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Causes of Civil War Course Text
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Introduction to “Causes of the American Civil War”
The causes of the Civil War are complex and layered, needing to be studied in detail using
numerous primary sources before even a basic understanding comes into focus. These causes are
crucial to the understanding and appreciation, by both interpreters and visitors, of the long ranging
effects the war has had and continues to have on American society. Today we live with the fruits of the
American Civil War, in a nation changed fundamentally by the war's outcomes. Understanding and
acknowledging the causes of that war can help us as a people to better appreciate the choices our nation
has made in the subsequent 150 years.
The study of the coming of the war, for public interpreters of the past, also needs to understand
the evolution of historical memory of the war, particularly that of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century Lost Cause interpretation. Perhaps the most contested aspect of popular American
history today is related to the causes of the American Civil War. As the Civil War Sesquicentennial
approaches, National Park Service interpreters will have to be prepared to help visitors appreciate why
a defense of slavery, and not states’ rights, was at the core of Southern unrest. They will equally need to
be prepared to explain that the objective of the United States in 1861 was not the abolition of slavery,
but the reunification of the Union.
By the end of the course you will be able to:

Understand the nuances of the causes of the American Civil War.

Identify the “Lost Cause” school of Civil War interpretation and understand its place in the
evolution toward modern scholarship.

Effectively and respectfully convey the causes of the war to visitors of varying knowledge
levels and backgrounds.
Prologue: Interpreting the Civil War – New Scholarship and Old Battles
The American Civil War, and particularly its causes, is one of the most controversial topics
which interpreters face at Cultural and Historic sites today. When visitors approach with questions and
challenges to the meaning of the Civil War, often times the interpreter is left fumbling for words.
[Interp. Video – Interviews: Interpretive Anecdotes]
Much of the misconception of the causes of the Civil War grow from the memory making
period which immediately followed the war’s end, as two sides sought to come together and reconstruct
not only the American South, but the memory of the war itself. As an interpreter, you face the tough
challenge of combining evolving scholarship, primary evidence and your resource to help visitors
better understand the complexities underlying the American Civil War. By returning to the root
documents and words of the men and women who brought about the war, we can come to a richer
understanding of why conflict erupted, and for what reason 600,000 American lost their lives.
Chapter 1: The Long Road to War – 1840s
The American Civil War has a long lineage of causes. This course could return to the Missouri
Compromise (1820) to track the course of slavery's expansion. It could just as easily delve further back
Causes of Civil War Course Text
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to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Three-Fifths Compromise or even the Declaration of
Independence. The American Civil War, and its root cause of slavery, is deeply embedded in the
intellectual and political fabric of the United States itself. For the sake of brevity, however, this study
will begin with the Annexation of Texas following the Mexican War. Still, it is important to keep in
mind that your specific site may have deeper, older connections to the Civil War's causes than those
which grew from the 1840s.
Chapter 1: The Long Road to War – 1840s (Continued)
[Political Tab]
“The contest in which we are now engaged is not a new one. It is of twelve or fifteen years’ standing. It
assumed new proportions when we acquired Texas. Texas, under the laws of Mexico, was then free. We
insisted that slavery should not be recognized there. You claimed that it should–that slavery should go
into all the common Territories of the Union. You succeeded. You procured what you claim is a decision
of the court in your favor. But the people would not give the question up. The issue was formed–Slavery
or Freedom; and on that issue we went into the [1860] election.”
David Wilmot, February 22, 1861, Washington Peace Conference
The outcome of the Texas War of Independence in 1836, with the American settlers of the
region gaining independence from the Mexican government, all but ensured that the United States
would be poised to fight a war with Mexico over territorial rights. The western border of the now-free
Republic of Texas was not determined at the war's end. The Treaties of Velasco, ending the Texas War
of Independence, was never ratified by the Mexican Government and, indeed, Mexico never
acknowledged Texan sovereignty. In 1845, as the United States prepared to annex Texas, Mexican
authorities claimed that President James K. Polk was attempting to steal Mexican Territory. Through
his desire for western lands, Polk provoked a war with Mexico.
Slavery quickly became an important issue in the Mexican-American War. David Wilmot, a
Democratic member of the House of Representative from north-eastern Pennsylvania, made himself the
center of the debate. In August of 1846, Wilmot proposed an amendment to a war appropriations bill,
later called the Wilmot Proviso, designed to prevent slavery in any territories acquired from Mexico.
