The Real Cause of the Civil War

Copyright © 2011 by Jack L. Pennington.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Background

The Northwest Ordinance or the Ordinance of 1785

Lincoln’s Speeches’ 1854-1860

Peoria Speech

Lincoln’s Springfield Speech of 1858

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates—Freeport Debate

Jonesboro Debate

The Charleston Debate

Galesburg Debate

Quincy Debate

Alton Debate

Lincoln’s 1859 speeches

Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech

The 1860 Campaign

Interim, Lame Duck, Compromise Period (November 1860-March 1861)

First Inaugural, March 4, 1861

July 4, 1861, Lincoln’s Speech Justifying the War

My Observations

Reconstruction

The Fugitive Slave Act

Hypothetical Dialogue with a Civil War Northerner

The Real Cause of the Civil War

Essays

LINCOLN in His Own Words—Lincoln Bicentennial Collector’s Edition—from the editors of American History.

American Civil War—Magazine; March 11 issue, The Shot in the Dark, by Winston Groom

Collector’s Edition: 150th Anniversary of the Civil War

TV Programs: (1) Gettysburg (2) Robert E. Lee & Ulysses S. Grant

Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address: God’s Word

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Author of Team of Rivals

Jefferson Davis and His 7 Resolutions

Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

I taught American History for thirty plus years in high schools. I found the most interesting and yet the most pathetic time in American History was the period leading to the Civil War. The threat of war was imminent and thoughtful men on both sides made frantic attempts to prevent it, yet were not able to. Why weren’t they able to prevent the South from seceding and avoid a disastrous war? The major conflict that led the South to secede appeared to be opposition to their right to extend slavery into the territories. Why couldn’t a compromise have been agreed upon? The answer, according to the American History textbook I had used, did not provide me with a satisfactory answer. The following was the textbook’s explanation:

In order to put such fears [of secession and war] to rest, moderate leaders on both sides suggested a compromise that would guarantee slavery in the states where it was already established. But southern extremists demanded much more than this. They demanded guarantees of the right to extend slavery into the Territories. Since the Republican Party was pledged to prevent the spread of slavery, the southern demands were completely unacceptable. So the last minute efforts at compromise failed.

Recently I picked up a historical magazine that revealed secrets of the presidents, and toward the end of the magazine they had historians name who they thought was the worst president. Their answer was President Buchanan. I didn’t agree with them, which brought me back to questions I had when studying the period as well as during my teaching. Since I have retired from teaching this seemed like a good time for me to examine the period and attempt to arrive at my own conclusions. I have always questioned categorical statements, especially those made by politicians or historians where I have had somewhat of a background. This questioning had sparked my interest in the Battle of the Little Big Horn and my rejection of the historical version of Custer’s actions, and it is why I ended up writing several books and articles on the battle.

I thought for my study of the prewar period, besides getting out my old college and graduate textbooks, I needed to look at the speeches Lincoln made during the period leading to the war and his presidency. I also needed to examine the interim or lame duck period, Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, his speech justifying going to war, and lastly the Reconstruction and its effect. I would have to keep in mind that the North won the war, but also had on their side the moral issue of opposing slavery. Also the fact that Lincoln was killed and thus became a martyr would have made it even harder for historians to present an unbiased view of either Lincoln or the war. In this same sense, and although I have never seen a poll which asked the question whether the American people believe the Civil War was a good war or not, I believe the answer would be that it was. The emancipation of the slaves, and the fact that the Union was kept together has created a greater conceptual image than the remembrance that 600 thousand lives were lost, or the pillaging, destruction, and the suffering of both the wounded and the families who were missing loved ones.

The main questions I wanted to attempt to answer were: What was the real cause of the Civil War and was it justified? Three subjective questions should be raised: (1) Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were the lives of the blacks in the South better off following the war and the Reconstruction than they were before? (2) Are blacks still suffering from the remnants of Jim Crow laws? (3) Would the natural time eradication of slavery as predicted by Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and other leading Northerners and Southerners have been more effective in bringing about equality and racial tolerance?

