# How could the civil war have been avoided? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 29, 2013, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484 "2013-08-29T08:40:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/21 "2013-08-29T20:46:54Z")
One suggestion I’ve heard floated was that the United States could have used the land it acquired from the Louisiana Purchase or the Mexican War as collateral to pay for an emancipation program. Basically pay the slave owners for their slaves with bonds which would spread out the payments over several years. And then finance the bond payments by selling off land. The problem is that this would have been virtually impossible to sell politically. You’re basically talking about a huge payout program to wealthy people in one section of the country. Wealthy people in the rest of the country and poor people in general would complain that they weren’t getting any government money. The only way to sell such an idea would be by comparing it to the cost and devastation of the war - but the program would be designed to prevent the war so it wouldn’t exist to use as a comparison. So economically it was possible - the assets existing. But politically, it was never going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/22 "2013-08-29T20:54:55Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > The reliance on slaves was probably holding the South down economically. Slave labor is not very efficient. One theory is that the only reason the south was able to maintain a slave-based economy was because it was politically connected to the rest of the country, which had a growing non-slave economy. Think of it as a marriage where the husband is a business executive and the wife runs a boutique - the wife is only able to keep the boutique going because her husband’s salary is paying for all of the couple’s household expenses. Secession was the equivalent of a divorce. Even if the United States had let the southern states go peacefully, the CSA was doomed because it didn’t have the resources to finance the running of a country. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/23 "2013-08-29T21:10:41Z")
It was important, from a Congressional voting standpoint, for the slave owning states to push the option of slavery into the soon-to-be western states or else they would have been out-voted in Congress. States were being admitted two at a time to balance Congressional voting. Lincoln’s election finally convinced the southern states that there was no longer any point in trying to get along with the North. Buh bye. Southern states literally rejected all Federal/Northern/United States laws, regulations, and authority. They chose to create their own central government and live independently. There was no popular peoples demand in the North to force the southern states to rejoin the Union. South: We don’t like you. North: We don’t like you either. South: We’re leaving. North: Goodbye. South: We’re serious about this. North: Great. Just stop bitching about it. South: Fine. Oh, by the way, we shot up your fort. North: OK, that does it. Now it’s ON. Somebody hold my beer and watch this. Tensions were high on both sides and there is no reason to believe that “someone” wouldn’t have started shooting at the other side and recieved return fire, which is the reason the Civil “WAR” started. If the South hadn’t shelled Ft Sumter, if the North hadn’t fired back, someone else would have shelled/defended some other fort and the Civil War would have started at that point in time. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/24 "2013-08-29T22:56:18Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Not capitulation- all that was needed to prevent a war was for Lincoln to say, “Goodbye, and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.” What about the debts that the entire Union had entered into, such as the large amount of money that was spent to pay off the huge debt that Texas had accumulated during its days as a Republic? In my opinion, an attempt to secede peacefully would have to involve a concrete proposal to settle that issue (and other issues as well). ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/25 "2013-08-29T23:08:30Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Not capitulation- all that was needed to prevent a war was for Lincoln to say, “Goodbye, and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.” Isn’t that pretty much capitulation? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/26 "2013-08-29T23:43:54Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Probably true, but you could make much the same case for our fossil-fuel economy. We expend some large percentage of GNP on just maintaining the supply and ameliorating the effects. > > Freeing the slaves would have, and did, destroy the South’s economy. Only decades of life near the poverty line and an extralegal continuation of slavery (through Jim Crow suppression and control) kept it from utter ruin. Forcing the US to drop fossil fuels would have much the same effect, no matter how many rainbows and daisies the replacement brings in the future. Not sure about that, the best recommendations do not insist on going cold turkey and the eventual change is not as economically damaging as the contrarians claim. > **[Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy](https://skepticalscience.com/richard-alley-we-can-afford-clean-energy.html)** > > Re-posted from Climate Crocks, an excellent video showing Richard Alley debunking the myths Renewable energy is too expensive and CO2 is not a pollutant in one fell swoop.  This video is well worth watching: > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > There are many cases where something good and necessary could be accomplished if it wasn’t across the ruins of what it replaces. Of course the thing here is that I see the change to other fuels as a bad example to use. IMHO If there was something that would had prevented the civil war it would had been to avoid the Mexican-American war. The addition of the territories taken from Mexico then lead to the eventual problem of what states would become slave ones and when California turned in the end non-slave that really accelerated the run to conflict. > **[American Experience | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/)** > > Watch full films from TV's most-watched history series. > [@](#): > > Slavery in the Gold Rush > African American man wearing black coat White southerners brought black slaves into the California mines as early as the summer of 1849. Slave owners and slaves came primarily from western U.S. states – Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas. Among them were Stephen Spencer Hill and Wood Tucker, who mined near Columbia. Slavery wasn’t popular in the mines, but there were no