Why did the USA go to war against the seceded Southern States?. I cannot believe that it was simply over the issue of slavery, maybe I’m wrong about this.
I know about Fort Sumter being fired on which as I understand it started the conflict.
I can’t see any reason why a war was necessary other than to keep the USA as one nation. Even so surely the USA and the CSA could have co-existed peacefully.
Why is that not good enough?
If the CSA was allowed to secede peacefully over the issue of slavery, then what point was there in having a USA in the first place? Once the CSA had set the precedent, then New England could secede when it felt that tariffs were too low, or the Midwest could seceded when it felt that tariffs were too high, etc. The CSA was trying to effectively nullify Lincoln’s election; either the Union could fight to stay a union, or the federal government could admit to being irrelevant.
For the same reason that there was all of that fighting to unite England, Scotland and Wales under one government.
The root cause was economics, IMHO. To grossly oversimplify things, the northern states sought tariffs to help protect their industries from foreign competitors, while the southern states, which made their living mainly through agricultural exports, wanted to minimize trade barriers, an excellent recipe for sectoral tensions.
To paraphrase something I heard once:
In grade school, I learned that the Civil War was fought over slavery. In High School, I learned that the Civil War was fought over a complex web of conflicts that included culture, economics, and disagreement over the limits of federal power. In college, I learned that the Civil War was fought over slavery.
If you remove slavery from the equation, many of the other issues vanish.
Now, as for why there was a shooting war (rather than a cold war)- some contend that most northerners were content to let the South secede, but they were not going to let go of federal properties that happened to lie within the CSA’s borders. Hence, Fort Sumter being a flash point.
All that fighting as you put it was the fault of England wanting to own the whole of the island of Britain.
The wheel has almost gone full circle.
Stonebow Assuming that the Southern States had offered some monetary compensation for those properties, would this not have assuaged the Northerners.
How many states would the CSA have if the federal government let the first couple states go? Didn’t most of the Upper South (like Virginia) only secede after Fort Sumter?
Well, all that fighting in our Civil War was because many wanted the US federal government to be supreme authority within the geographic boundries of the United States as it existed ante bellum.
No. Read what John Corrado wrote. Even leaving aside the slavery thing, there was no way Lincoln or the federal government was going to allow states to set the precidence that they could simply secede from the Union. What point HAVING a union after all, if states could simply bolt at will?
So…it was always going to come down to war, regardless. The union simply could not allow the southern states to secede, the south had to fight to win their independence…war was inevitable.
-XT
I thought I remembered a previous thread about this very question. The closest thing I can find is Why can’t any state secede if it wants to? but I’m not sure that’s the one I’m remembering.
Since you’re English, I’ll assume that you aren’t that familiar with American politics of the 1820s to 1860s. (Not an attempt at an insult - not many Americans are, either. And I couldn’t describe English politics of that period other than “There were factories, and Charles Dickens wrote a bunch.”)
South Carolina had already toyed with a concept known as “nullification” in the 1830’s in response to Federal tariff law; “nullification” was basically South Carolina’s way of legally stating that, as a state, it had no duty to follow laws set forth by the Federal government. Obviously, if such a precedent took hold, it would basically castrate the federal government - it wouldn’t matter whether Congress passed laws or not, as they would only affect states that chose to let it affect them. As Stonebow stated above, the desire in the South for Federal legislation not to affect them came from various economic and social reasons, but most of those tied back into the South desiring to keep slavery as an institution, and many Southerners believing that the Federal government couldn’t be trusted to do so.
The nullification crisis was ended when President Jackson threatened to send a column of troops down to South Carolina and hang any politician who supported nullification, and suddenly South Carolina politicians decided that the state needed to abide by Federal Laws.
The secession of the CSA was essentially that fight all over again. The southern states were essentially stating that the State was a more powerful instrument than the Federal, and that the State had the right to govern itself as it saw fit regardless of what the Federal government stated the laws really were. This was specifically in regards to Lincoln having been elected President despite his not being on any ballots in the South, and Southern states refusing to accept his Presidency as legitimate - but again, this is also tied into the handwriting on the wall that slavery was no longer going to be protected by the Federal government, and forcing the issue of State supremacy vs. Federal supremacy was the only thing that was going to allow slavery to survive.
If the North had allowed the South to secede - even if they forced the South to pay restitution for Federal land or whatever - then the North would have been essentially validating the idea of Nullification and of State supremacy over the Federal government. Again, once the South had successfully seceded over slavery, why couldn’t New England secede to protect New Englander rights vs. Midwesterners? Why couldn’t California secede simply because it was paying more in taxes than it was receiving in services? Why couldn’t Iowa secede to avoid having to enact regulations on farming?
