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 question of slavery in the West

Territorial acquisitions

Main articles: Webster-Ashburton Treaty and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Related Topics:
Webster-Ashburton Treaty - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

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In the 1850s, sectional tensions were revived by the same issue that had produced them dating back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820: slavery in the territories. Northerners and Southerners, in effect, were coming to define "Manifest Destiny" in different ways, undermining nationalism as a unifying force.

Related Topics:
1850s - Missouri Compromise of 1820

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By the 1850s, the line of frontier settlement had extended beyond the western boundaries of Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri to encompass the Great Plains. Just a generation earlier this area had been known as "the Great American Desert," and most Americans had been unaware of the vast areas of arable land beyond the great bend of the Missouri River. Thus, in the states of the Old Northwest (between the Appalachians and the Mississippi) pressure began to build for efforts to extend settlement westward once again. Moreover, on February 2, 1848, Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding vast tracts of land to the United States. Free Northern farmers did not want to compete against slave labor, thus bringing up debates on whether slavery should be permitted in the newly gained Western territories.

Related Topics:
Iowa - Minnesota - Missouri - Great Plains - Missouri River - February 2 - 1848 - Mexico - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

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Not only did the territorial acquisitions of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty and the Mexican Cession bring up the old issue of upsetting the balance between slave states and free states in the Senate, they also placed the federal government at the center of sectional conflict. After all, settlers expected a great deal from the federal government: providing territorial governments, and displacing the indigenous population (so as to make room for whites). In addition, the problems of communication and transportation between the older states and areas west of the Mississippi naturally became salient. The interest in further settlement was thus one factor serving to strengthen the federal government. Washington was no longer the remote, unthreatening power that it once had been. It was a power needed to resolve the status of territories and deal directly with sectional disputes.

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Ulysses S. Grant declared the Mexican-American war to be "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation" and one of the causes of the American Civil War: "The occupation, separation and annexation were ... a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union."

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act

For details see the main articles Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen A. Douglas, and Transcontinental Railroad.

Related Topics:
Kansas-Nebraska Act - Stephen A. Douglas - Transcontinental Railroad

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The rise of railroads in the 1840s gave added support for those advocating government subsidies to promote transportation. Stephen A. Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill with the intention of building a railroad hub in his home state of Illinois. Douglas—along with many throughout the Mississippi valley—naturally wanted the railroad for his own region, which could allow Chicago to emerge as a great terminal for traffic with the Pacific coast. To garner Southern support, the Kansas-Nebraska Act provided that popular sovereignty, through the territorial legislatures, should decide "all questions pertaining to slavery", thus effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise. While the idea of a transcontinental railroad gained favor in Congress, it quickly became entangled with sectionalism.

Related Topics:
Stephen A. Douglas - Kansas-Nebraska Bill - Popular sovereignty - Missouri Compromise

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Of greater importance than the opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Congress was the ensuing public reaction against it in the Northern states. Perhaps no other piece of legislation in congressional history produced so many immediate, sweeping, and ominous changes. It was seen as an effort to repeal the Missouri Compromise, a measure that many Northerners believed had a special sanctity, almost as if it were a part of the Constitution. However, the surprisingly mute popular reaction in the first month after the bill's introduction would fail to foreshadow the gravity of the situation. As Northern papers initially ignored the story, Republican leaders lamented the lack of a popular response.

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Eventually, the popular reaction did come, but the leaders had to spark it. Chase's "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" did much to arouse popular opinion. In New York, William Seward finally took it upon himself to organize a rally against the Nebraska bill, since none had arisen spontaneously. Press such as the National Era, the New York Tribune, and local free-soil journals, condemned the bill right away.

Related Topics:
Chase - New York Tribune

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The founding of the Republican Party

Convinced that Northern society was superior to that of the South, and increasingly persuaded of the South's ambitions to extend slave power beyond its existing borders, Northerners were embracing a viewpoint that made conflict likely; but conflict required the ascendancy of the Republican Party. The Republican Party – harkening on the popular, emotional issue of "free soil" in the frontier – would capture the White House after just six years of existence, cultivating a coherent ideological message playing on sectional discontent in the rapidly developing North with Democratic leaders.

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The Republican Party grew out of the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska legislation. Once the Northern reaction against the Kansas-Nebraska Act took place, its leaders swung into action to advance another political reorganization. Henry Wilson declared the Whig party dead, and vowed to oppose any efforts to resurrect it. Horace Greeley's Tribune called for the formation of a new Northern party, and Wade, Chase, Sumner, and others spoke out for the union of all opponents of the Nebraska act. The Tribunes Gamaliel Bailey was involved in calling a caucus of anti-slavery Whig and Democratic Party Congressmen in May.

