there’s a thread in GD on “could there be a new civil war” that got me thinking:
a new civil war (red vs blue states) is impossible.
So why was the original civil war (grey vs blue states) so violent?
It’s easy to see why the south wanted to keep its way of life, and withdraw from the Union.But why were northerners willing to fight and die to prevent it?
Why did the industrialized, urban north care if a bunch of rural cotton farmers declare themselves to be a separate nation?
Sure, slavery was an emotional issue–but the average (and illiterate?) citizen in the north probably wasn’t willing to fight and die over releasing somebody else’s slaves. (Even in the 1950’s, very few northerners were willing to ride the Freedom buses into Alabama and risk getting attacked by a mob. )
I know that at some point during the war, the North had to forcibly draft men into its army, over great protests from the citizens. But the war was generally supported by the north, and Lincoln and his generals certainly believed that it was a sacred cause.
But what were they afraid of happening if they had just let the south go its own way? Government of the people, by the people and for the people would not perish from the earth–it would still exist, firmly rooted in the remaining northern states under President Lincoln.
I think it was mostly because it was the United States of America and few were willing to see it get cut in half. Didn’t Lincoln quote “a house divided against itself cannot stand” about this issue?
Independent nations enact tariffs. An independent Confederacy would have placed tariffs on Northern manufactured goods, hurting the Northern economy, and could have charged for the right to export grain and other goods via the Mississippi River (or forbidden such traffic altogether).
Independent nations tend to fight with each other. The North and South would have had residual disputes over the federal territories and fugitive slaves. By allying with Great Britain, an independent CSA would have sandwiched the USA between two British-allied rivals.
When a nation allows one secession movement to succeed, others tend to follow. (See Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.) If the South were allowed to separate, the next time we experienced an East/West split in a presidential election (e.g. 1896) the losing side would likely secede. Soon you would have a Balkanized North America looking a lot more like Europe.
Lincoln would have disagreed with you. He would have said that, had the United States allowed the “Confederacy” to peaceably secede, it would have meant the end of democratic government, because it would have set up the precedent that the minority wouldn’t have to respect the will of the majority. Let’s say the South had left, then in the next election someone was elected who New York State didn’t like, so New York seceded. Then in the New York elections, a governor is elected against the will of upstate, so Upstate NY secedes from New York. Then some town is unhappy with the new Upstate government, and so on.
Secession is all about minority governence, because, if secession exists, the minority can always threaten it to get the majority to go their way.
A good part of it was probably just pride, ie: “How DARE they just leave like that?” Also there were economic interests at play, with the South being a big market for finished goods that the North produced.
There was also a big debate going on about States Rights, ie: whether the States had to do what the Federal government said or if the states had the final say in things. By it’s very nature, leaving the Federal government is flaunting the point of view that the federal government didn’t get the final word, so if the Union wanted it’s side to have any legitimacy they had to respond.
Then there’s a strictly military point of view, the South was home to a number of forts, naval bases, etc. that the Union had gone through all that trouble paying for and equipping over the years, plus many of the soldiers had been similarly trained and equiped at government expense. If the state of Texas wanted to seceed for some reason or another, I’m sure the US gov’t would have a few choice things to say about us wanting to take NAS Houston, NAS Corpus Christi, NAS Fort Worth, Randolph AFB, Dyess AFB, Lackland AFB, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, etc. with us.
Also, if you want to see some funky politics, you should see the stances that Lincoln and his predecesor took in reference to the Confederate states. The first guy said the states could not seceed, but that the Federal government couldn’t stop them, then Lincoln said the southern states could not seceed, thus they never seceeded, thus anyone fighting against the Union was not a seperate army but rather just an armed uprising. Similarly, any debts the Confederate States of America had made with foreign interests would not be repaid after the Union won the Civil War, as they were incurred by an entity that never existed as far as the US Government was concerned.
Yep. The basic idea was “a deal is a deal”. The South made a deal, and that was it. Note this was a general attitude. Divorce laws didn’t allow casual divorce back than either.
There’s actually two (or should be two) related issues in this thread: Why was the U.S. government so opposed to Confederate seccession (already well answered), and what cause or rallying cry so effectively galvanized and motivated Northern troops to violently clash for four bloody years with Southern armies?
The South was ostensibly fighting for states’ rights, preservation of slavery (yes, slavery), Union invasion (eh), and to slip from underneath what it considered Northern dominance/oppression. From this, one can understand their fury.
But what about the Northern troops? What burned in their hearts so intensely that would make them willing to fight, to kill, to risk life, limb and family welfare in a battle against their Southern counterparts? Was it fear of court martial, fear of being a coward, or perhaps a desire for retribution for earlier war casualties?
I can’t believe the average Northern troop raged across all those killing fields because he didn’t want the Confederacy to permanently break from the North. Nor is it likely a Northerner’s aversion to slavery would have likely elicited such a strong reaction, as the North itself wasn’t exactly a bastion of tolerance.
I think that’s exactly what it was, though I would state it another way. The fundamental reason was patriotism: the belief that the United States was a great country, and that the loss of the South would weaken and probably even destroy it.
I had three ancestors who fought in the Civil War, all of them immigrants. Two, one from Ireland and one from Germany, enlisted during the very first months of the war. While I can’t be sure, I think their motivation was probably to defend the integrity of their adopted country.
I think part of it was that, like in many Wars the vast majority of people, North and South, had no idea what they were getting into when they seceded and/or went to war.
