# Who is right about the causes of the Civil War? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 7, 2015, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898 "2015-06-07T16:27:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/81 "2015-06-09T16:09:41Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Could slavery had expanded anyway, further than central Texas? For labor-intensive agriculture, you need rain-intensive climate. You can’t use slaves on land suited only to grazing: who’s going to give their slaves six-shooters and horses? > > More land was made available on the Central Plains when a plow was invented to cut the tough sod, but that same industrial revolution brought harvesting equipment that negated an army of slaves with scythes (which is why the Russians could free their serfs at about the same time) > > The South was destined to lose the war, but if they’d stayed in the Union, they’d have lost their shirt. That’s why I suspect that if the South had been allowed to break away, and somehow resisted picking a fight with the Union, then they would have found reasons to attack and annex Cuba and other islands in the Gulf within a year. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/82 "2015-06-09T16:56:37Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > That then was the source of the growing anti-slavery feeling in the North. It wasn’t a humanitarian abolitionist movement but a practical matter. Slavery was evil as everyone in the North (and many in the South before 1830) agreed. But so long as the blacks stayed safely in the South where Northerners could join in the profits of their exploitation without seeing it first hand, it wasn’t a big issue. This isn’t true. If it wasn’t a moral issue why did the Northern states ban slavery in the first place? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/83 "2015-06-09T16:57:32Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Could slavery had expanded anyway, further than central Texas? For labor-intensive agriculture, you need rain-intensive climate. You can’t use slaves on land suited only to grazing: who’s going to give their slaves six-shooters and horses? > . California grows more cotton than any Southern State. And in any case, Southern Black Slavery was no longer a economic issue. Intelligent Southerners had already realized it was poor economics. But it was the fact that some person could **be** superior to another “subhuman” person and pretty much do whatever they want with them. It was about racism, not economics. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/84 "2015-06-09T17:03:28Z")
At some point, it also became about pride - about refusing to accept the denunciations of them and their practices as immoral and disgusting. The backlash was inevitable and real, and, helpfully, they could point to much more support in the Bible than the abolitionists could. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/85 "2015-06-09T17:25:48Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > California grows more cotton than any Southern State. only because of massive irrigation systems, most of which were built by the US Federal government. In the 1850’s there wasn’t a lot of places in California where anyone would establish a plantation. If there were, the Spanish would already have done so. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/86 "2015-06-09T17:28:33Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > only because of massive irrigation systems, most of which were built by the US Federal government. In the 1850’s there wasn’t a lot of places in California where anyone would establish a plantation. If there were, the Spanish would already have done so. There was slavery in Texas, note. And Spain didnt do so as they couldnt get anyone to move there nor any labor to work the plantation. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/87 "2015-06-09T17:37:34Z")
East Texas is where the slaves were. Hot and moist and not at all like cowboy movie Texas. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/88 "2015-06-09T19:52:14Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > And the Union had no Navy to withdraw them, right? Considering that a civilian steamer was fired upon and hit three times on January 9, 1861 how do you imagine the Union Navy was going to be greeted? More importantly, why should the North withdrawl them? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/89 "2015-06-09T19:53:58Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Considering that a civilian steamer was fired upon and hit three times on January 9, 1861 how do you imagine the Union Navy was going to be greeted? More importantly, why should the North withdrawl them? I think you’re confused. Northerners withdraw. It’s Southerners who withdrawl. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/90 "2015-06-10T01:32:44Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > This isn’t true. If it wasn’t a moral issue why did the Northern states ban slavery in the first place? Slavery is always a moral and ethical issue but it isn’t as simple as your question applies. Not all Union states banned slavery before or during the Civil War. Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky had slavery during the Civil War as did Washington D.C. The Emancipation Proclamation is a very famous symbolic gesture on Lincoln’s part but it was also almost completely ineffective at achieving anything most people credit for it. It only applied to the rebelling slave states not under Union control (effectively only Tennessee at the time of the proclamation). The Union slave states including Maryland, Missouri, the then new state of West Virginia, Delaware and Kentucky had slavery during the Civil War and all the way to the end in the case of the latter two. It wasn’t until the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865 that slavery was illegal in the North as a whole. The reason slavery persisted a few decades longer in the far South than the North didn’t have nearly as much to do with moral issues as it did with economics, weather and industrial development. This model of slavery only works at all in a large-scale agrarian economy which the South had and the far North didn’t as a general rule. Even in the Southern agrarian economy, the model was on its way out just like it was almost everywhere else in the Americas and it wasn’t because of sudden enlightenment. Slavery isn’t a productive work model once you mix in technology and industrialization. Even Brazil, the last large country to have it in the Americas, officially abolished it by 1888. All of the original 13 colonies once had slavery. The major slave trading ports and auction houses were in New England and New York all the way