Epilogue

Causes Of The War

In the end it is only fitting to ask how this national tragedy pitting brother against brother comes about?

The common belief is that the war was fought to “abolish slavery,” and to deliver on the high-minded promise that “all men are created equal.”

But this has almost nothing in common with what really happened.

Instead the story is less heroic and more familiar – a tale of everyman’s quest for personal wealth and power and a sense of superiority.

The seeds of Disunion are visible from the birth of the Republic at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

On one side the Southern aristocrats like Jefferson, committed to an agrarian economy centered on large plantations producing two major “cash crops” – raw white cotton and bred black slaves. These men fear a strong central government which might trample on what they see as their sovereign states’ rights; distrust banks and soft money; oppose protective tariffs; and pin their future prosperity on acquiring new land to the west and south to open more slave plantations.

On the other side, the Northern Yankees like Hamilton, seeking a diversified industrial economy built on the principles of capitalism and finance preached in Europe by the Scotsman Adam Smith. Their vision hinges on a strong central government investing in infrastructure to support the creation of cities and the concentrated marketplaces required for capitalism to take hold. Growth will be fueled by an abundance of “soft money” in the hands of entrepreneurs and consumers alike. A domestic manufacturing base will be sustained by import tariffs and a host of new occupational options to farming will offer alternative paths to prosperity for the common man. In turn America will become a global power with a landscape and economy rivaling its European counterparts.

Although Northerners initially engage in the slave trade, ownership is banned in the 1787 Northwest Ordnance, and by 1804 almost all local Blacks have become “freedmen.”

By that time then America has become a “house divided” over chattel slavery, with the South’s economy dependent on its expansion and the North focused on industrialization. As long as the South’s “peculiar institution” doesn’t interfere with its own path to prosperity, the North will remain indifferent to it.

Only this doesn’t last for long.

Up through the first seven decades of its existence both the Executive and Senate branches of the federal government are dominated either by Southern men or Northern “doughfaces” dependent on southern votes to win or retain their political power. Thus of the first fifteen Presidents, only John Adams, his son JQA and Millard Fillmore violate this norm.

The result is a consistent “tilt” toward Southern priorities. Spending on infrastructure is resisted along with higher tariffs to protect domestic manufacturers. Banks and “soft money” and the joint stock corporations of capitalism are viewed with suspicion and periodically reined in. Perceived intrusions by the federal government in state’s affairs are challenged and attempts are made to gag attacks on slavery in Congress. The result is growing animosity among northerners and westerners and an instinct to strike back at southern dominance.

The first opportunity comes in 1819 when the Missouri Territory seeks admission to the Union as a Slave State. This is met head on by the Tallmadge Amendment which agrees to the request “only if” slavery is allowed to wither away there over time.

Jefferson calls the Amendment a “fire bell in the night” for the South, the first sign that the North may dig its heels in against new plantations in the west. And his prophecy will be borne out in 1846 as America is on its way to a victory in the Mexican War and the addition of vast amounts of land from Texas to California and up to Utah.

The alarm this time is the Wilmot Proviso, a bill which refuses to fund the war without a guarantee that slavery will be banned in all land acquired in the conflict. When this bill passes in the House on a sectional (North-South) not party line (Whig-Democrat) vote, radical “Fire-eater” politicians intensify their campaign for secession.

Not only is pressure coming at the South in Congress, but also from the public throughout the North.

Some of this traces to a minority who gain respect for black leaders like Fred Douglass, read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, feel moral pangs, join the American Anti-Slavery Society and send protest petitions to Congress.

Still the vast majority of the opposition comes from other whites who share deeply held racial prejudices and simply want to “cleanse the nation” of all Blacks, enslaved or free. These “Free Soilers” argue that the new western lands should belong exclusively to white settlers who will defend the “dignity of their labor” against the defilement of slave labor. But behind this plea lies another motivation: their wish to avoid price competition for land and crops from the wealthy plantation owners.

The sectional anger amplifies by 1850. Northerners are ready to label the South with the epithet of “Slavocracy,” while the South is convinced that the North is eager to damage their economy out of spite for their “superior” social and economic order. After all, they insist that “slavery is a positive good,” ordained in the Bible, and providing better living conditions than those of factory workers up North.

Divisive events follow. An updated Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 finds armed southern bounty hunters roaming northern cities to capture frightened and often free blacks. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is viewed as an illegal betrayal of the 1820 Compromise and sparks the creation of a new Republican Party. It “fuses” Free Soil whites with the anti-slavery faction in an effort to challenge the Democrats.

From there the daily newspaper headlines record rounds of North-South violence. A war breaks out in 1856 between Free State and Slave State factions in what is soon known as “Bloody Kansas.” Members of Congress arrive in chambers with pistols and knives. Fistfights on the floor are followed by a near-fatal caning of a famous abolitionist Senator by an irate opponent offended by his latest speech.

Finally in October 1859 a crisis beyond repair, when a white abolitionist from the North leads a raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with the intent of forming an army of local slaves to rise up and murder their owners. The plan is quickly foiled, but for many southerners it confirms that the North plans to do away with slavery even back in Virginia.

As he approaches the gallows, the perpetrator of the raid utters his prophetic prophecy:

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land:
will never be purged away; but with Blood.

Six months later, with Abraham Lincoln in the White House and the Confederate Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, the Civil War begins in Charleston Harbor at Ft. Sumter.

The motivation for Southern secession is obvious: Lincoln’s ban on expanding slavery into the west is an existential threat to their future economic prosperity selling cotton and slaves.

But why does the North fight? Four reasons emerge:

1. Virulent anti-black racism. From Jamestown onward, white Americans are convinced that the Africans in their midst are sub-human (3/5ths of a man), and savage by nature. Blacks are a pestilence that has been perpetuated by the South for its own ends. It is their problem to solve rather than spreading it among white men in the new west. (Oregon’s 1859 Constitution reflects this by prohibiting residency to slaves and freedmen alike.)
   
2. Protection against competition for western land and agricultural profits. Northern settlers wish to avoid bidding against wealthy plantation owners to buy the Mexican War lands and against slave labor undercutting the prices they seek for their crops at market.
   
3. The demand for infrastructure spending and protective tariffs. For the North to realize its goal of a modern industrial economy, federal government initiatives must add infrastructure (roads, canals, trains, schools, etc.) and support import tariffs to enable domestic factories to fully compete with foreign imports. The South’s ongoing resistance to backing these programs is no longer viewed as tolerable.
   
4. Finally the wish to “put the South in its place.” Over time many Northerners come to regard the Southern culture as dominated by aristocrats who look down their noses at the common man and manipulate politics in Washington to serve their own selfish purposes. The chance to strike back at this comes when the South attempts to impose their “black problem” on white settlers in the west.

Thus comes the war of Southern economic necessity vs. Northern anti-black racism.

The Confederate States of America, 9.0 million strong (5.5m white/3.5m slave), spread across eleven states and with high hopes, never realized, of adding Kentucky and Missouri, to reflect the 13 stars on its battle flag.

Against the Union, 22.0 million whites and in 22 northern states, along with four “border” states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, where all of the Union’s 0.5 million slaves reside.

Most certainly a war to end all wars in America?