It was a great lark akin to the guys on Crossfire or on the SDGD, getting worked up, picking up guns and starting to shoot … complete with civilian audiences (lurkers) watching the first big battle. *We’ll whip those Yankees and send 'em home within a month if they dare come down here * // We will put down that rebel rabble and be home in Pennsylvania in time for the harvest… were the attitudes of almost everyone large and small (with notable some exceptions).
I suspect (and this is probably inappropriate for SDGQ because I cannot provide a cite) if you said this : This issue can only be settled by over 4 years of war with 600,000 dead, and a half-million maimed and the South will be wrecked and occupied for a decade, lawlessness for many years will be the rule rather than the exception, the South will more or less be an economic, cultural and political backwater for about the next century. Everyone now living will have his/her life touched by by this war - If you had said all that and been believed the day after the 1860 election there would have been a political settlement of one sort or another and no civil war would have taken place.
To some extent, that’s why soldiers fight in every war. But, in the US Civil War, if the southern soldier joined up to fight for states rights and freedom, the northern soldier fought against treason, and against rebellion.
I highly recommend the “Valley of the Shadow” project, which looks at daily life before, during, and after the war, in two communities. Augusta County, VA, and Franklin County, PA. You can find the link here:
All of the points made here ring true, except maybe cotton/oil.
A lot of stuff was building up over many years. The South panicked after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. The North got pissed off when the South fired on Ft. Sumter.
I like the point about knowing the future the best. If the two sides had known what would happen, perhaps they could have done something. Who knows.
In Ken Burns’ The Civil War, Shelby Foote quotes an unidentified Northern Congressman who claimed there would be no war. According to this airbag, he would be able to wipe all the blood spilled with a handkerchief. Foote went on to surmise that an excellent PhD dissertation could be written on calculating how many handkerchiefs it really would have taken: over 600,000 dead, 1 out of every 10 men in the US, in a series of horrible and mostly indecisive battles. Of course, nobody learned anything, so Europe had to repeat the experience all over again 50 years later.
I don’t think humans have the capacity to wipe life off the planet, but I’m certain we have the capacity to wipe ourselves off.
While the Union wasn’t happy about the Confederate secession and certainly would have gotten around to using force, it was actually the Confederacy that declared war on the United States not the other way around.
Nations declare war on other nations. If the U.S. had declared war on the Confederacy, it would have been seen by many as a recognition of the Confederacy as a separate nation.
One reason the Civil War was so bloody is that the tactics hadn’t caught up with the weapons. Marching in formation across open fields may work against musket fire, but it doesn’t work against rifle fire.
During my misspent youth, I spent many weekend nights wasting money, trying to pick up women, and getting drunk in Charleston (mostly just getting drunk, I excelled at the latter and was very poor at the former as a result). I remember that it was the small groups from the Citadel, a fine institute of learning here in the South Carolina Lowcountry, that excelled in getting drunk and showing their asses (not that I was ever in a position to pass judgment on someone elses debauchery). I remember many times seeing the familar grey uniforms from El Cid being turned away from some downtown bar with the reason, “We would like to try to get some women to come in tonight!” I often see, in my minds eye, 100+ years ago, a group of Cadets that had had too much to drink and too much time on their hands wandering down by the Battery and one of them saying to the other, “Bet you wouldn’t light that cannon!” Hey, stranger things have/will happen.
Please forgive my transgression, but it was an idea I always wanted to share.
The bottom line is most people go to war because their country went to war and they went along with it. Forts being shot at, ships being sunk, naval bases being bombed, and allied countries being invaded are all events that happen hundred or even thousands of miles away and have no direct effect on most citizens.
Quite right. But let’s think about the red/blue state split: we’re talking in most cases about a 5% difference in the per state voting attitudes toward two extrememly similar political parties among the 60% of the eligible voting population who bothered doing so. I’ve been considering the alleged red/blue state split that has so many hot and bothered to be statistically insignificant. There are a few outliers with closer to 65/35% presidential preference splits like Texas, Utah, Mass., NY, but this is pretty much a useless designation in trying to draw a meaningful line between, say, OH and PA. This simply isn’t anywhere near the scale or range of north/south issues in the 1860s.
When I say “extrememly similar political parties” I maintain that the differences between them compared to either the differences in the 1860s or the parties found in pretty much all other western democracies are pretty much trifles.
Looks like public opinion in the North was being subject to a persistent drumbeat as to how the Southerners, to put it in modern lingo, “hate America and hate our Freedom”.
Which come to think of it is not that unusual. You stir your populace with emotional appeals (remembering the Alamo and the Maine and Pearl Harbor, etc.) not with dissertations on the geopolitics of the conflict.
I think part of the reason the North decided it was worth going to War over was that, like in many Wars the vast majority of people, North and South, had no idea what they were getting into when they seceded and/or went to war.
It was a great lark *We’ll whip those Yankees and send 'em home within a month if they dare come down here // We will put down that rebel rabble and be home in Pennsylvania in time for the harvest… * were the attitudes of almost everyone large and small (with notable some notable but very few exceptions).
I suspect that if you said this before the First shot at Fort Sumter: This issue can only be settled by over 4 years of war with 600,000 dead, and a half-million maimed and the South will be wrecked and occupied for a decade, lawlessness for many years will be the rule rather than the exception, the South will more or less be an economic, cultural and political backwater for about the next century. Everyone now living will have his/her life touched by by this war - If you had said all that and been believed then there would have been a political settlement of one sort or another and no civil war would have taken place.
It does not seem rational becuase both sides didn’t fully understand the connsequences at first of the actions they were taking.
