Origins of the American Civil War

The origins of the American Civil War lay in the complex issues of slavery, expansionism, sectionalism, and political party politics of the Antebellum Period.

The Antebellum South and the Union

Unifying forces

Before the Civil War, a number of factors helped mitigate the sectional tensions, enabling the union to survive episodes such as the Nullification Crisis. The fundamental reason was the dominance of the increasingly pro-Southern Democratic party, which helped secure Southern interests in the federal government.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Democrats, meanwhile, were the nation's majority party, usually controlling Congress, the presidency, the courts, and many state offices, and the party fostered alliances between Southern planters and Northern Democrats. As a result, until the watershed election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, slaveholders were able to prevail in more and more of the nation's territories and to garner a great deal of influence over national policy.

Related Topics:
Election of Abraham Lincoln - 1860

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The expansion of the nation westward made it seem for the time, under President Jackson in the 1830s, that agrarian principles ("Jeffersonian democracy" and "Jacksonian democracy")— in practice an absolute minimum of central authority and a tendency to favor debtors over creditors— had won a permanent victory over those of Alexander Hamilton.

Related Topics:
Jackson - 1830s - Jeffersonian democracy - Jacksonian democracy - Alexander Hamilton

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On economic policy, for example, Southerners hailed Jackson's work to dismantle the Bank of the United States, which had been originally introduced in 1791 by Alexander Hamilton as a way of providing for national debt and increasing the power of the federal government. Another example of strong Southern influence was the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which ended the Nullification crisis.{{ref|1}} Moreover, the South's sway over the judicial branch was perhaps even greater. In 1835 Roger Taney succeeded John Marshall as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. For roughly three decades, the Taney Court asserted the principle of social responsibility for private property— the basis for upholding fugitive slave laws. Finally, even in the realm of foreign policy, the Wilmot Proviso (1847) and the Ostend Manifesto (1854) were examples of strong Southern influence.

Related Topics:
Bank of the United States - 1791 - Compromise Tariff of 1833 - Nullification crisis - 1835 - Roger Taney - John Marshall - Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - Fugitive slave laws - Wilmot Proviso - 1847 - Ostend Manifesto - 1854

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Divisive forces

Tariffs and the question of nullification

A major and continuous strain on these unifying forces from roughly 1820 through the Civil War was the issue of trade and tariffs. Heavily dependent upon trade, the almost entirely agricultural and export-oriented South imported most of its manufactured needs from Europe or obtained them from the North. The North, by contrast, had a growing domestic industrial economy that viewed foreign trade as competition. Trade barriers, especially protective tariffs, were viewed as harmful to the Southern economy, which depended on exports. Southerners vocally expressed their tariff opposition in documents such as the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest" (1828), written in response to the "Tariff of Abominations."

Related Topics:
South Carolina Exposition and Protest - 1828 - Tariff of Abominations

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Having waited four years for Congress to repeal the "Tariff of Abominations," South Carolinians reacted with anger as Congress enacted a new tariff in 1832 that offered them little relief, resulting in the most dangerous sectional crisis since the Union was formed. Some militant South Carolinians even hinted at withdrawing from the Union in response. But the state's leading statesman, John C. Calhoun, however, persuaded the most ardent opponents of the tariff to adopt the doctrine of nullification — not secession — as their strategy. The newly elected South Carolina legislature then quickly called for the election of delegates to a state convention. Once assembled, the convention voted to declare null and void the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 within the state. President Andrew Jackson responded firmly, declaring nullification an act of treason. He then took steps to strengthen federal forts in the state.

Related Topics:
1832 - John C. Calhoun - 1828 - Andrew Jackson

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Violence seemed a real possibility early in 1833 as Jacksonians in Congress were introducing a "force bill" authorizing the president to use the army and navy in order to enforce acts of Congress. No state had come to support South Carolina; and the state itself was divided on willingness to continue the showdown with the federal government. The crisis ended when Henry Clay and Calhoun worked to devise a compromise tariff. Both sides later claimed victory. Calhoun and his supporters in South Carolinia claimed a victory for nullification, insisting that it, a single state, had forced the revision of the tariff. Jackson's followers, however, saw the episode as a demonstration that no single state could assert its rights by independent action. Calhoun, in turn, devoted his efforts to building up a sense of Southern solidarity so that when another standoff should come, the whole section might be prepared to act as a bloc in resisting the federal government.

Related Topics:
1833 - Henry Clay

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The issue appeared again after 1842's Black Tariff. A period of relative free trade after 1846's Walker Tariff reduction followed until 1860, when the protectionist Morrill Tariff was introduced by the Republicans, fueling southern anti-tariff sentiments once again.