From Wilmot's action in 1846 until the outbreak of civil war in 1861, the subject of slavery in the
western territories formed the core of sectional unrest.
[Map of West Circa 1845-46] [Wilmot Proviso Text] [Portrait of David Wilmot]
As the war with Mexico drew to a close in 1848, American political discourse was creeping
toward Civil War. With the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the United States acquired
the territory now comprising the American Southwest. General Zachary Taylor, riding high on his
status as war hero, unseated Democratic control of the White House. The Whigs now held the highest
office in the land. Taylor would face opposition on Capitol Hill from a Democratic congress. Most
foreboding for the Whig party was their losses in the House of Representatives. A new third party,
flying the banner of “Free Soil,” seized upon the fissures created by David Wilmot’s Proviso to win
nine seats on the floor of the House. By the end of the 1840s, Slavery, and its extension into the new
territories, was poised to be the central point of controversy on Capitol Hill.
[Smoke Him Out at P&P, LOC]
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Further Reading:
Joel H. Sibley, Storm Over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (2005)
Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil
War (2004)
Mark J. Stegmaier, Texas, New Mexico, & the Compromise of 1850: Boundary Dispute & Sectional
Crisis (1996)
[Social Tab]
By the 1840s, New Orleans emerged as one of the most prominent cities of the American south.
It boasted a population of over 100,000 citizens. Using the natural corridor of the Mississippi River,
New Orleans’ merchants helped ship cotton and other raw materials from the interior south to markets
in New England and abroad. By the next decade, New Orleans would see over 150 million dollars
worth of goods from the inner south pass through its ports. New Orleans also became a hub for the
burgeoning internal slave trade, sporting the south’s largest collection of slave markets. Elsewhere in
the South, rail lines and turnpikes were fashioned in a radial pattern to maximize the South’s ability to
distribute its slave produced raw materials to costal ports for shipments to manufacturing facilities
worldwide.
On March 9th, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled on a landmark case in the evolution of
Abolitionism in America. Two years before, 57 slaves aboard the Cuban ship “La Amistad” escaped
their captivity and held the crew of the ship hostage, demanding return to Africa. The ship was
eventually seized by the United States Navy, and the vessel and its cargo (slaves included) claimed as
salvage. Spain demanded the slaves’ return as stolen cargo, but the Supreme Court, after arguments
headed by former President John Quincy Adams, upheld the decision that the Africans were,
“unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board,” the Amistad, and that Spain had
no rights to claim them as property.
When the Home Mission Society was met with the request of James E. Reeve, a Georgia Baptist
and slave owner who wished to operate as a missionary among Native Americans, it was not
immediately apparent just how consequential their response would prove. The Society refused to
ordain Reeve, their sole reason his complicity in slavery. Within months, the Baptist church in America
split along the biblical implications and interpretations of slavery. The Triennial Convention dominated
northern Baptist theology, and preached a doctrine of the Bible’s condemnation of slavery. The new
splinter group, the Southern Baptist Convention, preached a doctrine of biblical support for America’s
“Peculiar Institution.” Over the next two decades, these schisms would help to divide religious and
social spheres along increasingly sectional lines.
Further Reading:
Gospel of disunion: religion and separatism in the antebellum South
By Mitchell Snay
[Response Question]
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See what others have said, and post your own response at the forums. [Link to Forum thread for this
discussion question]
Chapter 2: Compromises and Concessions – 1850s
[Political Tab]
“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.”
John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850, U.S. Senate
By 1850, Congress continued to hash out the details of what new states and territories could
enter the union and, most importantly, whether those states would be slave or free. Compromise came,
but not without flaring tempers, including Senators brandishing revolvers on the floor of Congress.
While the Compromise of 1850 did settle the issue of Texas’ western boundary, the admission of
California as a free state upset the delicate balance of power in the U.S. Senate. This political threat to
the South, which nearly resulted in secession at the Nashville Convention, was met with a social threat
to the North. The Compromise also had the effect of strengthening and extending fugitive slave
legislations.