Related Topics:
Henry Wilson - Horace Greeley - Wade - Chase - Sumner - Gamaliel Bailey

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Meeting in a Ripon Wisconsin Congregational Church on February 28, 1854, some thirty opponents of the Nebraska act called for the organization of a new political party and suggested that "Republican" would be the most appropriate name (to link their cause with the Declaration of Independence). These founders also took a leading role in the creation of the Republican Party in many northern states during the summer of 1854. While conservatives and many moderates were content merely to call for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise or a prohibition of slavery extension, radicals advocated repeal of the Fugitive Slave Laws and rapid abolition in existing states. The term "radical" has also been applied to those who objected to the Compromise of 1850, which extended slavery in the territories.

Related Topics:
February 28 - 1854 - Fugitive Slave Laws

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But without the benefit of hindsight, the 1854 elections would seem to indicate the possible triumph of Know-Nothingism rather than anti-slavery, with the Catholic/immigrant question replacing slavery as the issue capable of mobilizing mass appeal. Know-Nothings, for instance, captured the mayoralty of Philadelphia with a majority of over 8,000 votes in 1854. Even after opening up immense discord with his Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas began speaking of the Know-Nothings, rather than the Republicans, as the principal danger to the Democratic Party.

Related Topics:
Know-Nothingism

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After the establishment of the party, when Republicans spoke of themselves as a party of "free labor," they appealed to a rapidly growing, primarily middle class base of support, not permanent wage earners or the unemployed. When they extolled the virtues of free labor, they were merely reflecting the experiences of millions of men who had "made it" and millions of others who had a realistic hope of doing so. Like the Tories in England, the Republicans in the United States would emerge as the nationalists, homogenizers, imperialists, and cosmopolitans. Intolerant of social diversity, they attempted to impose their values on all groups – including temperance legislation and anti-slavery – while the party of the regional and ethnic minorities (Democrats in America, Liberals in Britain), called for cultural pluralism and local autonomy.

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Those who had not yet "made it" included Irish immigrants: a large, growing proportion of Northern factory workers. Republicans often saw the Catholic working class as lacking the qualities of self-discipline, temperance, and sobriety essential for their vision of ordered liberty. Republicans insisted that there was a high correlation between education, religion, and hard work—the values of the "Protestant ethic"—and Republican votes. "Where free schools are regarded as a nuisance, where religion is least honored and lazy unthrift is the rule," read an editorial of the pro-Republican Chicago Democratic Press after Buchanan's defeat of Frémont in the U.S. presidential election, 1856, "there Buchanan has received his strongest support."

Related Topics:
Buchanan - U.S. presidential election, 1856

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Ethnoreligious, socio-economic, and cultural fault lines ran throughout American society, but were becoming increasingly sectional, pitting Yankee Protestants with a stake in the emerging industrial capitalism and American nationalism increasingly against those tied to Southern slaveholding interests. For example, acclaimed historian Don E. Fehrenbacher, in his Prelude to Greatness, Lincoln in the 1850s, noticed how Illinois was a microcosm of the national political scene, pointing out voting patterns that bore striking correlations to regional patterns of settlement. Those areas settled from the South were staunchly Democratic, while those by New Englanders were staunchly Republican. In addition, a belt of border counties were known for their political moderation, and traditionally held the balance of power. Intertwined with religious, ethnic, regional, and class identities, the issues of free labor and free soil were thus easy to play on.

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Events during the next two years in "Bleeding Kansas" sustained the popular fervor aroused among some elements in the North by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Those from the North were encouraged by press and pulpit and the powerful organs of abolitionist propaganda. Often they received financial help from such organizations as the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Those from the South often received financial contributions from the communities they left. Southerners sought to uphold their constitutional rights in the territories and to maintain sufficient political strength to repulse 'hostile and ruinous legislation.'

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While the Great Plains were largely unfit for the cultivation of cotton, informed Southerners demanded that the West be open to slavery, often—perhaps most often—with minerals in mind. Brazil, for instance, was an example of the successful use of slave labor in mining. In the middle of the eighteenth century, diamond mining supplemented gold mining in Minas Gerais and accounted for a massive transfer of masters and slaves from Brazil's Northeastern sugar region. Southern leaders knew a good deal about this experience. It was even promoted in the pro-slavery DeBow's Review as far back as 1848.

