I’ve heard it said that the American Civil War was NOT about slavery. It was about uniting the nation. What supporting evidence is there today that this was indeed the premise…esp when Lincoln executed the Emancipation Proclomation during this time? (This action by Lincoln sure seems contraindicated, if the premise was uniting the nation again.)
And, if true…did the North understand they were NOT fighting to free the slaves?
Lincoln didn’t issue the Emancipation Proclamation until 1863. His stated goal (and that of most Unionists) for a long time was not to end slavery, but to preserve the Union. Freeing southern slaves was at least in part a tactic to weaken the southern rebellion.
Slavery was the prime issue for the South (i.e. the fear that slavery would be ended, which was not any kind of imminent threat, despite the activities of abolitionists and the spectacularly failed raid of John Brown).
Still, this was during war time. Was his scope broadening, perhaps?
Secession was over slavery.
The War was about it, later.
The Civil War was about slavery and nothing else. Every major dispute during the 19th century had as its base either slavery, the expansion of slavery into territories, or protection of the economic system that rested on slavery.
The profession of history was dominated by southerners for generations after the Civil War and they had obvious vested interests in “proving” that the war was about something else other than the slavery and dehumanization of black people. Revisionist history, a non-southern based objective look at the issue, begins around WWII and becomes dominant in the 50 and 60s. After that time, a series of attempts have been made by groups that are politely called conservatives, but are often outright bigots, to try to rehabilitate the South by going back and re-proving that other factors caused the war. Any serious examination of those other factors show that these arguments fail at every level.
I know of no other issue in American history that is equivalent to this. History is complex: there are always multiple ways to look at every subject. There is no one cause of the American Revolution, or of Manifest Destiny, or of the Depression. But the one cause of the Civil War was slavery. Once you acknowledge that, there are as many opinions on aspects of the subject as with any other. Doesn’t matter. The fact that the Constitution allowed slavery as the necessary compromise to get it passed leads directly to every future development. Every move made until 1860 can be traced to it.
The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t made until the war was half through, so it’s not relevant to the causes of the war.
The South did and still does claim the war war over states rights compared to the rights of the Federal government. Of course those right were by and large related to… slavery. There were some political deals made in the pre-war years about admitting new states to the Union, and one of the criteria was whether they would allow slave ownership. This suggested that the Federal government could dictate where slave ownership was permissible, and if so, there was a “slippery slope” argument that if the Feds could prevent slavery in territories wanting to become states, they could eventually outlaw slavery in states where it always existed.
The Emancipation Proclamation was in many ways the worst nightmare of the South come to like, because it is exactly what they feared would happen eventually. And over succeeding years most of the rights of citizens accorded by the Federal Constitution have been extended to cover state actions as well. So you could argue that the South’s fears were justified.
This is really a Great Debate. Here is the answer in a nutshell however. Many people in the North weren’t especially anti-slavery including Abraham Lincoln himself. Lincoln said that he was in the war mainly to reunite the nation and not over slavery in particular. He would do whatever it took to put the country back together with or without slavery. In that sense, the Civil War was not really about slavery to Lincoln or many other Northerners. Ending slavery was a goal but not the main one.
On the Southern side, many argue that it was really over state’s rights and their broad sovereignty to make their own laws. That is technically true in many ways but it just so happened that the major sticking points were laws regarding slavery so be careful when someone makes that argument because it is a trick in a way. Preservation of slavery was important throughout the South because it was largely a an agrarian economy that needed slaves to sustain it historically so it is dishonest to say the South wasn’t fighting the War Between the States over slavery even though that issue encapsulated some broader issues.
As some side notes, many Americans in general are confused about the history of slavery in the U.S. because of the way the Civil War is presented as a fight of good versus evil. Some Northern states like Maryland had slavery even during the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation is a famous but bizarre document. It freed the slaved Southern states where the North held no authority at that time and left slavery alone in the Northern states with slavery. Slavery was hardly just a Southern institution as well throughout the history of the U.S. All of the original colonies even the far Northern ones like Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire once had it but those areas didn’t support plantation style growing of cash crops so it died out one by one as it proved unnecessary. Most slaves imported into the U.S. were bought and sold in the Northern ports like Boston as well and lots of wealth was created from it some of which exists in families to this day. In summary, it was not a matter of the South simply thinking that slavery was a swell idea and the entire North recoiling in horror at the idea. It was something that evolved over time and died out in some areas before others.
Maybe the Union wanted to enslave the entire population of America. Thus, in order to support the Industrial Revolution, destroy everything regarding colonial life and begin to invest in human currency. It’s a no-brainer for any war machine to propagate as much moral support for their side as possible.
In the north you had a minority who were pro-slavery, probably a majority to whom it was an issue they probably had opinions about but not opinions that consumed them (kind of like the problem with AIDS in Africa or global warming would be to most Americans today- they may have opinions and concerns but ultimately they’ve got enough problems in their own life to give it a whole lot of concern), and then you had the anti-slavery factions who were a large minority.
The anti-slavery faction was mostly divided into two very unequal parts. The vast majority were anti-expansionists. Anti expansionists were the more pragmatic; they were against slavery and probably would have agreed “It’d be wonderful if we could click our heels together and have slavery be illegalized and everybody fine with it” but they knew this wasn’t going to happen without a war, and it wasn’t worth a war to them, so they were content to contain it.
