The Civil War: Yeah, it was About Slavery

Gordon was an escaped slave who joined
and fought for the North in the Civil War

It’s been 155 years since the Civil War. It’s been going around for years that the South didn’t secede because of slavery. Revisionist historians have delved deep into the culture, the politics, the sentiments of the day and have served up well-researched treatises on the causes of the civil war, the political strife leading up to it and the sentiments that caused it. We’ve had people writing revisionist books that cherry-pick and take out of context passages from Lincolns writings and actions, to try to show that he fought the war to keep the country together, not to free the slaves. We’ve seen people point out that the emancipation proclamation didn’t free all the slaves in America, only those in unoccupied confederate states. Ergo, Lincoln didn’t care about freeing the slaves. We’ve seen revisionists rename the conflict the “War Between the States”, “War for Southern Independence” or the “War of Northern Aggression.” 

All of this revisionist history is designed to overload the senses of the casual scholar, confuse the issue, cast doubt on the conventional wisdom and regenerate the narrative to paint the Southern cause in a more acceptable light. And it’s all poppycock, and easily swept aside with one question and one fact.

The question: Would the Civil War have happened if there had been no slavery in the United States of America?

This is the root cause. There is a common technique in Quality Systems theory for discovering the root cause of any problem called the 5 whys. Ask why something happened, and then ask why the first reason happened, etc. Eventually – usually within five iterations – you get to the root cause. If you apply the five whys to any of the revisionist reasons for the Civil War, you will eventually always come back to slavery.

What few realize today was that the road to secession was a long one. The various states didn't jump up one day and all declare their break from the US Constitution. It was a process that took nearly a year from the time that South Carolina seceded until Kentucky seceded. These states that later followed the other's lead cited their outrage that the Union was using military force to enact their will on those states left because of their slaves. The notable point of this oft-cited cause is that it seems that only slave states shared this outrage. If the cause really concerned the rights of states to secede, then whether a state was slave or free should have had no bearing on its outrage over union over-reach.

The fact: Every single state that seceded from the union published a declaration or ordinance of secession. Of those declarations that gave reasons for their secession all either cited slavery as the prima facie cause of secession, the election of Lincoln and the fear that he was an abolitionist, calling him a "sectional party." Lincoln's personal interest in freeing the slaves was subordinated to his understood duties and limitations under the constitution. Lincoln understood that he could not constitutionally abolish slavery, and said as much many times both before and after he took office.

Lincoln was elected easily by 28 electoral college votes, breaking directly in terms of slave vs. free. The fact that he was elected showed the South that the winds of public opinion were turning against them and slavery. The recent admission of Oregon and Minnesota into the union was shifting the political power towards the North, and southern slave states knew they would be soon outnumbered in electoral votes, as the populations of the increasingly urban free states boomed and shifted the electoral power north. Lincoln's election was proof of this, and it became plain that the South would never regain their influence in the House or the Oval office, the Senate would always hang by a thread, and the subtle pressure to punish slave holding states in petty fashions would only increase.

South Carolina, December 24, 1860:
“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

“For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

“This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”

Mississippi, January 9, 1861:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. "

Alabama, January 11, 1861:
"Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [i.e. slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and manacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security, therefore:"

"And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,"

Texas, February 1, 1861:
"WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression; THEREFORE,"

Virginia, April 17, 1861:
The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:

Arkansas, May 6, 1861:
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

Arkansas was adopting the "Hang together or hang separately" paradigm. Having the North win the war that was already being fought would certainly be ruinous to the slave holders of Arkansas.

Kentucky, November 20, 1961:
". . .the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, . . ."

Yes, folks, the idea that blacks aren't inferior and shouldn't be enslaved was considered an ignorant prejudice.

Any attempt to whitewash the civil war as being about anything but slavery ignores the context. If there were other causes, they weren't addressed by the requirements that the rebel states needed to comply with to be readmitted to the union. As soon as the Federal occupation ended, many state governments in the South proceeded to pass Jim Crowe laws.

Yes, the politics leading up the Civil War are fascinating to study, but whether you use the 5 whys method of root cause analysis, or just look at the cited reasons for the secession of the Southern states and their subsequent behavior, no matter how you slice it, it comes up slavery.