[Link to Compromise of 1850 map] [News Article, Compromise of 1850, Northern and Southern Newspaper]
[Image: Scene in Uncle Sam’s Senate, P&P, LOC] [http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/textidx?c=mayantislavery;idno=03818510]
On July 5th, 1852, Frederick Douglass addressed a crowd in Rochester, NY. The noted orator and
abolitionist had been invited by a citizen’s group to speak on the nation’s 76th birthday. But Douglass,
an African-American and former slave, saw the great irony in their choice: “What have I, or those I
represent, to do with your national independence?” Douglass’ speech, a scathing condemnation of
America’s continued tolerance of slavery, struck at the heart of the question of Slavery, politically and
socially:
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all
other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling
vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted
impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your
sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast,
fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages.”
Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852, Rochester, NY
By 1854, as pressure from Southern Congressmen to open the Kansas Territory to slavery was
mounting, Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat from Illinois, introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In
order to placate the South, the act allowed for the extension of slavery north of the Missouri
Compromise line established in 1820. The new states of Kansas and Nebraska, instead of having their
status decided upon the floor of congress, would be admitted under a doctrine of “Popular
Sovereignty.” A flood of settlers, supporting slavery and abolition, rushed to the territories to sway the
decision, quickly leading to a shooting war in the Kansas Territory between pro- and anti-slavery
forces.
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[Link to Kansas-Nebraska interactive map]
In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the violence it sparked, the Whig party began to splinter
completely. The sectional nature of the slavery debate drove a wedge between northern and southern
Whigs. The result was the formation of the Republican Party, an amalgam of remaining northern
Whigs who joined together with the Free Soil Party, around opposition of the extension of slavery into
the territories.
[Further Reading: John C. Waugh, On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How it Changed the
Course of American History (2003)]
[Further Reading: Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the
Civil War (1970)]
[Social Tab]
As Congress drafted and passed the Compromise of 1850, Northern abolitionists seethed with
anger. The newly enhanced and expanded Fugitive Slave Act was viewed as a travesty. Instead of
simply providing for the recapture of runaways who had crossed into the north, the bill also included a
clause which stated that, at the request of a U.S. Marshal, any citizen could be impressed into a slave
catcher’s aid. In spite of their moral convictions, anyone on the street, abolitionist or not, was required
by law to assist in the capture of an escaped slave. The law met heavy resistance. In February of 1851,
the Boston Vigilance Committee liberated Shadrach Minkins, a captured fugitive slave, from the
custody of U.S. Marshals. A similar instance, the rescue of a black citizen of Syracuse, NY named
“Jerry,” shocked and outraged the South. That September, in Southern Pennsylvania, a bloody firefight
between abolitionists and a Posse of Maryland slave-owners further proved that the Fugitive Slave Act
was odious to many, and nearly unenforceable in many northern communities.
In 1851 and 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a New England abolitionist from a family of
outspoken ministers and activists, penned Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, a novel
depicting the harsh conditions of slavery through the eyes of the human property who were dealt the
blows. Stowe’s dark, sinister depiction of slaveholding whites drew particular ire from Southern
leadership. Stowe, a minor abolitionist figure, was catapulted onto the main stage. Stowe received
threats and stinging criticism for her work, even so far as one southerner mailing her a severed slave’s
ear.
[Link - Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture at UVA http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/]
[http://www.archive.org/stream/uncletomscabin01stowgoog#page/n5/mode/2up]
As the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the west to popular sovereignty, settlers of both slavery
and anti-slavery leanings flooded to the territory to influence its constitution. These settlers quickly
came to blows, as the realization dawned that eliminating a vote for your opposition was as easy as
pulling the trigger of a rifle. Radical zealots, both abolitionists and slavers, rose to the surface as
violence increased. Men like John Brown, a failed businessman and strict Calvinist abolitionist, struck
out with their families and formed militia groups to influence Kansas’ statehood through violence.
Eastern powers added fuel to the fire of violence by sending aid, money and supplies to the warring
factions in the west. Most famously, Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, himself
an abolitionist minister, shipped Sharps rifles westward, in crates marked Bibles, to further the
destruction of slavery. The New York Tribune remarked that Beecher saw that, “there was more moral
power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a
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hundred Bibles.”
[Response Question]
See what others have said, and post your own response at the forums. [Link to Forum thread for this
discussion question]
Interlude: War Approaches – 1850s
As America marched closer to war throughout the 1850s, tempers had flared. The central issue
of contention was the extension of slavery into the new lands in the West. This was the driving beat to
which the rest of American political discourse marched.
