Download Was Slavery the Primary Cause of the Civil War?

Was Slavery the Primary Cause of the Civil War? TAH Charms Kristen DErrico [email protected] Kristen D’Errico
Foxborough High School
Teaching American History Year 2- Final Project
Lesson Plan: Identifying Slavery as the Cause of the Civil War
The causes of the Civil War have persistently been identified with a myriad of conditions and
agendas that led to Southern secession. Tariffs, state’s rights, constitutional interpretations,
preservation of the Union, slavery’s expansion into the Western territories, and divergent cultures
have all been used to explain the reasons for the Civil War. Yet, can we define slavery as the
primary cause of the Civil War? Wasn’t this peculiar institution at the root of it all? James Madison
at the Constitutional Convention saw this as the dividing line between the states as he prophetically
observed, “It seems now to be pretty well understood that the real difference of interests lies not
between the large and small but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of
slavery and its consequences form the line.” [1] Emancipation was declared by the Union in 1863
and was officially made law via the 13th Amendment. The Federal government then ensured the
rights of freedmen with the 14th and 15th Amendments; but Southern states quickly found vehicles
through mandate and law to maneuver around total freedom and rights guaranteed under the
Constitutional Amendments. Early Reconstruction attempted to secure rights for freed slaves and
to ensure a new social order in the ‘New South’. But Jim Crow laws and Black Codes were passed in
former slave states in an effort to maintain social order and power structure. Why then did the
Union accept a return to the status quo? Why was Reconstruction not fulfilled? Looking at the
climate of the nation following the Civil War it becomes apparent that most of the country wanted
to forget and forgive the horrors of the Civil War and move forward. The United States of the late
nineteenth century was concerned with industrialization, immigration, closing of the Western
frontier, and economic issues.
Slavery and its remnants quickly became a topic to be ignored and both historians and
politicians failed to recognize emancipation’s failures following the Civil War. This teaching strategy
will ask students to look at both primary and secondary sources to answer the essential question: In
the decades following the Civil War, how did the North and South view slavery as the war’s primary
cause? Students will be asked to consider why the nation chose not to deal with slavery’s legacy, as
well as the abandonment of the freed slaves who now lived under Jim Crow and the KKK.
Standards: Mass State Frameworks and AP College Board Standards
NCSS: Era 5: Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) -- Standard 1A: Explain the causes of the Civil
War and evaluate the importance of slavery as a principal cause of the conflict
Mass State Framework:
USII.9 Analyze the post-Civil War struggles of African Americans and women to gain basic civil rights. (H)
A. Carrie Chapman Catt
B. W.E.B. Du Bois
C. Marcus Garvey
D. the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
E. Alice Paul
F. Booker T. Washington
AP College Board Frameworks:
13. The Origins of the New South
Reconfiguration of southern agriculture: sharecropping and crop-lien system
Expansion of manufacturing and industrialization
The politics of segregation: Jim Crow and disfranchisement
Themes in AP US History
Reform
Diverse movements focusing on a broad range of issues, including anti-slavery, education, labor,
temperance, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, war, public health, and government
Slavery and Its Legacies in North America
Systems of slave labor and other forms of unfree labor (e.g., indentured servitude, contract labor) in
American Indian societies, the Atlantic World, and the American South and West. The economics
of slavery and its racial dimensions. Patterns of resistance and the long-term economic, political,
and social effects of slavery.
Objectives
1. To examine slavery as the pivotal cause of the Civil War.
2. To investigate post Civil War documents to understand how slavery was discussed and
presented in the late nineteenth century.
3. To discuss historiography of Civil War legend following the war.
4. To interpret primary and secondary sources.
Time Frame
Three-four class periods consisting of 55 minute periods.
Background
Slavery had been a stain on the United States’ credo of liberty and freedom, and the
antebellum era was ripe with contentious political, moral, religious, and economic debate over
slavery’s existence in the United States. Pro slavery proponents extolled the virtues of slavery’s
paternalistic character, while abolitionists, like escaped slave turned orator Frederick Douglass,
highlighted the cruel and vicious nature of the peculiar institution of the South. The eruption of the
Civil War created a contest between the states; one side fighting for preservation of the Union, the
other fighting for individual and state’s rights. Slavery became the focal point of the war’s purpose
in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation would ensure
freedom for all slaves. The inevitable aftermath of emancipation and the image of a remade nation
extolling the virtues of equality and prosperity would be short lived and unfulfilled within a decade
of the war’s conclusion. In American Slavery, Kolchin observed this post war condition stating,
“Almost everyone- freed people, former slave owners, poor whites, Yankee reformers- seemed to
feel (although from diverse perspectives) that things were going terribly wrong. The myth of
Reconstruction as a “tragic era” was born in this pervasive disillusionment with the aftermath of
emancipation.” [2] The South, soon after the war ended, began presenting the ‘Lost Cause theory
to reflect on the defeat of the South and to portray a pre-war south that was mythic and idyllic. [3]
The North and South found Reconstruction efforts to be insufficiently lacking and the nation
turned away from civil rights to issues of industrialization, imperialism, and economic pursuits in the
late nineteenth Century. As a result we see through documents that the promises of emancipation
and equality have remained largely unfulfilled. We see how cartoons by Thomas Nast comment on
the suppression of blacks by the Democratic Party as well as the unfulfilled financial promises made
by the Freedman’s Bureau. Frederick Douglass pondered the condition of freed slaves in the “The
Future of the Negro, 1884,” and asserted that former slaves would not leave the United States, but
their condition in their homeland remained uncertain. Finally the current article by David Von
Drehle reflects on how the United States quickly forgot the pivotal role slavery and its demise was to
the events of the Civil War. Through this lesson, student will examine both the discussion of slavery
immediately after the Civil War, the inability of Reconstruction efforts to eradicate slavery’s ghosts,
and the current opinion that slavery was a primary reason for the contest between the states.