The abolitionists were the more zealous: slavery is an injustice, a barbaric practice, and it must be abolished and if that means war so be it. They were of the “Let justice be done if the heavens fall” camp. They were a small minority of the whole population.
The South was also very diverse, but the simple answer- one that is easily verified a thousand different places, is “They seceded because of slavery”. They had many other reasons to be very against the North- some of them very legitimate- but none would have led to war.
You’ll read that “Most southerners didn’t own slaves” and that’s true, but it’s also true that the South was a plutocracy and most of their policy makers DID own slaves, and while not all southerners owned slaves themselves at least a good quarter to half of them (depending on what part of the south they lived in) were from families that owned them, and the ones who didn’t own them certainly didn’t want to compete with between 4-5 million freed slaves for land and jobs. The founders of the Confederacy made absolutely no pretense that they were seceding for any reasons not directly related to keeping slaves, and it’s not opinion when I say that the claims “It was state’s rights, not slaves” is latter day nonsense that came long after the war.
The Federal government saw Southern secession and the firing on Ft. Sumter and all as a rebellion- i.e. they never recognized the legitimacy of the Confederacy to exist or the authority of its government. Imagine if today all of the states west of the Rocky Mountains banded together and said “We’re now the Western States of America, a new country”, and they seized all government buildings and military bases by force: the government now would do what they did then and say “Oh hell no” and send troops in to deal with the rebellion.
So the North’s reaction was not to free slaves, it was to end a rebellion and basically throw out the [admittedly so large it’s hard to quite define it] domestic terrorist regime that had taken over some of their richest lands. There were certainly some abolitionists who said “Well if we’re going to war anyway let’s go ahead and burn this mother called slavery down in the process”, but they were a slim minority. Later, for military reasons and because many people who prevsiously would never have fought a war to end slavery basically said “F*ck it, we’re in a war anyway and we’re never going to have a better opportunity” they added the eradication of slavery to the objectives.
It was not a universally popular decisions: many troops were outraged at the notion of using the war to free slaves. Most just wanted the war to be over. Lincoln’s decision was part ethical, part pragmatic, and largely “Well, the tornado tore down the house and we have to rebuild it, so might as well paint it a color we like better than the old one”.
I recall this quote from the period comparing it to the Biblical plague of frogs:
Lincoln wanted to keep the union together. He said that if he could do it by keeping slavery, he would, and if he could do it by ending slavery, he would.
In his second inaugural, he acknowledged that slavery (the peculiar institution) was the cause of the war.
In his view, the south *left *over slavery (specifically, the government’s intent to keep it from expanding), but the north *accepted *the war to preserve the union. So the combatants were fighting for different reasons.
This should go into debates. Unless you discuss this with the mindset of 1840’s-60 you can find equal argument for both sides.
Today, Yeh pretty easy to say it was about slavery and the majority on the street would agree. Yesterday states rights is a pretty good arguement
Conspiracy theorist or something?
The ‘war machine’ pretty much didn’t exist at the time. The north didn’t want the south to industrialize, it was a ‘captive market’ for finished goods, and a source of raw materials.
– “Much Apu About Nothing”
The answer was given by the southern states themselves. South Carolina, the first state to secede, put forth a declaration of secession. They had an eye toward history, equating the document with the Declaration of Independence. In it, the clearly put forth their grievances.
There were all about protecting slavery. The biggest grievance was that other states were declaring slaves to be free men simply by crossing their borders. South Carolina didn’t want that particular part of state’s rights and objected to the Federal government not enforcing their property rights against their slaves. There was not a single grievance that had anything to do with anything other than slavery.
The other states first seceding copied their language from South Carolina. There is no doubt whatsoever that secession began over slavery (it could be argued that Virginia reasons were different, but Virginia joined the secessionists late in the game).
Further, there was nothing else in the Republican platform or in Lincoln’s speeches that anyone in the South had such strong objections to. The platform plank on trade and tariffs – often cited as the “real” reason for secession – basically said, “we’ll keep things at the status quo.”
Once the South seceded, the North went to war to protect the Union, and the South fought to protect the Confederacy. But there would have been no war if slavery wasn’t an issue.
Exapno covered the reason why the history has been rewritten to pretend the war had nothing to do with slaves. But the facts are the same: the South left the Union in order to protect slavery. They specifically said so.
It might be more accurate to say that Lincoln saw his job, his official duty, as keeping the Union together—not as doing anything about slavery. It’s probably worth keeping in mind the distinction between Lincoln’s personal opinions and his role as President.
The quote you mention comes from a letter Lincoln wrote to newspaper editor Horace Greeley:
It wasn’t JUST about slavery. States rights and other issues came into it. But slavery was a huge part of it, and its difficult to imagine Americans going to war and killing 600k of their own if the slavery issue is removed from the equation.
Here’s a good article that makes many of the same points RealityChuck makes about why the Civil War was over slavery and not over states’ rights:
What states’ rights issues existed that weren’t related to slavery?
The Emancipation Proclamation was also intended to make it certain that neither Britain or France, both of whom had considered intervention at various times, would come in on the side of the Confederacy now.