Related Topics:
Cotton - Minerals - Brazil - Diamond - Gold - Mining - Minas Gerais - DeBow's Review

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"Bleeding Kansas" and the elections of 1856

Main articles: U.S. presidential election, 1856 and Bleeding Kansas

Related Topics:
U.S. presidential election, 1856 - Bleeding Kansas

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In Kansas around 1855, the slavery issue reached a condition of intolerable tension and violence for the first time. But this was in an area where an overwhelming proportion of settlers were merely land-hungry Westerners indifferent to the great public issues looming large in the 1850s. The majority of the inhabitants were not concerned with sectional tensions or the issue of slavery. Instead, the tension in Kansas began as a contention between rival claimants. During the first wave of settlement, no one held titles to the land he was squatting, and settlers rushed to occupy newly open land fit for cultivation. While the tension and violence did emerge as a pattern pitting Yankees and Missourians against each other, there is little evidence of any lofty ideological divides on the questions of slavery. Instead, the Missouri claimants, thinking of Kansas as their own domain, regarded the Yankee squatters as invaders, while the Yankees hated the Missourians for grabbing the best land without honestly settling on it, and stigmatized them as half-savage "pukes."

Related Topics:
Kansas - 1855 - Cultivation - Missouri

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However, the 1855-56 violence in "Bleeding Kansas" did reach an ideological climax after John Brown— regarded by followers as the instrument of God's will to destroy slavery— entered the melee. His assassination of five proslavery settlers (the so-called "Pottawatomie Massacre") resulted in some irregular, guerrilla-style strife. Aside from John Brown's fervor, the strife in Kansas often involved only armed bands more interested in land claims or loot.

Related Topics:
Bleeding Kansas - John Brown - Pottawatomie Massacre

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Of greater importance than the civil strife in Kansas, however, was the reaction against it nationwide and in Congress. In both North and South, the belief was widespread that the aggressive designs of the other section were epitomized by (and responsible for) what was happening in Kansas. Whether or not such beliefs were entirely correct is less important than that they became passionately held articles of faith in both sections. Consequently, "Bleeding Kansas" would emerge as a symbol of this sectional controversy.

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Even before news of the Kansas skirmishes reached the East coast, a related violent escapade occurred in Washington on May 19 and 20. Charles Sumner's speech before the Senate entitled "The Crime Against Kansas," which condemned the Pierce administration and the institution of slavery, singled out in particular Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, a strident defender of slavery. Its markedly sexual innuendo cast the South Carolinian as the "Don Quixote" of slavery, who has "chosen a mistress ...who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him, though polluted in the sight of the world is chaste in his sight." Several days later, Sumner fell victim to the Southern gentleman's code, which instructed retaliation for impugning the honor of an elderly kinsman. Bleeding and unconsciousness after a nearly fatal assault with a heavy cane by Butler's nephew, U.S. Representative Preston Brooks—and unable to return to the Senate for three years—the Massachusetts Senator emerged as another symbol of sectional tensions. For many in the North, he illustrated the barbarism of slave society.

Related Topics:
Charles Sumner - Andrew P. Butler - South Carolina - Don Quixote - Preston Brooks - Massachusetts

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Indignant over the developments in Kansas, the Republicans—the first entirely sectional major party in U.S. history—entered their first presidential campaign with confidence. Their nominee, John C. Frémont, was a generally safe candidate for the new party. Although his nomination upset some of their Nativist Know-Nothing supporters (his mother was a Catholic), the nomination of the famed explorer of the Far West with no political record was an attempt to woo ex-Democrats. The other two contenders, William Seward and Salmon P. Chase, were seen as too radical.

Related Topics:
Sectional - John C. Frémont - Nativist Know-Nothing - William Seward - Salmon P. Chase

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Nevertheless, the campaign of 1856 was waged almost exclusively on the slavery issue—pitted as a struggle between democracy and aristocracy—focusing on the question of Kansas. The Republicans condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery, but advanced a program of internal improvements combining the idealism of anti-slavery with the economic aspirations of the North. The new party rapidly developed a powerful partisan culture, and energetically cultivated armies of activists driving voters to the polls in unprecedented numbers. People reacted with fervor. Young Republicans organized the "Wide Awake" clubs and chanted the catchphrase "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, Frémont!" With Southern fire-eaters and even some moderates uttering threats of secession if Frémont won, Buchanan benefited from apprehensions about the future of the Union.

Related Topics:
Campaign of 1856 - Kansas-Nebraska Act - Internal improvements - Buchanan

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Allan Nevins, in his eight-volume Ordeal of the Union, argued that the Civil War was an "irrepressible" conflict. Nevins synthesized contending accounts emphasizing moral, cultural, social, ideological, political, and economic issues. In doing so, he brought the historical discussion back to an emphasis on social and cultural factors. Nevins correctly pointed out that the North and the South were rapidly becoming two different peoples. At the root of these cultural differences was the problem of slavery, but fundamental assumptions, tastes, and cultural aims of the regions were diverging in other ways as well.

Related Topics:
Allan Nevins - Ordeal of the Union

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