[Interp. Video – Interviews: Reflecting on the 1850s]
Laying the proper framework upon which to build the story of the American Civil War is
immensely important when interpreting the causes of the four year bloodletting. The 1840s and early
1850s laid the seeds of war, which would ultimately blossom into bitter fruit. For the interpreter, these
years, and the primary documents they yielded, offer a wealth of evidence that the debate over the
future of slavery was at the very core of the conflicts dividing the young American nation. Without this
deep history, the breakneck paced events of 1855-1860 become nearly meaningless.
Chapter 3: An Ever Widening Gulf
[Political Tab]
“The Senator from South Carolina [Andrew P. Butler] has read many books on chivalry, and believes
himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress
to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him,–though
polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight: I mean the harlot Slavery.”
Charles Sumner, May 19, 1856, U.S. Senate
By 1856, the debate on the floor of Congress was at a seething boil. In retaliation for offensive
remarks made toward his cousin by Senator Charles Sumner, Representative Preston Brooks assaulted
Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate and beat him with a gutta-percha cane. Even after the senator’s
desk toppled over, pinning him to the ground, Brooks continued to beat him for impugning his family’s
honor and tying it to “the harlot Slavery.” It would take Sumner three years to recover from his injuries
and return to the body. Northerners were outraged. Southerners reelected Brooks and sent him dozens
of commemorative replacement canes.
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_Chivalry.jpg]
[http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a39197]
The Presidential election of 1856 revolved around the perpetual issue of the extension of
slavery into the territories (New Mexico and Arizona), the constitutionality of the Kansas-Nebraska
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Act, and the future of slavery. Although Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican
John C. Fremont, little was solved. Furthermore, the slave states aligned themselves firmly against the
Republican candidate, with just under 600 votes going to Fremont across the entire South.
[1856 Republican Platforms] [1856 Democratic Platform]
The following year, the landmark Dred Scott decision was handed down by the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared that the court had no jurisdiction over the case. But he
continued in his decision, injecting the majority opinion of the court that, “A free negro of the African
race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a "citizen" within the
meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” The finding incensed Republicans and Abolitionists.
In his over-reaching decision, Taney set three new precedents in American law, spurring the nation
closer to war:
1) Black Americans, slave or free, were not to be considered citizens of the United States,
2) The federal government did not have general control over the territories,
3) Prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States was unconstitutional.
In 1858, a series of senatorial debates captivated the nation, as former congressman and
Republican lawyer Abraham Lincoln challenged Democrat Stephen Douglas for his seat in the United
States Senate. Over the course of seven highly publicized debates, Lincoln and Douglas focused
chiefly on the constitutionality of prohibiting slavery in the western territories. The emerging
transportation and communications technologies of the 1850s allowed for the debates, held across
Illinois, to be witnessed through news coverage across the entire nation. Lincoln, in spite of losing his
bid to unseat Douglas, helped to clarify the Republican’s argument in opposing the extension of slavery
in the territories and to gain national notoriety for himself and the party.
Further muddying the waters for Southern observers of the Republican stance on Slavery was
John Brown, a radical abolitionist who, in October 1859 assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry,
Virginia to incite a slave rebellion. Although his bid to outfit an army of fugitive slaves and march
through Virginia failed, Brown was a piece of evidence which southerners used to cast aspersions on
the Republican platform and northern motives. In spite of the cries of prominent Republicans,
including Abraham Lincoln’s February 1860 entreaty that, “John Brown was no Republican,” the attack
on Harpers Ferry further convinced Southerners that Northerners, and especially Republicans, were
bent on attacking and abolishing slavery in the South.
[Statement of John Brown at Trial, 1859] [Lincoln at Cooper Union]
[Further Reading: William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861 (2007),
pp. 79-84]
[Further Reading: James F. Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War
Powers (2006)]
[Further Reading: David Brown, Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and the Impending Crisis of the South
(2006)]
[Further Reading: David S. Reynolds, John Brown Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil
War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005)]
[Social Tab]
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, but particularly in the 1850s, slaves in the upper
south fled their plantations via a loose series of anti-slavery advocates and supporters in the Northern
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states. This network, known colloquially as the underground railroad, helped ferry thousands of
fugitive slaves to freedom across the border in Canada. As a direct reaction to the Fugitive Slave Acts,
both that of 1850 and the previous requirements outlined in the Constitution, northerners assisted
fugitive slaves to travel, often at peril of their own lives and fortunes. The narratives of these freedom
seekers became widespread propaganda across the north, published by abolitionists as success stories in
the defeat of slavery.