up until the early 1800’s. There were vocal abolitionists but they were never a majority. New England and the mid-Atlantic states didn’t have a sudden wake-up call when it came to slavery. Instead, the model became less necessary and then undesirable from an economic standpoint as it industrialized. Marginalized European immigrant groups started flooding into those areas and could work dangerous factory jobs at least as well as the slaves and you could just send them home to their slums at night. If one got killed or maimed, you didn’t have to go buy a new one, others would line up to take their job. It is much more efficient that way. It is a serious mistake to think that certain areas of the country are fundamentally more moral than others. The reasons for the (rather small) historical differences are almost always the result of very practical economic circumstances. A short survey of American history will show that every area of the country had its own version of this problem during the 19th century and even much later. ---
**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:** [June 10, 2015, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/91 "2015-06-10T04:20:14Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > And in any case, Southern Black Slavery was no longer a economic issue. Intelligent Southerners had already realized it was poor economics. But it was the fact that some person could **be** superior to another “subhuman” person and pretty much do whatever they want with them. It was about racism, not economics. It was about both. Lets say you’re a plantation owner; got 700 acres in Mississippi, 65 slaves. Lets also say you’re one of those intelligent Southerners you reference. You’ve even read Hinton Helper, and think maybe he makes some sense. Oh, a little alarmist. Things aren’t THAT bad, and no doubt he’s inflammatory, but you can read a balance sheet, and you can see production yields. He’s not all wrong. Slavery’s not all that efficient. So now what do you do about it? You’re not liquid. All your money’s tied up in slaves and land. You can’t set your slaves free. It’s illegal, for one thing, and even if it’s not, those slaves make up most of your assets. Oh, I suppose you could sell out, maybe, but you’re not going to find anybody willing to buy the entire plantation. You’d have to break up the land, break up the slaves (so I hope you don’t feel any _noblesse oblige_ to your people, or qualms about breaking up slave families.), and sell off for a fraction of its value. So now what do you do? All you really know is how to run a plantation. That’s really your only practical skill, and it’s not enormously transferable. So how are you going to support yourself and your family. Nope. Not practical. Your only good option, really, is to keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep going and hope that before things get too bad, people are able to figure something out. Slavery might be poor economics, and in the long run, it might be ruinous to the slave owners. But giving it up would be ruinous to the slaveholders in the short run. I’m not saying that racism wasn’t a factor, and that there wasn’t this clear feeling of racial superiority, because there was. But there was also the practical consideration that once you climb on the tiger’s back, it’s not that easy to dismount. ---
**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:** [June 10, 2015, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/92 "2015-06-10T04:23:39Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Considering that a civilian steamer was fired upon and hit three times on January 9, 1861 how do you imagine the Union Navy was going to be greeted? More importantly, why should the North withdrawl them? The ship that was being fired on was a ship giving the garrison supplies. Had the US Navy shown up with the intention of withdrawing the garrison, it wouldn’t have run into a bad reception. Withdrawing the troops was what the government of South Carolina wanted. It would have greeted the Navy with open arms had it known that the ships were there to take the garrison away. ---
**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:** [June 10, 2015, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/93 "2015-06-10T05:15:21Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > It was about both. Lets say you’re a plantation owner; got 700 acres in Mississippi, 65 slaves. Lets also say you’re one of those intelligent Southerners you reference. You’ve even read Hinton Helper, and think maybe he makes some sense. Oh, a little alarmist. Things aren’t THAT bad, and no doubt he’s inflammatory, but you can read a balance sheet, and you can see production yields. He’s not all wrong. Slavery’s not all that efficient. > > So now what do you do about it? You’re not liquid. All your money’s tied up in slaves and land. You can’t set your slaves free. It’s illegal, for one thing, and even if it’s not, those slaves make up most of your assets. Oh, I suppose you could sell out, maybe, but you’re not going to find anybody willing to buy the entire plantation. You’d have to break up the land, break up the slaves (so I hope you don’t feel any _noblesse oblige_ to your people, or qualms about breaking up slave families.), and sell off for a fraction of its value. > > So now what do you do? All you really know is how to run a plantation. That’s really your only practical skill, and it’s not enormously transferable. So how are you going to support yourself and your family. Nope. Not practical. Your only good option, really, is to keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep going and hope that before things get too bad, people are able to figure something out. > > Slavery might be poor economics, and in the long run, it might be ruinous to the slave owners. But giving it up would be ruinous to the slaveholders in the short run. I’m not saying that racism wasn’t a factor, and that there wasn’t this clear feeling of racial superiority, because there was. But there was also the practical consideration that once you climb on the tiger’s back, it’s not that easy to dismount. It’s pretty limited to only look at the situation from the viewpoint of a plantation owner. How many slaves’ lives were ruined to support that plantation owner? How many other white people in the community would have been better off economically if there was a free labor economy? How many southern men died defending that plantation owner’s way of life during the war? Hundreds of people had to pay huge costs so one person wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having his personal wealth reduced. ---
**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:** [June 10, 2015, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/94 "2015-06-10T10:47:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s pretty limited to only look at the situation from the viewpoint of a plantation owner. How many slaves’ lives were ruined to support that plantation owner? How many other white people in the community would have been better off economically if there was a free labor economy? How many southern men died defending that plantation owner’s way of life during the war? Hundreds of people had to pay huge costs so one person wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having his personal wealth reduced. Oh, quite a lot, probably. But the point I’m trying to make is that its easy to make judgments when you have no skin in the game. You can say, abstractly, “Oh, this is poor economics”, but when you’re actually in the situation, you choose differently. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/95 "2015-06-10T13:42:24Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s pretty limited to only look at the situation from the viewpoint of a plantation owner. How many slaves’ lives were ruined to support that plantation owner? How many other white people in the community would have been better off economically if there was a free labor economy? How many southern men died defending that plantation owner’s way of life during the war? Hundreds of people had to pay huge costs so one person wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having his personal wealth reduced. Well, yeah. Of course. But you’re not a plantation owner in 1857. They didn’t care about ruining slaves’ lives. They didn’t care if slavery hurt poor whites’ chances at getting a job. They held the political and economic power and continuing slavery was in their best interest. As Keynes (I think it was Keynes) pointed out, in the long run we’re all dead. A well read plantation owner in 1857 might have known, even if he never would have said it out loud, that slavery was going to die someday. But if it could hold out long enough for HIM to live a life of reasonable comfort, so what? It’s not poor economics \*\*if you’re the one who gets rich. \*\* And frankly, few plantation owners would even have admitted the long term truth to themselves. Slavery was nearly a religion, something slaveowners held on to for dear life and which whites who didn’t own slaves aspired to. There was, furthermore, absolute terror of what slaves would do if they were allowed any degree of freedom. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/96 "2015-06-10T15:09:31Z")
Remember some of these planation supporters (the Mudsillers in particular) made their own arguements that in the future there would _only_ be slaves and masters. 'cause it was the natural way of the world, was in the Bible, was more humane (their claims!), etc. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/97 "2015-06-10T16:31:57Z")
Whether slavery would have died off for economic reasons is a thread to its own, and a subject that has been contentious among historians for decades. My impression is that today’s consensus says that slavery was doing quite well in 1860. Industrialization might have made diminishing or abolishing slavery economically viable in another generation, but who in the South could have seen that at the time? And as said, a generation is a stupendously long time. People today are having global climate change smacked in their faces and they still refuse to do anything that might cost them money because the real effects are a generation away. Any economic failings of slavery weren’t a single percent as obvious in 1860. Neither side would have waited that long, neither side could have waited that long, and neither side should have waited that long. ---
**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:** [June 10, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/98 "2015-06-10T18:54:01Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Well, yeah. Of course. But you’re not a plantation owner in 1857. They didn’t care about ruining slaves’ lives. They didn’t care if slavery hurt poor whites’ chances at getting a job. They held the political and economic power and continuing slavery was in their best interest. > > As Keynes (I think it was Keynes) pointed out, in the long run we’re all dead. A well read plantation owner in 1857 might have known, even if he never would have said it out loud, that slavery was going to die someday. But if it could hold out long enough for HIM to live a life of reasonable comfort, so what? It’s not poor economics \*\*if you’re the one who gets rich. \*\* > > And frankly, few plantation owners would even have admitted the long term truth to themselves. Slavery was nearly a religion, something slaveowners held on to for dear life and which whites who didn’t own slaves aspired to. There was, furthermore, absolute terror of what slaves would do if they were allowed any degree of freedom. I think the real motive that kept slavery is existence was the fear of former slaves. In 1860, there were about three million black people and six million white people living in the southern states. White people, including those who didn’t own slaves or even those who might have thought slavery was wrong in the abstract, couldn’t ignore the massive disruption that would occur if the slaves were freed. So they supported slavery, even if they didn’t benefit from it personally, because it kept the black population in place. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/99 "2015-06-10T19:03:20Z")
It wasn’t just “massive disruption” they feared, but \*physical \*retribution in many cases. The notion that the blacks had to be kept not only in submission but prevented from assembling in any way that could do to the owners what the owners had done to them had existed for as long as “the peculiar institution” had. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898/100 "2015-06-10T19:06:29Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > My impression is that today’s consensus says that slavery was doing quite well in 1860. Industrialization might have made diminishing or abolishing slavery economically viable in another generation Or not. Slavery worked in an industrial or manufacturing setting too, and it still does _today_. Even Jefferson was induced to keep his slaves working in his nail shop, since that was even more profitable than selling their offspring. Only if actual machinery got to be cheaper and more efficient than human hands would there be a chance of the humans belonging to those hands being considered redundant. But that hasn’t happened _yet_ in the garment-making sweatshops in Asia, the Pacific, and even here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-right-about-the-causes-of-the-civil-war/721898.md?page=6)