In my analysis of the period I will look at Lincoln’s speeches from the perspective of his trying to gain political office and defeat Senator Douglas, along with his speeches that enabled him to obtain the presidency, and how they effected the relation between the North and South. I realize that facts can be used to support a position and other facts can be used to oppose that position, and that theories can be looked at as logical by one side and illogical by the other. However, when the history of the period can become biased and one-sided, as I believe this period has, then this prevents us from learning the lessons we should from history. One basic lesson that we might have learned is not to condemn and berate the conciliatory and diplomatic solution to a problem while lavishing praise on a firm, undeviating approach. In other words, history has condemned the Buchanan approach that prevented war, and acclaimed Lincoln’s which brought about war. We see this today in the attempt by each political party to portray their side as strong on national defense so as not to be accused of being soft on issues of national security. Diplomacy is too often considered a sign of weakness.

I will look at Lincoln’s speeches not from what I consider the one-sided view found in our history books and magazines, but more from a syllogistic approach, in which my major premise or objective is to determine what I believe was the real cause that led to the war. My minor aims are to determine whether the war should have been avoided, and what actions would have been necessary if the war was to have been prevented. Finally, would we have been better off if we had allowed slavery to die a natural death?

This being the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War, there have been numerous articles and writings on this pre-war period. As they have portrayed the accepted version of history, I have included four essays which I wrote in response to them, and one hypothetical dialogue. I believe they help substantiate my view of the real cause of the Civil War.

My conclusion is that the real cause of the Civil War was Northern racism played on by Republican politics which was responsible for Southern secession.

BACKGROUND

L incoln was a member of the Whig Party and served a single term in Congress in 1847-49. This was at the time of the Mexican War, and Lincoln was famous for what became known as the spot resolutions in which he called on President Polk to come before Congress and show where American blood was shed on American soil.

After serving one term in Congress, Lincoln returned to his law practice in Springfield. Lincoln’s opposition to the Kansas Nebraska Act brought him back into politics. This begins the period where I will look at Lincoln’s views on the basic issues that led either directly or indirectly to the Civil War.

Lincoln was an adroit politician, and one cannot help recognize how adept he was in using presentations that were specious, metaphorical, and often they were abstract and non-sequitur. He was an expert at playing on the fears of his audience. The divided feelings brought about by the Kansas-Nebraska Act created splits in both the Whig and Democrat Party. It caused the demise of the Whig Party and a Northern and Southern divide in the Democrat Party. The breakup of the Whig Party brought on the formation of the Republican Party. Lincoln became a member of that party. John C. Fremont was their first presidential candidate in the election of 1856. He made a respectable showing, but James Buchanan the Democrat candidate received the necessary electoral votes to be President.

The Northwest Ordinance, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution were interpreted by Lincoln to express his views and supposedly blend them with those of the founding fathers. He said the Northwest Ordinance showed that Congress could pass acts preventing the extension of slavery; the Declaration of Independence represented and was meant to include the essential rights of blacks; and the Constitution gave the Union government power over the states. The states, according to Lincoln, had agreed to the Constitution and joined the Union, so they had no right to secede. Lincoln felt that secession constituted a rebellion, and that the central government had not only the right but the obligation to prevent it.

Three particular Congressional Acts must be looked at because of their central role in the issues that led to the Civil War. They were: The Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision is the other major factor that needs to be examined.

In attempting a study such as this I should mention that I am biased. I think very few wars in history are justified, and this observation certainly applies to the recent wars the United States has been engaged in. I believe if any war has been justified World War II would receive the number one position.

Lincoln attempted to use the founding fathers’ Northwest Ordinance, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution to support the positions that he took.

The Northwest Ordinance or the Ordinance of 1785

A committee was set up to survey and divide the Northwest Territory into divisions such as townships and sections, and to establish land policies. One of the provisions was that there was to be no slavery or involuntary servitude. In his Peoria speech of 1854, Lincoln brought out that in doing so the founding fathers recognized that the central government had the right to prevent the extension of slavery, and he used this to counteract Douglas’s claim that because the founding fathers supported self government they would have been in favor of popular sovereignty.

I believe this is a good example of where facts are manipulated in order to support ones position, in this case that Congress had the right to prevent slavery from entering a territory. In my study I didn’t find any example where members working under the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution even questioned that Congress didn’t have that right. However, I would say it is more of an indication that slavery was recognized both in the North and the South as being immoral, and so the central union government could allow or prevent slavery during the territorial period.