Related Topics:
1842 - Black Tariff - 1846 - Walker Tariff - 1860 - Morrill Tariff

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Diverging cultures

For further details please see Slavery in North America and History of slavery in the United States

Related Topics:
Slavery in North America - History of slavery in the United States

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the slavery issue, growing free labor movements in the North were seen as threats to the Southern plantation system. At the center of these tensions were differences in the labor system. The plantation system, in effect, determined the structure of Southern society. By 1850 there may have been fewer than 350,000 slaveholders in a total white population of about six million. Within this group, only a small minority owned the majority of slaves: perhaps seven percent of slaveholders owned roughly three-quarters of the slave population. This small minority, who constituted a class of plantation-owning elite known as "slave magnates," were small enough as to be comparable to the millionaires of the following century. Poor whites or "plain folk" (who resorted at times to eating clay) were outside the market economy. Many of the small farmers with a few slaves and yeomen were on its periphery.{{ref|2}}

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Although those who had a proprietary interest in slavery (i.e. the plantation and slave owners) were a very small minority, slave labor was not on the brink of internal collapse due to moves for democratic change initiated from the region itself. Small farmers in the South generally accepted the political leadership of the slave magnates and embraced hysterical racism; they were thus unlikely agents for internal democratic reforms in the South.{{ref|3}} Moreover, even poor whites and "plain folk" would often rally to the cause of slavery's most militant defenders. For one, small farmers depended on local planter elites for access to cotton gins, for markets for their feed and livestock, and for loans. In many areas, there were also extensive networks of kinship linking whites of varying social castes. The poorest resident of a county might easily be a cousin of the richest aristocrat, thus explaining why the South would come to defend its "peculiar" institution as the cornerstone of its way of life.{{ref|4}}

Related Topics:
Racism - Cotton gin

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the 1850s Southern slaveholders felt increasingly encircled psychologically and politically. Increasingly dependent on the North for manufactured goods, for commercial services, and for loans, and increasingly cut off from the flourishing agricultural regions of the Northwest, they now faced the prospects of a growing free labor and abolitionist movement in the North.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The militant defense of slavery

With the outcry over developments in Kansas strong in the North, defenders of slavery— increasingly committed to a way of life that much of the rest of the nation considered obsolete— shifted to a militant pro-slavery ideology that would lay the groundwork for secession upon the emergence of Lincoln.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Southerners waged a vitriolic response to political change in the North. Slaveholding interests sought to uphold their constitutional rights in the territories and to maintain sufficient political strength to repulse "hostile" and "ruinous" legislation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Behind this shift was the growth of the cotton industry, which left slavery more important than ever to the Southern economy. Coloring this shift and heightening its intensity, it was imbued with a pattern of ideological response and counter-response between the two sections.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Reactions to the popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851), and the growth of the abolitionist movement (pronounced after the founding of the Liberator in 1831 by William Lloyd Garrison) inspired an elaborate intellectual defense of slavery. Increasingly vocal (and sometimes violent) abolitionist movements, culminating in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 were viewed as a serious threat and, in the minds of many Southerners, abolitionists were attempting to foment violent slave revolts as seen in Haiti in the 1790s and as attempted by Nat Turner some three decades prior.

Related Topics:
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin - 1851 - 1831 - Raid on Harpers Ferry - Haiti - 1790s - Nat Turner

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J.D.B De Bow established De Bow's Review, the leading Southern magazine warning the planter class about the dangers of depending on the North economically. De Bow's Review emerged as the leading voice for secession. The magazine emphasized the South's economic inequality, relating it to the concentration of manufacturing, shipping, banking, and international trade in the North. Frantically searching for Biblical passages endorsing slavery, and conjuring up economic, sociological, historical, and scientific arguments, slavery went from being a "necessary evil" to a "positive good." Foreshadowing modern totalitarian thought, especially Nazism, Dr. J.H. Van Evrie's book Negroes and Negro slavery: The First an Inferior Race: The Latter Its Normal Condition — setting out the arguments the title would suggest — was an attempt to apply scientific analysis.

Related Topics:
J.D.B De Bow - De Bow's Review - Totalitarian - Nazism

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Latent sectional divisions suddenly activated derogatory sectional imagery, which would emerge into full-blown sectional ideologies. As industrial capitalism gained momentum in the North, Southern writers emphasized whatever aristocratic traits they valued (but often did not practice) in their own society: courtesy, grace, chivalry, the slow pace of life, orderly life, and leisure. This supported their argument that slavery provided a more humane society than industrial labor. The most influential exponent of this argument was undoubtedly George Fitzhugh. In his Cannibals All!, Fitzhugh argued that the antagonism between labor and capital in a free society would result in "robber barons" and "pauper slavery," while in a slave society such antagonisms were avoided. He advocated enslaving Northern factory workers, for their own benefit. Lincoln, on the other hand, denounced such Southern insinuations that Northern wage earners were fatally fixed in that condition for life. To free soilers, the stereotype of the South was one of a diametrically opposite, static society in which the slave system maintained an entrenched aristocracy.

Related Topics:
George Fitzhugh - Lincoln

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~