordinance of Nullification declaring the tariffs null and void in South Carolina, and threatened to secede (leave the Union) if President Jackson tried to enforce them. The State argued that, in a federal republic, the states had the right to overrule federal law if they wanted.
  • President Jackson prepared the Federal Army for war, but Congress greatly reduced the tariffs, and both sides backed down. The crisis was averted … but the North couldn't help but notice that the South had 'got one over on them'.

• Expansion into the West

  As the United State expanded westwards, there was intense disagreement about whether the new states should be ‘slave states’ or ‘free states’.

  • A compromise was agreed in 1820 (the ‘Missouri Compromise’) and another in 1850, but in 1854 a minor civil war broke out in Kansas (‘Bleeding Kansas’) between pro-and anti-slavery campaigners.
  • A confrontation developed over the Homestead Act, which Southern politicians hated – they saw it as a trick to fill the West with the same kind of small-scale free-born farmers  that lived in the north.
  • There was also anger in the South when the first transcontinental railroads went through northern states; they said it was another example of northern sectionalism.
  • The key problem as that the continuous opening up of the west, and the creation of new states, destablised the delicate balance of politics in the Senate.

• Politics and Power

  People don’t go to war, politicians do. And – although, to get public support, they claim they are acting on principles – it is usually about power.

  • Up to the 1840s, the Southern States held the power in the Senate. Sometimes a President came from the North (e.g. James Buchanan) but they were usually ‘dough faces’ – who so depended on the support of Southern Senators that they did as the South told them.
  • As you can guess, this angered the politicians from the North, especially as they dominated the House of Representatives.
  • After the 1840s, the balance of power swung away from the South, as the population of the North, and the numbers of Northern politicians in Congress, grew. The Southern politicians could see the way the wind was blowing – it made them super-sensitive of their position … which was interpreted by northerners as unfair privilege.

• Slavery

  The popular view of the cause of the Civil War is that the North fought to abolish slavery, the South to keep it. That is not true.

  • Most Northerners were racist. There were many who wanted abolition, but the majority did not, and there were attacks and lynchings in the north as well as the south. They did not oppose slavery … they opposed the Southern slavocracy (the powerful political plantation-owner vested interests) which they though were damaging and holding back the North.  (Lincoln was wishy-washy on slavery: he fought the 1860 election promising to allow slavery to continue in the Southern States, and issued the Proclamation of Emancipation as a military measure.)
  • The South, on the other hand, was fighting for much more than just being able to own slaves – they were defending their whole economic and social system, and 'slavery' was just the shorthand.
  • The importance of slavery was not so much that it caused the war, but that it was a trigger for every other cause:
  • •  slave-or-free was the underlying difference between the North and South’s economic and social differences.
  • •  it was the cause of the Missouri Compromise, and the clash of rights between ‘State or Union’.
  • •  it led to the acrimony of the conflict over the admission of new states.
  • •  it underlay the political alliances – and was a cause of conflict – between North and South power-blocks in Congress
  • So – as President Lincoln said in 1865 – the issue of slavery "was somehow the cause of the war".  Although the war was clearly primarily a sectional power-struggle, slavery cropped up as an issue in almost every confrontation. Which is why, when the Southern states seceded in 1861, almost every Southern politician said it was about slavery.

 NB margin order: Top; Right; Bottom; Left   

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 Click here for the interpretation

 

 

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  What did America contribute to the war effort? [ANSWER]

      (Click on the u orange arrows to reveal more information)

     

  • Sectionalism: North v South
    • ‘Sectionalism’ is putting your region before any other.
    • By 1861, North and South USA had grown into very different places.
    • The North was much more populated, more urban, more industrial – it had as many factories as the South had factory-workers. Its model citizen was the free-born farmer, and its worker, ‘free labor’. There were during reform movements for temperance, public education and the abolition of slavery.
    • The South had fewer people and no large cities. 80% of the population worked on the land, where the economic model was based on the slave cotton plantation. Although only a quarter of the people owned slaves, slavery was vital for Southern society because poor whites measured themselves better than the slaves. At the same time, white Southerners were terrified of a slave uprising.
    • Both were mainly Protestant, both believed in the Constitution and that they best represented the Constitution, and both believed that the other was trying to ‘do them down’. The hatred was mutual; Professor Gary Gallagher comments: “By 1859, a great many people, both North and South, had worked themselves into such a state that compromise would be very difficult if another great crisis did arise”.

   

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts from BBC Bitesize

Voices  - IWM

YouTube

Declaration of War

Source B