[Henry Box Brown] [Jermain Loguen]
The antislavery settlement of Lawrence, Kansas found itself besieged by an army flying a flag
of “Southern Rights,” in May of 1856. The town, a center of abolition activity, came under the gun of a
thousand pro-slavery forces. In what newspapers reported as the “Sacking of Lawrence,” southern
border ruffians destroyed two abolitionist presses, dumping their typesetting equipment into the river,
and burned the Free State Hotel.
Incensed by continued violent censorship, both in Kansas and upon the floor of Congress, John
Brown and a handful of likeminded abolitionists became intent upon meeting violence with violence.
The band marched along the Pottowatomie creek in Kansas, dragging pro-slavery settlers from their
homes and murdering them within earshot of their families. Brown, his sons and fellow anti-slavery
forces slew a total of five pro-slavery men and former slave catchers with military broad swords. The
incident made John Brown an infamous name across both the north and south, and led the abolitionist
crusader to seek refuge in the north.
Communications across the Atlantic had always been a factor in the dissemination of antislavery ideals, as tracts passed back and forth from the British Anti-Slavery Society and various
American antislavery organizations. But the prospect of instantaneous communication between Britain
and the United States excited Americans north and south alike. The Trans-Atlantic Telegraphic Cable
laid in 1858 brought the world one step closer to an age of instant worldwide dissemination of ideas,
but also stood as a symbol of the marked divide between northern and southern technological
evolution. Whereas the south still relied upon cost-intensive slave labor, the northern states had now
shifted to labor and communications aided, simplified and cheapened by technological improvement.
Although the cable failed shortly after its first transmission, it signaled a change in the rate of
technological advance and served as another death knell for slavery’s supremacy.
As Republicans began assuming a national political role, they began attracting heat from a
myriad of sources. Throughout the late 1850s, culminating in 1859, a series of books by North
Carolina author Hinton Rowan Helper helped to solidify the popular conception of Republican as
abolitionist. In his 1859 work, The Compendium of the Impending Crisis, Helper, a southerner, labeled
slavery a “great moral, social, civil, and political evil” and urged fellow non-slave holders to abolish it
because it stood as a fundamental impediment to their social and economic progress. Financed by the
Republican establishment and endorsed by sixty-eight Republican congressmen, the publication of this
revision of Helper’s earlier publication, The Impending Crisis in the South: and How to Meet It (1857),
convinced secessionists that the Republican Party intended to destroy slavery not only in the territories,
but in the already extant states as well. The Republican endorsement of this small book so outraged the
South that the selection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 36th Congress, 1st
Session was blocked for eight weeks by furious Democrats.
[http://www.archive.org/stream/impendingcrisis00helprich#page/n7/mode/2up]
[http://www.archive.org/stream/impendingcrisis01helpgoog#page/n6/mode/2up]
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[Response Question]
See what others have said, and post your own response at the forums. [Link to Forum thread for this
discussion question]
Chapter 4: Election and Destruction
“Now, sir, I do not believe that ninety-nine hundredths of the men who voted for Mr. Lincoln thought
anything about the subject of slavery in the States, or had any policy on the subject. They were opposed
to the introduction of slavery into the Territories.”
George E. Pugh, December 11, 1860, U.S. Senate
“What, then, could the slaveholding States expect, after the election of such a candidate upon such a
platform, but that all the patronage and all the power of the Federal Government, in all its
departments, would be brought to bear upon the Institution [slavery] in the South, in order to compass
its destruction?”
Trusten Polk, January 14, 1861, U.S. Senate
The election of 1860 merged the social and political spheres, bringing the entire United States
into the ever increasingly heated debate over slavery. Abolitionists sought to make the election a
political referendum on Slavery. Southerners, too, saw the Presidential election as their last
opportunity to ensure the continued existence of slavery. But at the Democratic convention in
Charleston, S.C. on TK, 1860, the fragile sectional balance within the Democratic party shattered, and
three splinter parties formed. These groups, with the addition of the Republicans, made the contest for
President a hotly contested four-way race.