laws barring it in the early days of the gold rush. > > Statehood > In Washington, Congress was embroiled in a rancorous debate over whether the land acquired during the war with Mexico, including California, would be admitted to the union as free or slave states. The nation was evenly divided, with 15 states free and 15 states slaveholding. California would tip the balance in one direction or the other. > > Delegates Declared California a Free State > By September of 1849 Californians were tired of waiting for the federal government to act on the matter of their statehood. Forty-eight state delegates gathered in Monterey and voted to join the Union. Many of California’s delegates were from slave states, but they were also miners. They had experienced the hard physical toil of digging for gold and the majority thought slavery an unfair advantage in the mines. They declared California a free state, writing into the constitution, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for punishment of crimes, shall ever be tolerated in this State.” So slavery was indeed seen as an unfair economical practice when mining was concerned, and I do agree with Deeg on this one, slavery was dragging the economy of the south down. That about face of former slave state citizens now in California told the slave states that the writing was on the wall and secession was seen as the only way to continue with the peculiar institution. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/27 "2013-08-29T23:54:33Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Not sure about that, the best recommendations do not insist on going cold turkey and the eventual change is not as economically damaging as the contrarians claim. I’m not in any way trying to make an absolute moral, ethical or political judgment, especially not from 150 years later. The south’s economy was driven by slave power; taking it away would have shaken things up badly, and many would have lost some or all of their wealth. Wherever you take it from there, it’s plenty of explanation for why the southern states banded together in secession and fought a bloody war to Preserve Their Way of Life. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/28 "2013-08-30T00:51:15Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Not capitulation- all that was needed to prevent a war was for Lincoln to say, “Goodbye, and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.” And suffer a hostile new country within it’s original boarders? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/29 "2013-08-30T01:03:32Z")
As much as I admire Mr. Lincoln (and I do), I think his obsession with keeping the Union together (which, by his own admission, was paramount) was a weakness, and a near-fatal flaw. If he had let the southern states secede, the North would have still been a viable country and military conflict could have been avoided. It would have perpetuated slavery for a while, but I think that world opinion and economic changes would have eventually doomed it – after all, the Industrial Revolution was on the horizon – and a reconciliation between North & South might have been possible 50-100 years later. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/30 "2013-08-30T01:16:28Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > And suffer a hostile new country within it’s original boarders? My guess is you mean “its original borders.” (possessive, territorial) “it’s (not possessive) original boarders” would be someone who rents a room or invades a ship. If I am correct, I don’t know that the Confederacy would be all that hostile. Their stated intention was to separate and go their own way, since it was doubtful they could force their will upon the northern states, nor did they want to. Their hostility (attacks on Fort Sumter) was generated by the Union’s lack of concession (You assholes! We gonna teach you muhfuckers a lesson!). If they had been left alone, they might not have been that great a threat. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/31 "2013-08-30T01:24:55Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > As much as I admire Mr. Lincoln (and I do), I think his obsession with keeping the Union together (which, by his own admission, was paramount) was a weakness, and a near-fatal flaw. If he had let the southern states secede, the North would have still been a viable country and military conflict could have been avoided. What you’re calling his weakness and a near-fatal flaw was his job. He took an oath. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/32 "2013-08-30T01:30:04Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > If I am correct, I don’t know that the Confederacy would be all that hostile. Their stated intention was to separate and go their own way, since it was doubtful they could force their will upon the northern states, nor did they want to. Their hostility (attacks on Fort Sumter) was generated by the Union’s lack of concession (You assholes! We gonna teach you muhfuckers a lesson!). If they had been left alone, they might not have been that great a threat. Yeah, and if we had just given Japan whatever it wanted, it wouldn’t have been driven to bomb Pearl Harbor. The Confederacy had unreasonable demands and it attacked the United States when we refused to give in to their demands. That’s about as hostile as you can get. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/33 "2013-08-30T01:41:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Yeah, and if we had just given Japan whatever it wanted, it wouldn’t have been driven to bomb Pearl Harbor. When was Japan a part of the US? Did I miss that memo? > [@](#): > > The Confederacy had unreasonable demands and it attacked the United States when we refused to give in to their demands. That’s about as hostile as you can get. The Confed’s demands were to be left alone and not be part of the Union. Doesn’t seem all that unreasonable (reprehensible, maybe), but the Union wouldn’t allow it. Thus, the attacks. Which caused which? ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/34 "2013-08-30T01:43:57Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I have a few responses to this: > > **1. Slavery was such a vile institution- such a stain on humanity and on our country- that it must be ended, no matter the cost.** > 2. By “popular will” of the southern states, you must mean the popular will of selected white people- because there were millions of people in the South that did not want to secede. > 3. Armed men attacked and shot at United States soldiers. When people attack US soldiers, it’s appropriate to meet that with force. I say that as an American and as a veteran. Bolding mine You cannot use 21st century morals in relation to 19th century folks, moral values change over time. Industrialization was making the Economics of Slavery non-viable but it had not happened yet. Most in the North did not think of Blacks as equal either socially or intellectually, Lincoln surely did not( he may have changed his views somewhat toward the end of his life, there is much debate about this with Lincoln scholars). The North went to war to preserve the Union and the North’s Economic interests. If the War was sold to the public as a war to free the slaves very few would have shown up to volunteer. This might be informative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_York\_City\_draft\_riots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots) Slavery was dying(as it well should have) but the War was really about economics as **ECG** so eloquently pointed out. **Capt** ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/35 "2013-08-30T02:03:28Z")