Procedure
Day 1-2 Investigation and discussion of slavery as cause of Civil War
a. Students will be introduced to the subject of slavery as cause of Civil War through a
listing of statements made by politicians and historians. Students will have to determine
what the cause of the Civil War was according to quote.
b. Using their quotations sheet, students will debate whether slavery was considered the
root cause of the Civil War once the war was over.
Day 3-4 Document Reading for Historical context and understanding- Essay assessment
a. Students will be placed in heterogeneous groups to read a selected text packet that illustrates
the history of North or South following the Civil War. Documents will include the
following topics
i. Frederick Douglass Excerpt, The Future of the Negro
ii. Carl Schurz, “The Condition of the South” Excerpt
iii. Thomas Nast’s “Waiting, 1879”
iv. Thomas Nast’s “This is a White Man’s Government, 1866”
b. Essay prompt: Was slavery the primary cause of the Civil War according to late nineteenth century
reflection and discussion?
c. Homework reflection: Reading- The Way We Weren’t by David Von Drehle (Time Magazine)
Endnotes
1. David Von Drehle, “The Way We Weren’t,” Time Magazine, 18 April 2011, 42.
2. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang Publishing, 1993.
3. Speiser, M. A. (2009). Origins of the Lost Cause: The Continuity of Regional
Celebration in the White South, 1850-1872. Retrieved 9 18, 2011, from University of
Virginia- Essays in History: http://www.virginia.edu/history/EIH/?p=49
Was Slavery the Primary Cause of the Civil War?
[email protected] Read the following statements and then based on the contents of the quote determine how strongly it suggests that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. Answer on a scale of 1‐5 (1= Slavery was not a primary cause of War, 5= Slavery was the only cause of the war) 1. "I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our
defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see
truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance
and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country
he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought....For the present, and so long as there
are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be
consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes,
people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their
ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of
property in man."
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. NY: Charles L Webster & Co. 1885, Vol. 1, p.170)
2. "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War. Nations,
like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in
the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."
(Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. NY: Charles L Webster & Co. 1885, Vol. 1, p.56)
3.
"There is very little moral mixture in the 'Antislavery' feeling of this country. A great
deal is abstract philanthropy; part is hatred of slaveholders; a great part is jealousy
for white labor, very little is consciousness of wrong done and the wish to right it."
- Abolitionist writer George William Curtis, 186161
4. WASHINGTON, D. C., August 16, 1880.
DEAR SIR:--At the great reunion of the Ohio soldiers last week I tried to show that to complete
the victory gained by the Union arms it was necessary that the means of education should be
amply provided for all parts of our country. Wherever universal education prevails in the United
States, the results of the war are cheerfully accepted and the constitutional amendments
embodying those results are inviolable. Ignorance is the enemy most to be dreaded by the friends
of free government. Ignorant voters are powder and ball for the demagogues. The right to vote
will lose its value in our country if ignorance is permitted permanently to prevail in any
considerable portion of it. The schoolmaster alone can abolish the evils which slavery has left in
the South. Universal education is the only safe foundation for universal suffrage. Men cannot
be fitted for the duties of citizenship in a republic without free schools. Jefferson said: "Without
education universal suffrage will be a farce or a tragedy, and perhaps both." In too many
instances elections are already the farce he predicted.
Let us hasten to provide for all our countrymen the means of instruction, that we may escape the
tragedy which Jefferson predicted.
[Sincerely,
R. B. HAYES.]
[Unidentified.]
5. “Let not slavery prove a barrier to our independence…Although slavery is one of the
principles that we started to fight for…if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the
achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it.”
Jackson Mississippian, 1864 (from Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson, P.833)
6. The shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the negro people, - a
disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded
save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.”
W.E.B. Du Bois from The Souls of Black Folk (from American Slavery, Peter
Kolchin, p. 233)
If you scored a 5-10 you have found that slavery was not a primary cause of the Civil War
If you scored a 10-20 you have found that slavery was potentially a cause of the Civil War
If you scored a 21-30 you have found that slavery was clearly the cause of the Civil War.
Questions to Consider:
According to the previous statements what conditions existed in the nation following the
Civil War?
What language is used that leads to your conclusion about slavery as the cause of the Civil
War?
Using the quotations as evidence, create an argument that either places slavery as central
cause of Civil War, or the contrary opinion that slavery was NOT the pivotal reason for the
war.