Causes of the Civil War
Civil War: In U.S. history, the conflict (1861–65) between the Northern states
(the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union
and formed the Confederacy. It is generally known in the South as
the War between the States and is also called the War of the
Rebellion (the official Union designation), the War of Secession,
and the War for Southern Independence. The name Civil War,
although much criticized as inexact, is most widely accepted.
Causes
The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a
class struggle, but a sectional combat having its roots in political,
economic, social, and psychological elements so complex that
historians still do not agree on its basic causes. It has been
characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the
“irrepressible conflict.” In another judgment the Civil War was
viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought
on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views
accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or
wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.
In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the
Constitution, differences between North and South were dwarfed
by their common interest in establishing a new nation. But
sectionalism steadily grew stronger. During the 19th century the
South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy
and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation
system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the
staples, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth.
The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always
more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially.
Hostility between the two sections grew perceptibly after 1820,
the year of the Missouri Compromise, which was intended as a
permanent solution to the issue in which that hostility was most
clearly expressed—the question of the extension or prohibition of
slavery in the federal territories of the West. Difficulties over the
tariff (which led John C. Calhoun and South Carolina to
nullification and to an extreme states' rights stand) and troubles
over internal improvements were also involved, but the territorial
issue nearly always loomed largest. In the North moral indignation
increased with the rise of the abolitionists in the 1830s. Since
slavery was unadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which
eventually would be admitted as free states, the South became
more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the
Union. Southerners thus strongly supported the annexation of
Texas (certain to be a slave state) and the Mexican War and even
agitated for the annexation of Cuba.
The Compromise of 1850 marked the end of the period that might
be called the era of compromise. The deaths in 1852 of Henry
Clay and Daniel Webster left no leader of national stature, but
only sectional spokesmen, such as W. H. Seward, Charles
Sumner, and Salmon P. Chase in the North and Jefferson Davis
and Robert Toombs in the South. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act
(1854) and the consequent struggle over “bleeding” Kansas the
factions first resorted to shooting. The South was ever alert to
protect its “peculiar institution,” even though many Southerners
recognized slavery as an anachronism in a supposedly enlightened
age. Passions aroused by arguments over the fugitive slave laws
and over slavery in
general were further excited by the activities of the Northern
abolitionist John Brown and by the vigorous proslavery utterances
of William L. Yancey, one of the leading Southern fire-eaters.
The Election of 1860
The “wedges of separation” caused by slavery split large
Protestant sects into Northern and Southern branches and
dissolved the Whig party. Most Southern Whigs joined the
Democratic party, one of the few remaining, if shaky, nationwide
institutions. The new Republican party, heir to the Free-Soil party
and to the Liberty party, was a strictly Northern phenomenon. The
crucial point was reached in the presidential election of 1860, in
which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated three
opponents—Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C.
Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell of the
Constitutional Union party.
Lincoln's victory was the signal for the secession of South
Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860), and that state was followed out of the
Union by six other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas. Immediately the question of federal
property in these states became important, especially the forts in
the harbor of Charleston, S.C. (see Fort Sumter). The outgoing
President, James Buchanan, a Northern Democrat who was either
truckling to the Southern, proslavery wing of his party or sincerely
attempting to avert war, pursued a vacillating course. At any rate
the question of the forts was still unsettled when Lincoln was
inaugurated, and meanwhile there had been several futile efforts
to reunite the sections, notably the Crittenden Compromise offered
by Sen. J. J. Crittenden. Lincoln resolved to hold Sumter. The new
Confederate government under President Jefferson Davis and
South Carolina were equally determined to oust the Federals.
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition Copyright ©1993, Columbia University Press.