Chapter 1

How Did the War Happen?

IN THIS CHAPTER

Taking a look at the big picture

Defining a “civil war”

Understanding the distinction between North and South

Exploring the issues

Since the founding of the United States, different sections of the country had interests and priorities that competed with the interests and priorities of other sections. These conflicts had always been resolved through politics (usually some form of congressional dealmaking).

However, beginning in the 1850s, the political process for resolving these disputes became less and less effective. The differences between sections of the country were so great at that time that the survival of the union of states was in danger. Peace depended upon compromise and conciliation between congressional leaders representing each section. This chapter examines the sectional differences between the North and South that led to such a dangerous situation and provides some background to the controversies that led to the Civil War.

The Big Picture: War and Politics

Wars have many causes. No one should ever forget that wars are fought for political reasons and objectives. Essentially, people or nations go to war to protect a vital interest, to defend territory from an aggressor, or to achieve a moral purpose (such as defending the innocent and punishing an evil). The Civil War included all of these rationales. Each side used all three justifications for fighting the other during the four years of war. And, interestingly enough, each side had a strong, valid, substantial reason for doing so.

What’s a civil war?

You hear the word civil in such terms as civil rights, civilian, and civil liberty. All are related to the concept of a common citizen, a member of society, and a state. So, a civil war is a war between citizens representing different groups or sections of the same country. Civil wars are unique in the history of war and usually are quite difficult to start. People have to be pretty angry and threatened to take this kind of drastic step. But when issues of survival are at stake between the opposing groups, violence can escalate quickly. After it does start, though, a civil war is quite bloody, often extreme, and very hard to end.

The setting: 1850–1860

To understand the causes of the Civil War, you must be aware of some important events in American history — from roughly 1850 (the Missouri Compromise) to 1860 (the election of Abraham Lincoln) — that culminated in the secession of seven Southern states. These are milestones that will illustrate how specific events during this decade raised fears and created perceptions that made Americans so angry at their countrymen that they were willing to kill each other as a result.

The North and South: Two Different Worlds

Until the expansion of the population into the rich lands of the lower South, in the first decade of the 19th century, slavery had been a dying institution. The North had slaves but freed most of them (except New Jersey) because the institution was too expensive and too inefficient to maintain. In the South, too, slavery was viewed as an institution that had no future. But this all changed with the industrial revolution that swept Europe and the states of the North. Textiles were the dominant product of new factories, which depended on enormous quantities of a raw material — cotton. As the demand for cotton rose on the world market, Americans began to look for opportunities to profit by getting in at the entry level. This meant putting as much land into cotton production as possible. The expansion of the frontier into the lower South and across the Mississippi River where the soil was rich and the weather ideal for growing cotton led many Americans to settle in this vast open region to stake their fortunes and achieve the American dream of independence and wealth. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas rapidly became states between 1812 and 1836, even as the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan in the Midwest were added to the Union. Great fortunes were made and the U.S. economy thrived with the export of cotton to European (and Northern) factories between 1820 and 1860.

In theory, making a profit from cotton was easy to do, and the more land you put into production, the more profit you made. The invention of the cotton gin, a ridiculously simple machine that easily separated seeds from the cotton boll, allowed raw cotton to be processed in unlimited quantities. The growing and harvesting of cotton, however, required the labor of many people. From the time the seed is put into the ground until the time the cotton boll is picked, run through a gin, and baled, the crop required almost constant attention. To produce any sizable cotton crop, a large pool of labor available year-round was essential. Slaves, once seen as an unnecessary burden, now became the essential source of labor in the rapidly expanding cotton economy. Slaves, who had largely populated the coastal states of the South, were now imported into the interior to work in the cotton fields. Competition for acquiring labor made slaves more and more valuable. As prices rose, fewer and fewer people could afford to own them.

By the 1850s, cotton was the raw material that powered the world economy and slavery was the engine. Whoever could put the most land into production, plowing the profits into more land and more slaves, would reap enormous profits. Slave owning became the road to status and success for all ambitious Southerners, including free Blacks and Indians. A small farmer, if he was so inclined (and many were not), could make enough money from a small cotton farm to buy one or two slaves. With this extra manpower, he could put more land into production, make more profit in the booming cotton market, and buy more slaves. With 20 slaves, he could become a planter, and rise to social and political influence. The father of Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, began this way and became one of the richest and most powerful men in Mississippi.

Of the 1.4 million white families in the South in 1860, there were only 383,000 slaveholders. Only 46,000 planters owned 20 slaves, fewer than 3,000 owned 100 or more slaves, and only 12 Southerners owned 500 or more slaves. One individual owned 1,000 slaves. He was the richest man on the planet. Thus, only a tiny minority of people owned slaves in the South.

The rarified air of highly sophisticated historical minds harbors many intricate pet theories to account for the South’s connection with slavery, but let’s keep it simple. Wealthy slave owners were men of high social status and held political power. They were the ones who ran the state legislatures and elected men of their kind to Congress. Not surprisingly, they enjoyed great influence over Southern society and their attachment to, and defense of, slavery represented a broad consensus. Although Southern society was highly stratified, there was — in the often rough and violent Southern frontier, regardless of social position or wealth — a sense of rough equality where a white man demanded equal treatment and respect from other white men. Because it was an integral part of the landscape of the South, the institution of slavery bound slaveholders and non-slaveholders together politically, culturally, and economically. When questions arose about the future direction of the country after the Mexican-American War, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, sharing the same outlook and interests, united to defend the institution to prevent any limitation.

The North, during this same time period, was setting the stage for the industrial revolution that would transform the nation in the next hundred years. Technology harnessed to both agriculture and industry, plus a huge influx of immigrants to serve as a ready labor force, created a new dynamic economy. Textile mills (run on Southern cotton), steam engines, railroads and canals, and iron and steel factories came to dominate the landscape of New England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In 1860, the North held about 140,000 factories, which employed nearly a million and a half workers, who produced almost $2 billion worth of goods. New cities in the northwest such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee became the engines of change in the national economy. St. Louis and New Orleans became the centers of a dynamic interregional trade. Within this atmosphere of economic change and readjustment between 1850 and 1860, the North and South were becoming more disparate, confidently...