Why did the Civil War start?
That is a very complex question, and one to which you will receive many different answers.
It is my opinion that the war was caused by the new egalitarianism of the North. Many classes of people who had not previously had any social or political standing now did. Although there most certainly was still a class system in the North, the differences between the classes began to diminish.
In the South, however, class differences became more and more striking. An American aristocracy of planters and wealthy merchants had formed, with poor white and slave labor supporting it. These Southerners were gentlemen: educated, athletic, cultured. They saw themselves as a superior class of men.
Increasingly in the North, men and women of conscience began to speak out against Southern slavery. Despite the fact that many Northern immigrants lived in a condition of wage slavery, abolitionists turned their attention towards negro servitude in the South. During the 1840s and 1850s the abolitionist movement grew. It was never large, but it was vocal and its members had all the energy of their righteous cause.
Southern aristocrats reacted very negatively towards these attacks on slavery. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century most Southerners had freely admitted that slavery was a moral wrong, but had not seen any ways to safely abolish it. It was, to their thinking, a necessary evil that was dying out anyway. With the introduction of the cotton 'gin, chattel slavery suddenly became a very profitable business. Slavery began to expand again, and Southerners changed their way of thinking. When slavery was on the wan and unprofitable it was fine to admit it was wrong. When slavery was profitable and growing however, nothing of that sort could be tolerated. Southern attitudes towards blacks hardened out of economic necessity.
For two decades the debate over slavery degenerated from a genial, academic contest to an emotional, passion-filled clash of basic ideologies. Northern radicals increasingly called for complete and immediate emancipation. Southern firebrands increasingly saw any attempt to limit slavery as an attack on their culture and values. By the mid-1850s the time when any compromise was possible had passed. Both sides were convinced that they were absolutely right and the other was absolutely wrong. No debate could change anyone's mind.
The first great event which sparked the Civil War was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, VA. Brown struck the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, hoping to capture the store of U.S. Army weapons there. With these weapons he planned to move South, arming slaves and leading the insurrection that would free them. Brown openly advocated violence towards the white owners of slaves: it was an integral part of his plan. He was financed by many leading Northern abolitionists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglas. Brown was never able to put his plan into action. He and his men were surrounded in the armory and captured by a contingent of U.S. Marines commanded by a U.S. Army Cavalry Colonel, Robert E. Lee.
Southerners were aghast at the event, as they might well be. Northern abolitionists had hatched a plan to murder them and their families in their beds, and had actually put the plan into execution. All over the South militias were formed to defend against further acts on Northern aggression. By now open violence had been tried as a way to settle the issue of slavery in the United States. The debate had passed beyond rhetoric. Now, it seemed, the North was committed to acts of direct agression against the South.
This was the atmosphere in which the presidential election of 1860 was held. The collapse of the old Whig party had left a political vacumn which was filled by a new party, the Republicans. They nominated Abraham Lincoln, a moderate, for president. Southern fire-eaters split the democratic conventions in Charleston and Baltimore, and split the party for the election. They knew that by doing so they were handing the election to the Republicans. That was their design. They now saw that if they stayed in the Union they would eventually have to give up slavery. They were now committed to leaving the Union, and forming sovereign states.
Lincoln won the election, of course, and seven Southern states immediately seceeded. The secession conventions were not attended by lower class Southerners, nor were there delegates elected by popular vote. In most cases they were appointed by the governers of the states. In only three states, South Carolina, Lousiana, and Virginia were secession ordinances put to a popular vote, and in the latter two states entire counties know to be of Union sentiment were not polled. The movement for secession was one of the South's aristocrats, and did not have overwhelming popular support.
With the deep South forming its own government in Montgomery, AL, Lincoln called for troops from the states to put down the rebellion. Four states, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas, refused to contribute men to an invasion of the South. Instead they too left the Union. Lincoln was bound by the Constitution to provide for the enforcement of Federal law in the departed states, as well as the protection of Federal propertry in them. Fort Sumpter was one such Federal property, and the shots fired there began the war.
Many will argue that the South was simply exercising its legal right to secession. The truth is that the Constitution neither allows nor forbids a state to leave the Union. Common sense presents conflicting views as well. Many argue that the Southern states would never have entered into a union which they felt they could never leave, but what is the purpose of a Federal government when the various states may leave at any time they wish? The states' rights argument is a good one, but it does not justify secession. In no way had the Federal government attempted to appropriate any of the states' rights. The only place where Lincoln felt he could legally strike at slavery was in the territories, which were administered by the Federal government. The South was rebelling against a non-existent threat.
What the argument basically comes down to is this: Southernerns claim that the Federal government no longer represented them fairly, while Northerners claim that the Federal government accurately reflected the political situation of the nation as a whole. Both are right. But the South's position seems more untenable. Because things did not go their way politically, they wanted to pack up and leave. If the losing minority does that in a democracy, that democracy will soon be destroyed.
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