The point is, there was no middle ground. You couldn’t say “You go off and have State over Federal government over there, and we’ll have Federal over State government over here”, because once you’ve allowed secession as a valid response to Federal government action, you’ve already proved that it’s all State over Federal government.
John That about sums it up in a nutshell, thanks.
You’re quite right, I know bugger all about American politics of that time, hell I know bugger all about them today come to that.
The secession was all about slavery. The seceeding states all said so, clearly and repeatedly. Areas with slave-owning minorities tried to join the Confederacy and were prevented by the non-slave-owning majority. Areas in the Confederacy where non-slave-owners were the majority tried (and in one case succeeded) in seceeded from the Confederacy to rejoin the Union.
Things like tariffs and culture and economics and states rights were all just things that were claimed after the war by people who didn’t want to admit it was all about slavery.
No, that’s going a little too far.
While it’s true that the proximate cause of secession was slavery, and that the secession documents say so, the secession documents also mention tariffs and culture and states’ rights. Those issues were not simply invented after the war by Confederate apologists. Rather, the sin of the apologists was (and is) to try to downplay the central issue of slavery.
USA. If they’re prepared.
Pshaw. USA, even if they’re not. All Bobby Lee did was buy us two years from the final ass-kicking.
chowder: No, thank you. I enjoy explaining American history to people, and I’m glad to have gotten the chance. If you’re interested in the subject and want to learn more, check up on the career of John C. Calhoun. He was an ardent nullificationist, and probably laid more groundwork for the coming Civil War than anyone else.
Little Nemo: While slavery was absolutely the main cause, slavery was also the main matter that defined how the economics and culture of the South developed. Trying to claim that the war was about slavery without being about tariffs, political structure, and culture is like trying to say that a problem affects New England, but doesn’t seem to involve Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachussets, Connecticut, or Rhode Island.* The converse is true as well.
[sub]*How many of those states did I mis-spell? I’m thinking two.[/sub]
I only picked up on Massachusetts (or as George Wallace once memorably called it during a Presidential campaign stop, “Mass-a-tu-shits”). 
There was a lot of stuff at issue as to both why the South seceded and why the North invaded.
The Civil War settled what had been a long standing political debate, and it settled it with blood. It wasn’t the slavery debate but rather the debate regarding whether or not a State which freely and voluntarily entered the compact between the States had the right to freely and voluntarily exit said compact.
This was not a “settled” matter at any point prior to the Civil War. New England states considered secession during the war of 1812, which they felt was primarily caused by desires of the western states to expand and New England wanted no part of it, especially since they were the ones who directly bordered Canada.
As has been stated South Carolina came very close to secessionist antics during Jackson’s presidency.
My personal opinion is, while it should have been clearly stated somewhere in the original constitution, unilateral secession was in fact not part of the original intent. I believe there is some argument to support bilateral secession. As evidence of this fact note that only 9 of 13 colonies had to ratify the U.S. Constitution before it was considered the law of the land. Meaning the colonial representatives who drafted the Constitution intended it to be binding once a large enough majority supported it, and ostensibly they planned to exert governmental control over any states who did not as a fait accompli. There was a strong move to make sure every state ratified the Constitution because everyone involved didn’t want to have a huge conflict right at the very founding of the new state, and ultimately all 13 of the original colonies did ratify (although it was not ratified by North Carolina or Rhode Island until after March 4, 1789 which is the official beginning date of operation for the United States government.)
A growing divide between North and South emerged almost from the very day we started Government operations. Slavery wasn’t the issue in the late 18th century and the early 19th century. In fact slavery wasn’t really the issue because as a practice it wasn’t as important to the South at that time as it would later become.
It’s unfortunate that sometimes technological innovation is possibly a net negative for society, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin dramatically increased the efficiency of cotton cultivation operations in the United States and dramatically increased the demand for slave labor. I doubt very seriously Whitney foresaw that kind of result when he invented something primarily designed to increase productivity.
The important of cotton and slavery to the economy of the South grew rapidly throughout the 19th century and by 1850 it was of monumental importance (well, at least to the powers that be.)
Tariffs were the early points of contention between North and South. The South had always been a fairly agricultural society, while the North was more focused on early manufacturing and shipping. The North long favored high tariffs to protect developing American industries. While the plantation-owning elites who ran government in the South had longed opposed tariffs because high U.S. tariffs insured that other countries would in turn charge high tariffs on U.S. exports. The Southern elite were also highly partial to importing fine finished goods from Europe and high tariffs significantly increased the cost of their lifestyles.
Note that most the rest of the world sympathized with the South in regard to these matters (out of economic interest), and that sympathy lead to outright support for the South during the war itself.
