Slavery as the Cause of the Civil War

     Slavery was the juggernaut that caused the American Civil War. Many scholars claim that, "Although slavery was a critical issue in igniting the Civil War...it was not the sole issue that sired secession and the costly combat that ensued" (4 Smith). But, this paper will make it "clear that the great, bloody struggle between the states was truly about the legitimacy of involuntary servitude" (1 Smith).
      All claims that the Civil War was caused by Northern aggression, that the South seceded for the preservation of states' rights, and that not abolition, but preservation of Union, was the priority of the North will be shown to be without reason. It will be made clear that, "Slavery was at the very heart of our disequilibrium. It was the core of the social, the economic, the political, and the constitutional conflict" (DeVoto) that lead to the War Between the States. Slavery was what both North and South were most interested in and, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, "All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war" (4 Lincoln).

      In the ante-bellum era leading up to the Civil War, there were a number of concerns held by Americans that built the foundation of mirrored fear within North and South that each was going to force its beliefs about slavery upon the other. These concerns were driven by the events and public discourse surrounding the attack in the United States Senate upon Charles Sumner in 1856, the Dred Scott Supreme Court Case in 1857, and John Brown's Raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859.
      Senator Charles Sumner, from Massachusetts, gave an anti-slavery speech on May 19 and 20 of 1856. Within his speech he spoke personally of Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. His speech was powerfully negative and even many of his political allies thought he had gone too far. It absolutely angered many whose beliefs opposed Sumner's. Among the most angry was Congressman Preston Brooks, a cousin of Senator Butler. After Sumner's speech, Brooks waited until "Mr. Sumner was alone, unarmed and defenseless," (Gazette) and then approached him with a message. Congressman Brooks told Senator Sumner that his speech had libeled his cousin, and then "the frenzied Brooks beat him over the head thirty times or more with a gold-headed cane as Sumner, his legs trapped under the bolted down desk, finally wrenched it loose from the floor and collapsed with his head covered with blood" (McPherson 150). The attack continued until "fifty blows being inflicted upon an unresisting victim, [and] the weapon of attack was used up" (Gazette).
       The South felt the speech was a threat to slavery. "Sumner's speech, surpassed in blackguardism anything ever delivered in the senate" (Register). The South continued the incident, "Adding insult to injury," by allowing Brooks to be "lionized...as a hero" (McPherson 151). "SUMNER was well and elegantly whipped, and he richly deserved it. Senator TOOMBS, of Georgia, who was in the midst of it, said, 'BROOKS, you have done the right thing, and in the right place.' Gallant old Governor FITZPATRICK, of Alabama, who was in the midst of it, warmly sustained BROOKS also" (Mercury). Although some Southerners did regret the incident in the Senate chamber, "public approval of Brooks' act far outweighed qualms" (McPherson 151). The South felt it was defending its honor and upholding its pride by punishing Sumner for his speech.
      Northern sensibilities were obviously insulted and incensed by this and they took it as an extension of slavery into its inevitable position of forced existence among them. "The
logic of the Plantation, brute violence and might, has at last risen where it was inevitable it
should rise to -- the Senate of the United States" (Evening Journal). This incident was not seen as a mere personal, if brutal, fist fight. It was seen as a Southern attack on the North. And, even at this early year, it was proclaimed in the North that "If violence must come, we shall know how to defend ourselves" (Atlas).
      Less than a year later, the Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court case provided a new source of slavery-inspired tension. Dred Scott was a slave, owned by army surgeon John Emerson, who lived in Missouri - a slave state. But, for an extended period of time, master Emerson did bring him to live in Illinois - a free state. Upon their return to Missouri, and master Emerson's death, Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in a free state. The Court ruled, by a margin of 7-2, that Mr. Scott was still obligated to servitude. The Court, largely through the opinion of Chief Justice Taney, also guaranteed the right of slave-owners to take their slaves into any territory or state, free or slave, same as any other property. The decision, it was feared by abolitionists and hoped by slave-owners, had effectively neutralized the slavery-limiting qualities of the Missouri Compromise.
     The Republicans, who had hoped to at least contain slavery where it was if not abolish it, now found themselves in fear that it would expand. Abraham Lincoln warned that, "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their state free, and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state" (2 Lincoln).
     Many Northerners gave little credence to the Court's decision in the Dred Scott case. They decried the ultimate judicial tribunal as "a propagandist of human Slavery." (2 Evening Journal). One Northern newspaper said that, "We design, that there shall be no misunderstanding as to our position on the great point raised by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. We shall treat the so-called decision of that Court as an utter nullity. It is
not law, and it has no binding force upon either the people or the government"(2 Gazette).
     Abraham Lincoln himself pointed out that, "An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not 'distinctly and expressly' affirmed in it"(1 Lincoln) as the Court said it was. And, he asked, "When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?" (1 Lincoln). But, he was not so ready to accept the case as a harmless mistake in the mean time. "Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them," he warned Americans.

     Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and
     become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. And let me tell you, that all these
     things are prepared for you by the teachings of history, if the elections shall promise that the next Dred
     Scott decision and all future decisions will be quietly acquiesced in by the people. (Beard)

And, "in the context of Dred Scott, Lincoln's 'warning that slavery might become lawful every where was...far from absurd'" (McPherson 181). One part of the currently in-power Buchanan administration said that "the abolition of slavery in northern states had been an unconstitutional attack on property" (McPherson 180). Apparently, Lincoln was not without cause when he feared that the Dred Scott case did "declare that the perfect freedom of the people, to be just no freedom at all" (2 Lincoln). Lincoln and the rest of the North had substantial fear that the power holding slave-owners would expand slavery, not only into the territories, but into free states as well.
     In late 1859, John Brown, a prominent militant abolitionist, incited Southern fears to reflect the North's. In what would become known as John Brown's Raid, he and a band of 18 recruits, including several of his sons and a number of negroes, "succeeded... in capturing the United States armory, arsenal and rifle works at Harper's Ferry, Virginia" (Rhodes). His purpose had been to free as many slaves as be could. But, he "never had any design against the liberty of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason or incite slaves to rebel or make any general insurrection" (Brown).
     His immediate victory was short-lived, however. A company of U.S. Marines, lead by Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart, Colonel and Lieutenant respectively at that time, attacked and put down this rebellion using only battering rams and bayonets. "Less than thirty-six hours after it started, John Brown's strange effort to free the slaves was over" (McPherson 206). No mob of slaves ever joined him, like he had expected, to fight for their freedom. But, the damage was done. The South felt that the Raid established "the fact that there are at the North men ready to engage in adventures upon the peace and security of the southern people, however heinously and recklessly" (2 Mercury). The Raid was said to be "an effort on the part of a party of abolitionists and negroes to take possession of one of the national arsenals, at Harper's Ferry, with the military stores and the public money there deposited" (State Register). The raid was thought to be directly under the influence of "the teachings of [William]. H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln" (State Register). It "was taken as a demonstration that the abolitionists had lied in saying they were concerned with moral suasion only, and it stimulated suspicion that Republicans were abolitionists in disguise" (Phillips).
     The Northern abolitionists heralded John Brown as a hero. "Extraordinary events took place in many northern communities on the day of Brown's execution. Church bells tolled; minute guns fired solemn salutes; ministers preached sermons of commemoration; thousands bowed in silent reverence for the martyr to liberty" (McPherson 209). One abolitionist pronounced him "'not only a martyr...but a SAINT" (McPherson 209).
None of this was helpful, however, to the political cause of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans. "John Brown's raid and Republican pledges to eventually eliminate slavery, however, gave [the Fire-Eaters] new credibility" (Walther 152). Some slave owners felt "the threat that a Republican regime would turn slave against master had become horrifyingly real" (Walther 185). The idea that, "The Black Republican party had its origins in the anti-slavery feeling of the North" (Cobb) gained in popularity. All of this clearly worked against the Republicans. "Most Southerners in 1860 did not trust Lincoln to his word. In him they saw John Brown reincarnate and began to brace themselves for the inevitable invasion that many thought would be forthcoming" (2 Smith) if the Republicans had their way and elected him President.