I did not read of Southerners, at that time, maintaining or advocating the principle that they had an inherent right to take slaves into a territory. Slave owners could be found in northern states, but it was also recognized that states, when forming their constitution, could say whether they were to be free or slave. Where there were slave owners, the states had the right to free those slaves. Many northern states, when freeing the slaves in their states, did not free the then slaves from their owners, but that the progeny when reaching a certain age would be free.

Since the purpose of the Northwest Ordinance was to organize and establish rules for organizing and dividing the land, one could say that at the time the concern between the North and the South was not over slavery but control of the central government and commercial policies. The North at the time felt this power rested in the South. This view would change in the eighteen hundreds.

Thomas Jefferson headed the Northwest Territorial committee of five. Three of the members, including Jefferson, were from the South, and two from the North. At the heart of the extension of slavery question is the fact that slavery was not profitable in areas that could or would not be raising cotton. This northwest region was not an area where slave owners would want to bring their slaves. One must also keep in mind that slave owners took care of not only the working slaves but their families, and economically it was important that slaves were fed and had adequate shelter. Therefore when one considers that this might be called the period of compromises, it is not hard to see that Southern delegates during the Articles and the formation of the Constitution in order to obtain other objectives would have been willing to support provisions that prevented slave owners from going into the Northwest Territory, since they knew it was not economical for them to do so.

Although one could say slavery was the emotional center of the discussion, the Missouri Compromise of 1820’s underlying concern was sectional control of the government and the effect this could have on not only the institution of slavery but the increasing economic sectional division of the country. Admittance of Missouri as a slave state could have unbalanced the number of slave and free states, and effected the policy control between the North and South. The admittance of Maine as a free state allowed the Compromise to take place. The Compromise established that for the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude line of 36o and 30’ would be closed to slavery. The line ran along the southern border of Missouri. President Monroe signed the compromise even though he believed it was a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.

After his one term in Congress, in which he had opposed the Mexican War, Lincoln had returned to his law practice in Springfield. The addition of new territory as a result of the Mexican War renewed the slavery question. An act was introduced in Congress known as the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited the extension of slavery into the new territories. It failed to pass but was favored and extolled by many Northerners and strenuously opposed by Southerners.

California’s gold rush in 1849 increased its population so fast that it was ready to come into the Union without having passed through the formation of a territorial government. It was applying as a free state. This accentuated the need to establish territorial status for the new territories. A bitter fight ensued, but the arguments of the three great leaders of the period, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, with the aid of Douglas, Davis, and others, brought about the Compromise of 1850.

Webster was bitterly attacked by Northern abolitionists for his speech. He contended that slave restrictions by Congress on California and New Mexico territories were unnecessary. He argued that even if there were no such restrictions, slavery could not exist in those regions, and therefore to apply the Wilmot Proviso to them would only serve to antagonize the South, since California and New Mexico were destined to be free. I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact the will of God. I would put in no Wilmot Proviso for the mere purpose of a taunt or reproach.

For the purpose of my study, the two main parts of the Compromise were the enacting of a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, and the organization of the territories of New Mexico and Utah with no provision for slavery during the territorial period. When these territories, or any portions of them, were ready for statehood, they were to be admitted into the Union with or without slavery as their constitutions would prescribe at the time of admission.

What is also noteworthy is the extreme opposition to the Compromise in the North by the abolitionists and the advocates of the Wilmot Proviso, but more of an indifferent support by the South because their leaders did not seem to expect that either of the proposed territories would accept slavery. This view is similar to why there was no Southern concern in preventing slavery in the Northwest Territory, or accepting a line in the Missouri Compromise.

The period between the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act could be considered comparatively quiet, but abolitionist agitation increased as did southern reaction to it. The gold rush to California made the demand for a trans-continental railroad imperative and the central location became a sectional and political demand. Since land areas were expected to be first divided into territories and to form territorial governments before applying to Congress for statehood, this created the need to formulate territories in the remaining Louisiana Purchase. Once again this brought the slavery issue to the foreground. According to Northerners, the Missouri Compromise should have settled the issue. We need to remember that at this time both of the two main parties’ members were from the North and the South. The South demanded that slavery be permitted to go into the territories, and the extension of