[Chart] Election of 1860, Party Platforms’ Stance on Slavery:
Northern Democratic Platform
Constitutional Union Party Platform
Slavery should not be tampered with where it
already exists. The future of slavery in the
territories should be decided by the will of the
citizens through popular sovereignty.
The United States Constitution is the final word
on all matters within the United States.
[Link to Northern Democratic Platform, 1860
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid
=29577]
[Link to Constitutional Union Platform, 1860
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid
=29571]
Southern Democratic Platform
Republican Party Platform
Slavery should not be tampered with where it
already exists. The future of slavery in the
territories cannot be decided at a Federal level, as
Congress has no authority over the matter.
Slavery should not be tampered with where it
already exists. However, slavery should not be
extended into new territories and acquisitions of
the United States.
Causes of Civil War Course Text
[Link to Southern Democratic Platform, 1860
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid
=29614]
10
[Link to Republican Platform, 1860
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid
=29620]
In November of 1860, Americans went to the polls. Results were split along deep sectional
lines. The fractured Democratic party could not muster the voting bloc needed to counter the
republican bid for the White House, and Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the
United States.
The period that followed the election was a tumult of activity and strife. The Southern states
began pushing toward secession, organizing conventions. South Carolina and her fellow Deep South
states sent commissioners to the Upper South, urging their conventions to throw their hats into the ring
with the Cotton Belt. These men helped fuel the growing fire of destruction beginning to rage across
the Southern consciousness. They preached of three possible outcomes of Lincoln’s election:
1. Republicans, fresh off of victory, would impose political equality for blacks across the South.
2. Republicans freeing of Slaves across the South would result in widespread violence and race
war.
3. Republicans would insist upon “equality in the rights of matrimony,” leading to racial
amalgamation and destruction of white power and Anglo domination of Southern society.
[Link to one or more speeches of commissioners http://civilwarcauses.org/preston.htm
http://civilwarcauses.org/mcqueen.htm]
On December 20th, 1860, South Carolina’s Secession Convention, comprising of 169
representatives from around the state, voted to leave the United States. Shortly after the vote, a
Immediately following the secession of South Carolina, its secession convention drafted a justification
for secession. Almost all of South Carolina’s grievances against the North revolved around perceived
attacks on the institution of slavery.
[Link to Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina from the Federal Union http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp ]
[Further Reading: Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: South Secession Commissioners and the
Causes of the Civil War (2001)]
Causes of Civil War Course Text
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Chapter 4: Election and Destruction (Continued)
Following Lincoln’s election, Congress furiously worked to avert the crisis of secession and
disunion yet again. Compromise after compromise was submitted to the floor to attempt to save the
Union, but all to no avail. Over fifty proposals were presented and failed, including those of Senators
Jefferson Davis (Louisiana) and Robert Toombs (Georgia). Even James Buchanan put forth a proposal
that urged northern to simply follow the laws as written and stay out of the South’s affaris. Most
famous among the proposals was that of Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. The Crittenden
Compromise called for
Between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration, proposals by President James Buchanan,
Senator John J. Crittenden, Senator Jefferson Davis, Senator Robert Toombs (and fifty others)
flooded Congress in the form of amendments to the U.S. Constitution; almost all were designed
to preserve and protect the institution of slavery.
[Link to six or so compromise proposals; for example:]
President James Buchanan, December 3, 1860
1. An express recognition of the right of property in slaves in the states where it
now exists or may hereafter exist.
2. The duty of protecting this right in all the common territories throughout their
territorial existence, and until they shall be admitted as states into the Union,
with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe.
3. A like recognition of the right of the master to have his slave who has escaped
from one state to another restored and ‘delivered up’ to him, and of the validity
of the Fugitive Slave Law enacted for this purpose, together with a declaration
that all state laws impairing or defeating this right are violations of the
Constitution, and are consequently null and void.
Source: 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., Congressional Globe (Appendix), p. 4.
1861
The secession of South Carolina was followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas; all before Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861.
Following the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the
Southern rebellion, Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee secede.
[Link to declarations of secession for Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas]
Causes of Civil War Course Text
12
Secession Reconsidered
The question of Slavery is the rock upon which the Old Government split: it is the cause of secession.
G. T. Yelverton, January 25, 1861, Alabama Secession Convention
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery–the greatest material interest of the
world.