      These are the fears that made the ante-bellum era rife with sectional distress. The cause of state rights is claimed by some historians to have caused the Civil War. But, "That most astute of all Southern historians, Ulrich Phillips, maintained that State rights formed no object of devotion among the antebellum leaders" (Osterweis). Indeed, the South desired unity, not individual states rights. In 1848, John C. Calhoun told his home state that "a Southern party would enable the South to achieve her ends" (Osterweis). In this, he was no different than some Southerners who came after him. "Some advocates of independence hoped for a complete merging of the several states into a unitary Southern republic" (Phillips). And, when the South eventually did secede, they modeled their new Confederacy after the United States from which they were seceding. The Constitution written by the Confederate States mirrors almost perfectly, in substance, the Constitution of the United States. (Confederate, United) The Confederate Constitution had the election of President, Vice President, and Representatives who would all serve in the same capacities as in the USA. The only substantive change in the language of the preamble of each Constitution was the CSA's addition of the phrase "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character" (Confederate). It is also notable that it is the Confederate
Constitution Preamble, not that of the United States, that speaks of a "permanent federal
government" (Confederate). Apparently the autonomy of each state sought by the Confederacy was not as high on their priority list as is sometimes claimed.
      At times there were facades put up to claim that the South was not motivated by the desire to save slavery. Confederate President Jefferson Davis claimed,

     It was not the passage of the 'personal liberty laws,' it was not the circulation of incendiary documents, it          was not the raid of John Brown, it was not the operation of unjust and unequal tariff laws, nor all combined,      that constituted the intolerable grievance, but it was the systematic and persistent struggle to deprive the
     Southern States of equality in the Union. (Davis)

"What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves..." (McPherson 241). Even Jefferson Davis admitted, "We left the Union 'to save ourselves from a revolution' that threatened to make 'property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless" (McPherson 245). And, "In 1861, the Confederate Secretary of State advised foreign governments that southern states had formed a new nation 'to preserve their old institutions' from 'a revolution [that] threatened to destroy their social system" (McPherson 245). No institution is claimed to be threatened other than that "peculiar institution" of slavery. It happened long before that, "'Southern rights' had come to mean racial security" (Phillips). One British newspaper correspondent observed of the South, "'Their whole system rests on slavery and as such they defend it'" (Osterweis).
      It is not difficult to see that "States' rights and secession was invoked by the South to save slavery" (Rhodes). Even those on the battlefield could understand that, "The South has made the interests of slavery the issue of the war" (Sherman Thorndike 222). "Although speeches and editorials in the upper South bristled with references to rights, liberty, state sovereignty, honor, resistance to coercion, and identity with southern brothers, such rhetoric could not conceal the fundamental issue of slavery" (McPherson 283). Surely there are still some who claim that it was state rights that caused the Civil War, but "it is debatable how much longer such a contention can survive" (1 Smith).


      When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 and the Republicans were brought to power, the South felt that they were losing ground in the up-to-then political war for slavery. Jefferson Davis complained to the North, "You elect a candidate ... who, in his speeches... made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions" (Davis). The South did fear Lincoln's inauguration because they felt, "On the 4th day of March, 1861, the Federal Government will pass into the hands of the Abolitionists" (Cobb). It held no great power that Lincoln, during his First Inaugural Address, declared, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists" (3 Lincoln). This was a smart thing for him to say to help avoid anger in the South, but its purpose came from nothing other than attemptedly appeasing politics. "Lincoln was perhaps the best politician this nation has ever produced" and he knew that despite his feelings about slavery, "passion must be anchored by patience" (4 Smith). But, he had "made it clear that he was opposed to slavery" (3 Smith). In his famous speech, Lincoln quoted Jesus when he said, "'A house divided against itself cannot stand'"(2 Lincoln). He made it very clear that the government could not sustain itself if it were to stay half slave and half free. But, he also said, "I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other" (2 Lincoln).
      If the Union can not be half slave and half free, but it is not going to dissolve, it is very easy to understand Lincoln's theory that it would become either all free or all slave. But, he made it absolutely clear that he was not willing to allow for the expansion of slavery into free states. "Regarding the question of slavery," Lincoln was clearly "an uncompromising anti-extensionist" (2 Smith). This sentiment was so strong in Lincoln that when Secretary of State Seward told the recently inaugurated President that, "'Every thought we think ought to be conciliatory, forbearing and patient, and so open the way for the rising of the Union Part in the seceding States which will bring them back into the Union'...Lincoln approved of this approach only so long as it involved 'no compromise which assists or permits the extension' of slavery" (McPherson 255). Therefore, if the house would not stand divided, and the nation would not become all slave, the only option remaining, by Lincoln's own sensibilities, was for the nation to become free - to abolish slavery. But, this left a dilemma for the President as he realized, "'I do not see how any us of now can deny and contradict all we have said, that congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the states'" (Hay 218). But, as he said, Congress has no such power. The President had realized that, "'I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress'" (Hay 218). The settling of a secessionist rebellion would serve as just such an emergency. As such, on the first day of 1863, after nearly two years of Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation was given with the intention of freeing all slaves in all the places that had seceded. It declared "by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free" (2 Lincoln). President Abraham Lincoln, with the implicit approval of the Republican party, did then prove the abolitionist tendencies that the secessionists had always claimed he had.