There was an enormous amount of distaste for tariffs, primarily forced on the South because of the North’s advantageous position in the House of Representatives due to having a higher population. It is around this time that the idea (promulgated by men such as Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun) that the individual states shouldn’t be so dominated by the Federal Government. This was a powerful idea that has stayed in the minds of Southerners to this day to a degree. With regard to tariffs the South was very unhappy that the North was able to unilaterally do something that had such a profound effect on Southerners.
Ultimately it was highly problematic that two major regions of the country were developing two highly incompatible and divergent cultures. It was also highly problematic that Southerners were beginning to think of themselves as a regional block, regionalism makes secession a lot more likely. Eventually the major issue, slavery, comes to the forefront. This issue is significantly exacerbated by western expansion. If we never expanded westward slavery as an issue would have been dealt with in a far different manner.
It’s difficult to say if abolishing slavery required a Constitutional Amendment, the thoughts in the minds of most was that simple Federal legislation would suffice. Which meant if anti-slavery politicians ever gained control of both Houses of Congress and the Presidency, there was a very likely chance slavery would be ended in the United States. The South recognized this, and they used the Senate to protect their interests. As long as the balance in the Senate remained between free states and slave states, they could block any efforts to abolish slavery. And since new states have to be admitted with Congressional approval, the Southern Senators insured (sometimes making judicious use of the filibuster) that anytime new states were admitted the balance remained between slave and free states. This wasn’t something that was done without hugely inflammatory events. And arguments over the admissions of new states lead to outright internal warfare on a small scale ten years prior to the Civil War itself.
Abolitionism as a movement was slow-growing in the North. Most of the Northern states that had abolished slavery had mostly done so because it was no longer economically viable and there was no point to it, strong abolition movements helped, but that was fairly limited for much of the early 19th century. Three things made slavery a big issue for Northerners, too. The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Dred Scott decision.
That background is what enabled Lincoln to be elected, as the anti-slavery Republican party gained widespread acceptance in the North.
Lincoln himself is integral in the actual invasion of the South. The South actually began seceding when they heard of Lincoln’s election, James Buchanan was still President at the time and took no serious actions to try and suppress secession. He publicly claimed states had no legal right to secede, and ousted anyone who supported secession from his cabinet. Unfortunately he also maintained that the Federal government had no legal right to prevent secession. Which allowed the seceding states precious time to both seize Federal property, imprison Federal soldiers, and in general prepare for war.
Lincoln made it clear the moment the South took Fort Sumter that secession was invalid and he was going to use the full power of the Presidency (and then some) militarily keep the union together. His reasons, I do not believe, had anything to do with slavery. It’s also important that he not give that impression, as most northerners probably weren’t willing to fight solely to free the slaves, but were willing to fight to preserve the United States.
The actual Emancipation Proclamation was a measure designed to be punitive towards the South, and it specifically only freed Southern slaves and not slaves in states then loyal to the Union. It’s not often remembered by the public that several states on the Union side still maintained slavery throughout the Civil War.
Paradoxically most of the men fighting on the front lines for the South were far too poor to own slaves. They were fighting to defend a regime that not only did not benefit them it actually was economically disadvantageous to them and kept their communities economically backwards. Slavery was in truth not good for the economy of the South as a whole, it was good for the ruling elite, and they were able to spin things such that they convinced the masses that they were fighting a war of liberty, to defend the ideals of the Founding Fathers against both “Northern Aggression” and attempts to subjugate the will and freedom of the South to northerners. This particular great lie was so well presented and articulated by the South’s ruling elite that it lives on to this day. Some southerners to this day say they feel that their forefathers were fighting to preserve their liberties across the board, and until recently the Confederate Flag was respected almost without question in all of the Southern states and featured prominently on public buildings and even flags of many of the states.
The truth of the matter is, the Southern public was duped into fighting and dying in order to continue propping up the ruling elite that were quite responsible for most of the South’s impoverished and economically backwards condition.
While most of your post is spot-on, I think this statement is inaccurate. Slavery was an issue early on. It’s just that the founding fathers swept it under the rug for fear that it would prevent the states from uniting. Even before cotton was king, slaves were growing rapidly in number, working the tobacco farms of Virginia and the rice plantations of the deep South.
The Quakers tried to force the issue early on, with their 1783 petition to Congress. That attempt was brushed aside by an assembly fearful of disunity.
Benjamin Franklin then lent his name to the effort, with his 1790 petition to Congress for abolition of slavery. That petition sparked a heated debate which highlighted the existing (and growing) divide between North and South. The representatives of Georgia and South Carolina made fiery (even Calhoun-esque) speeches in defense of slavery. The petition met with failure, but the pattern was set and the divide apparent.
Joseph J. Ellis has an excellent chapter on this episode in his book Founding Brothers.