Also I would like to add… The Siege of Fort Sumter was not started by the “Confederacy” but by some locals, including teenagers from the Citadel, Hot Head Mexican War Vets and Students of the South Carolina War College, to prevent its resupply and completion. No one in the new Confederate Government authorized this. This was part of the dispute about how Federal property would be divided up after succession, Teenagers and Old Men did this on their own. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort\_Sumter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter) Granted, things got quickly out of hand. **Capt** ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/36 "2013-08-30T02:05:43Z")
> [@Capt\_Kirk](#): > > Slavery was dying(as it well should have) but the War was really about economics as **ECG** so eloquently pointed out. > > **Capt** 😕 **engineer\_comp\_geek** pointed out that for the South it was all about slavery, economics was indeed a factor for the north, but even there ECG mentions that eventually the pigheadness of the south made slavery a big part of why the war was fought for the North. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/37 "2013-08-30T02:18:07Z")
> [@Capt\_Kirk](#): > > Also I would like to add… > > The Siege of Fort Sumter was not started by the “Confederacy” but by some locals, including teenagers from the Citadel, Hot Head Mexican War Vets and Students of the South Carolina War College, to prevent its resupply and completion. No one in the new Confederate Government authorized this. This was part of the dispute about how Federal property would be divided up after succession, Teenagers and Old Men did this on their own. > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort\_Sumter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter) > > Granted, things got quickly out of hand. > > **Capt** 😕 > **[Battle of Fort Sumter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter)** > > Confederate victory > The Battle of Fort Sumter (also the Attack on Fort Sumter or the Fall of Fort Sumter) (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina, by the South Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender of the fort by the United States Army, beginning the American Civil War. > Following the declaration of secession by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, its authorities demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. O... > [@](#): > > Lincoln’s notification had been made to the governor of South Carolina, not the new Confederate government, which Lincoln did not recognize. Pickens consulted with Beauregard, the local Confederate commander. **Soon Jefferson Davis ordered Beauregard to repeat the demand for Sumter’s surrender, and if it did not, to reduce the fort before the relief expedition arrived.** The Confederate cabinet, meeting in Montgomery, endorsed Davis’s order on April 9. Only Secretary of State Robert Toombs opposed this decision: he reportedly told Jefferson Davis the attack “will lose us every friend at the North. You will only strike a hornet’s nest. … Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.”[21] I have seen other sources reporting that, so again, 😕 by that post **Capt Kirk**. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/38 "2013-08-30T02:21:31Z")
> [@Capt\_Kirk](#): > > The Siege of Fort Sumter was not started by the “Confederacy” but by some locals, including teenagers from the Citadel, Hot Head Mexican War Vets and Students of the South Carolina War College, to prevent its resupply and completion. No one in the new Confederate Government authorized this. This was part of the dispute about how Federal property would be divided up after succession, Teenagers and Old Men did this on their own. > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort\_Sumter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter) Huh? Did you read the article you cited? > [@](#): > > On Thursday, April 11, 1861, Beauregard sent three aides, Colonel James Chesnut, Jr., Captain Stephen D. Lee, and Lieutenant A. R. Chisolm to demand the surrender of the fort. Anderson declined, and the aides returned to report to Beauregard. After Beauregard had consulted the Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, he sent the aides back to the fort and authorized Chesnut to decide whether the fort should be taken by force. The aides waited for hours while Anderson considered his alternatives and played for time. At about 3 a.m., when Anderson finally announced his conditions, Colonel Chesnut, after conferring with the other aides, decided that they were “manifestly futile and not within the scope of the instructions verbally given to us”. The aides then left the fort and proceeded to the nearby Fort Johnson. There, Chesnut ordered the fort to open fire on Fort Sumter. ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/39 "2013-08-30T02:38:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Huh? Did you read the article you cited? Egads! I am wrong about this. I read the first part but not the rest. I based my statement on what I was told by a Citadel/West Point grad that I used to know. Mea Culpa, sorry to be spreading ignorance. I fully retract my misunderstanding and post. **Capt** ---
**Author:** ![Capt\_Kirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2013, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484/40 "2013-08-30T02:48:46Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > 😕 > > **engineer\_comp\_geek** pointed out that for the South it was all about slavery, economics was indeed a factor for the north, but even there ECG mentions that eventually the pigheadness of the south made slavery a big part of why the war was fought for the North. Clarify what you are saying please. Slavery was the norm for thousands of years before machines took over. What are you asking me? **Capt** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-the-civil-war-have-been-avoided/667484.md?page=3)