      It can be further proven that the South did secede in direct response to anti-slavery fears. John C. Calhoun, the outspoken South Carolina Senator, declared as far back as 1850 that, "I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion" (Calhoun). Ten years later, South Carolina saw his prophecy to fruition. "As soon as it was clear that the United States had elected a president committed to an anti-slavery platform, the South Carolina legislature voted to call a State Convention" (Osterweis). "The delegates" were fully conscious "that they were about to sign an ordinance of secession...Two days later, they voted unanimously to take their State out of the Union" (Osterweis). South Carolina's Causes of Secession, the document that followed from that Convention, declared that the North "has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States" and "therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved" (South Carolina).
     Soon after, "the delegates voted to send representatives to all slave-holding states, inviting them to join South Carolina" (Osterweis).They sent such an invitation only to other slave-holding states. They, therefore, would not have invited Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, or California to join them. But, approximately half of the counties in Illinois had voted for the slavery-accepting Democratic candidate, Steven Douglas, in the grievous election of 1860, as had significant portions of the other mentioned states. (McPherson 236) This decision to contact only slave-holding states was not made on the basis of finding likely allies or any other politics than the condition of slavery. And, even within the states that decided to secede, the ownership of slaves was a factor. "In the conventions, delegates supporting delay or cooperation owned, on average, less wealth and fewer slaves than immediate secessionists" (McPherson 242).
     In all, thirteen states seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy between December 20, 1860 and November 20, 1861.(Dixienet) Their uniform reason was threats to slavery. Mississippi, the first state to follow in South Carolina's footsteps of secession, made it clear in the document delineating the causes of their secession that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery" (Mississippi). The document also says, "We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property" (Mississippi). The amount of money referred to is their estimation of the cost of their slaves being freed. Georgia ended their ties with the Union because, "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery" (Georgia). Texas also shed light on their reasons for secession:

    In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between
     entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough
     in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these      Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing
     doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to       the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the
     abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the
     white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro      slave remains in these States. (Texas)

The document then claimed that all "all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights" (Texas), that slavery was mutually beneficial to both slaves and masters, that such slavery is "is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations" (Texas), and that relations between North and South were being destroyed by the consolidated sectional interests of the North and for these reasons Texas seceded. It is clear that each of these states did themselves say that their reason for seceding was indeed slavery.

      The Civil War was the first strike against racial inequality between people with dark skin and people with light skin in the United States. Since it was fought over slavery, it is true that, "Contrary to what most Americans have been taught to believe, the civil rights movement began in earnest in 1861, not 1954" (5 Smith). The momentum that was created in 1954 when the Supreme Court made public schools racially integrated was only proof that "it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary" (Whitman). The North winning the Civil War, leading to the abolishment of slavery throughout the United States, was indeed the beginning this greater struggle that would come to be known as the Civil Rights movement.

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WORKS CITED

"A FLAG NOT FURLED." Editorial. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 23 April 2001: A-12.

"Banner of racism, ignorance." Editorial. The Baltimore Sun. 19 April 2001: 14A.

"Flag debate won't tarnish Southern roots." USA Today. 23 April 2001: 11A.

Gettleman, Jeffrey. "MISSISSIPPI VOTES TO KEEP CONFEDERATE BATTLE CROSS ON STATE'S FLAG." Los Angeles Times. 18 April 2001: A1.

"LOOK AWAY!" The Independent (London). 19 April 2001: 3.

McElvaine, Robert S. "For an Old Flag, A New Rationale." The New York Times. 21 April 2001: A15.

Milloy, Courtland. "Blacks Helped Keep Old Flag Waving In Mississippi." The Washington Post. 22 April 2001: C01.

"Mississippi will suffer for its Legislature's cowardice." Editorial. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 19 April 2001: 22A.

Smith, Ed. Informal interview and class lecture. Civil War History of the City of Washington, Hurst Hall, American University. 25 April 2001.

Wood, Julia. Communication Mosaics. 2nd ed. United States: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001