Mississippi, A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State
of Mississippi from the Federal Union, January 26, 1861
I meant that the true way to fight the battle was for us to remain here and occupy the places assigned to
us by the Constitution of the country. Why did I make that statement? It was because, on the 4th day of
March next, we shall have six majority in this body; and if, as some apprehended, the incoming
Administration shall show any disposition to make encroachments upon the institution of slavery,
encroachments upon the rights of the States, or any other violation of the Constitution, we, by
remaining in the Union, and standing at our places, will have the power to resist all these
encroachments.
Jefferson Davis, January 10, 1861, U.S. Senate
Question:
Answer:
What percentage of eligible voters in the North could be classified as Abolitionists?
2%
Question:
Answer:
Why secession before Lincoln’s inauguration?
By the election of 1860, white Southerners had convinced themselves that a Republican
president was going to abolish slavery throughout the South.
Question:
What were the chances that the Republican Party would prevent slavery from being
extended into the territories and abolish slavery in the states?
Since the Democratic Party retained its majority in both the Senate and the House of
Representatives following the election of 1860 and controlled the Supreme Court,
Republicans had minimal political power to interfere with, or abolish, slavery.
Answer:
Question:
Answer:
Was secession constitutional?
Since secession was/is not mentioned in the Constitution, the constitutionality of
secession could be argued either way.
Question:
Answer:
Is secession constitutional today?
In Texas v. White (1869) the U.S. Supreme Court decided that secession was
unconstitutional.
[Link to Texas v. White in the Handbook of Texas Online]
Causes of Civil War Course Text
13
Northern Intent
I say to you frankly, gentlemen, that while we hold this doctrine, there is no Republican, there is no
convention of Republicans, there is no paper that speaks for them, there is no orator that sets forth
their doctrines, who ever pretends that they have any right in your States to interfere with your peculiar
institution; but on the other hand, our authoritative platform repudiates the idea that we have any right
or any intention ever to invade your peculiar institution in your own States.
Benjamin Franklin Wade, December 17, 1860, U.S. Senate
I, for one, do not understand Republicanism to mean negro-stealing. If it is, then I am no Republican,
and never will be one. If I believed, at the same time, that it meant abolition, so help me God! I would
be the first to abandon and denounce it;....When you talk about the hostility of the people of the free
States to slavery, you are greatly in error.
Benjamin F. Junkin, February 7, 1861, U.S. House of Representatives
Since the vast majority of Northerners were unconcerned about the existence of slavery and the
Republican Party platform included a pledge of noninterference with the institution, the United States’
goal for the first eighteen months of the war was solely to restore the union of the states. Only after the
war stretched into the summer and fall of 1862 did Lincoln decide to issue the Emancipation
Proclamation as a war measure.
[Further Reading: Harold Holzer, Edna Greene Medford, Frank J. Williams., The Emancipation
Proclamation: Three Views (2006)]
That the Republican Party was not interested (at the beginning of the war) in the abolition of slavery in
the South is documented in the following evidence:
Republican platform of 1860 - support for slavery in the states
[Link to 1860 platform]
First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861) - no interest in interfering with slavery in the states
[Link to full text of Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural]
First Thirteenth Amendment (March 1861) - Declared that Congress had no authority to
interfere with or abolish slavery in the states – Ratified by Republican Ohio and Illinois, and
Democratic Maryland
[Link to full text of 1st 13th Amendment]
Congressional resolution in July 1861 passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress
stated that abolition was not the issue in the North
[Link to text of resolution]
Causes of Civil War Course Text
14
War and Choices
Question:
Answer:
Following the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, what were Abraham Lincoln’s
options?
Theoretically, Lincoln had three choices: 1) Let the South go, 2) Compromise along the
line of the Crittenden resolutions, or 3) Prepare to hold/retain federal property in the
South. Lincoln always considered the seceded states a part of the United States and their
attack on the United States an insurrection. Thus, since he had taken an oath to defend
the country “against all enemies foreign and domestic,” he could not simply let the
South leave the union of states simply because its man (Breckinridge) was not elected in
1860. What would have prevented California (for example) from seceding after the 1864
election if it became dissatisfied with that election’s results. The only compromise that
would be meaningful to the South would be to declare the western territories open to
slavery. This Lincoln could not agree to because opposition to slavery in the territories
was at the core of the Republican philosophy. Thus, Lincoln’s only option was to take a
stand at Fort Sumter.