Download US History I

US History I
Civil War
Why did they Fight?
Ideals in Conflict…
If you could have asked the Confederate and Yankee volunteers of 1861 why they were
willing to fight, most would have talked about hanging Jefferson Davis from a tree, or
running Abe Lincoln and his Republican Party out of Washington, as though the war
would be one big adventure. In time, however, as the months dragged into years and as
the dying seemed without end, each side began to see the struggle in loftier terms.
As America expanded westward, adding new states to the Union, the delicate balance of
power that existed between the North and South was upset. The South felt an increasing
sense of political powerlessness as the North grew and expanded and sought to restrict
slavery. More and more, the South saw the solution to these problems in secession. The
North saw the Union with or without slavery as indissoluble.
Southern soldiers generally believed in three causes for which they fought: states’
rights, slavery, and liberty…
1. States’ Rights: Southern leaders believed the Union to be a compact of sovereign
states, in which each state could join or leave depending on the will of the people.
They viewed the North’s use of force to keep southern states in the Union as an
act of conquest similar to an invasion by a foreign power. For these southerners,
the Civil War was a war not unlike the American Revolution. In fact, many
southerners referred to the Civil War as the Second American Revolution.
2. Slavery: Although not all white southerners endorsed slavery as a positive thing
(indeed only a small minority even owned slaves), most planters and small
farmers felt certain that freeing the South’s four million Blacks would cause
social and economic chaos. Wealthy whites feared the loss of their property.
Others were concerned that the freed Blacks would undermine the place of Whites
in society and dreaded the thought of political equality for former slaves.
3. Liberty: By 1860, many white southerners feared that the U.S. government could
not be trusted to protect their property, and that the South was becoming
dominated by the anti-slavery, industrial North that threatened their way of life.
Better to leave the Union, they reasoned, with their liberties intact.
Northern soldiers also fought as patriots and for equally compelling reasons: the
Union, anti-slavery, and democracy…
1. The Union: The idea of the Union symbolized all the country’s national myths in
a single concept that northerners had been taught throughout their lives to honor:
the Union was the greatest republican experiment the world had ever known. For
Yankees, secession from the Union amounted to treason. Since all the states had
formed the Union, they argued, no single state had the right to secede and break it
up. Northern soldiers would fight to the death to preserve the Union, both as a
reality and as an ideal.
2. Anti-slavery: The vast majority of northern soldiers were not abolitionists.
Abolitionists believed that slavery was a sin and agitated for immediate or gradual
emancipation of Blacks. Most northern soldiers, however, were anti-slavery; that
is, they opposed slavery’s expansion into the western territories. Some were also
against the federal enforcement of fugitive slave laws; many more supported the
creation of slave colonies in Cuba and Central America. They strongly believed
that slave labor threatened free institutions and the egalitarian ideals of a nation of
independent family farmers. At first, they fought more to keep the west free of
slavery than to free the slaves themselves.
3. Democracy: Many northern soldiers thought secession was a plot by the South’s
arrogant planter class to win by war what they had lost a the ballot box when
Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Secession violated their sense of fair
play and the idea that all Americans must abide by the outcome of free elections.
A minority could not be allowed to sabotage the principles of majority rule.
Both the blue and the gray believed they marched in support of an honorable cause.
Homework Question: Which of the South’s reasons for going to war do you find
most understandable? Why?