Historiographic issues about the American Civil War

Issues of the American Civil War include questions about the name of the war, the tariff, states' rights and the nature of Lincoln's war goals. The name of the war is a result of popular use, even though the term "United States Civil War" would be more precise. Nevertheless, the phrase "American Civil War" is the standard name. For more on naming, see Naming the American Civil War.

The question of how important the tariff was in causing the war stems from the Nullification Crisis, which was South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff and lasted from 1828 to 1832. The tariff was low after 1846, and the tariff issue faded into the background by 1860 when secession began. States' rights was the justification for nullification and later secession. The most controversial right claimed by Southern states was the alleged right of Southerners to spread slavery into territories owned by the United States.

As to the question of the relation of Lincoln's war goals to causes, goals evolved as the war progressed in response to political and military issues, and can't be used as a direct explanation of causes of the war. Lincoln needed to find an issue that would unite a large but divided North to save the Union, and then found that circumstances beyond his control made emancipation possible, which was in line with his "personal wish that all men everywhere could be free".

For those who want the short and simple version of the war, the simple English version is at Simple English version of the American Civil War.

Economic issues

Abraham Lincoln

Historians generally agree that economic conflicts were not a major cause of the war. Economic historian Lee A. Craig reports, "In fact, numerous studies by economic historians over the past several decades reveal that economic conflict was not an inherent condition of North-South relations during the antebellum era and did not cause the Civil War." When numerous groups tried at the last minute in 1860-61 to find a compromise to avert war, they did not turn to economic policies. Aside from the economic institution of slavery, no other economic issues brought about the Civil War.

Regional economic differences

The South, Midwest, and Northeast had quite different economic structures. They traded with each other and each became more prosperous by staying in the Union, a point many businessmen made in 1860-61. However Charles Beard in the 1920s made a highly influential argument to the effect that these differences caused the war (rather than slavery or constitutional debates). He saw the industrial Northeast forming a coalition with the agrarian Midwest against the Plantation South. Critics pointed out that his image of a unified Northeast was incorrect because the region was highly diverse with many different competing economic interests. In 1860-61, most business interests in the Northeast opposed war. After 1950, only a few mainstream historians accepted the Beard interpretation, though it was accepted by libertarian economists. As Historian Kenneth Stampp—who abandoned Beardianism after 1950, sums up the scholarly consensus: "Most historians...now see no compelling reason why the divergent economies of the North and South should have led to disunion and civil war; rather, they find stronger practical reasons why the sections, whose economies neatly complemented one another, should have found it advantageous to remain united."

Tariffs

Federal tariffs on British imported goods sold in the South led to resentment. Controversy over whether slavery was at the root of the tariff issue dates back at least as far as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. During the debate at Alton, Lincoln said that slavery was the root cause of the Nullification crisis over a tariff, while his challenger Stephen Douglas disagreed. John C. Calhoun, who led South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff, supported tariffs and internal improvements at first, but came to oppose them in the 1820s as sectional tensions between North and South grew along with the increasingly sectional nature of slavery. Calhoun was a plantation owner who helped develop the positive good theory of slavery. Also, Calhoun said that slavery was the cause of the Nullification Crisis. While most leaders of Southern secession in 1860 mentioned slavery as the cause, Robert Rhett was a free trade extremist who opposed the tariff. However, Rhett was also a slavery extremist who wanted the Constitution of the Confederacy to legalize the African Slave Trade. Republicans also saw support for a Homestead Act, a higher tariff and a transcontinental railroad as a flank attack on the slave power. There were enough Southern Senators in the U. S. Senate to keep the tariff low after 1846. Even when the tariff was higher three decades before the war, only South Carolina revolted, and the issue was nullification, not secession. The tariff was much lower by 1860.

Free labor vs. pro-slavery arguments

Historian Eric Foner has argued that a free-labor ideology dominated thinking in the North, which emphasized economic opportunity. By contrast, Southerners described free labor as "greasy mechanics, filthy operators, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists". They strongly opposed the homestead laws that were proposed to give free farms in the west, fearing the small farmers would oppose plantation slavery. Indeed, opposition to homestead laws was far more common in secessionist rhetoric than opposition to tariffs.

States' rights issues

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy

Questions such as whether the Union was older than the states or the other way around fueled the debate over states' rights. Whether the federal government was supposed to have substantial powers or whether it was merely a voluntary federation of sovereign states added to the controversy. According to historian Kenneth M. Stampp, each section used states' rights arguments when convenient, and shifted positions when convenient.

Stampp mentioned Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States as an example of a Southern leader who said that slavery was the "cornerstone of the Confederacy" when the war began and then said that the war was not about slavery but states' rights after Southern defeat. Stampp said that Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the Lost Cause.

The historian William C. Davis also mentioned inconsistencies in Southern states' rights arguments. He explained the Confederate Constitution's protection of slavery at the national level as follows:

To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery. Of all the many testimonials to the fact that slavery, and not states rights, really lay at the heart of their movement, this was the most eloquent of all.

States' rights and slavery in the territories

The "States' rights" debate cut across the issues. Southerners argued that the federal government was strictly limited and could not abridge the rights of states as reserved in the Tenth Amendment, and so had no power to prevent slaves from being carried into new territories. States' rights advocates also cited the fugitive slave clause to demand federal jurisdiction over slaves who escaped into the North. Anti-slavery forces took reversed stances on these issues. The fugitive slave clause in the Constitution was the result of compromises between North and South when the Constitution was written. It was later strengthened by the fugitive slave law that was part of the Compromises of 1850. The Southern politician and states' rights advocate John C. Calhoun regarded the territories as the "common property" of sovereign states, and said that Congress was acting merely as the "joint agents" of the states.

States' rights and minority rights

Frederick Douglass

States' rights theories were a response to the fact that the Northern population was growing much faster than the population of the South, which meant that it was only a matter of time before the North controlled the federal government. Southerners were acting as a "conscious minority", and hoped that a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution would limit federal power over the states, and that a defense of states' rights against federal encroachments or even nullification or secession would save the South. Before 1860 most presidents were either Southern or pro-South. The North's growing population would mean the election of pro-North presidents, and the addition of free-soil states would end Southern parity with the North in the Senate. As the historian Allan Nevins described the Southern politician John C. Calhoun's theory of states' rights, "Governments, observed Calhoun, were formed to protect minorities, for majorities could take care of themselves".

Jefferson Davis stated that a "disparaging discrimination" and a fight for "liberty" against "the tyranny of an unbridled majority" gave the Confederate states a right to secede. In 1860, Congressman Laurence M. Keitt of South Carolina said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States."

The South's chosen leader, Jefferson Davis, defined equality in terms of the equal rights of states, and opposed the declaration that all men are created equal. The Constitution does include states' rights elements in that each state has the same number of Senators, and certain rights are reserved to the states or to the people. Southerners such as Davis interpreted these rights as a shield against a numerical majority of Northerners.

Clarification of causes

When the Civil War began, neither civil rights nor voting rights for blacks were stated as goals by the North. They became important afterward during Reconstruction. At first, though there was pressure to do so, not even the abolition of slavery was stated as a goal. While controversy over the morality of slavery could be contained, it was the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories that made the conflict irrepressible. Slavery was at the root of economic, moral and political differences that led to control issues, states' rights and secession.

Slavery greatly increased the likelihood of secession which in turn made war probable, irrespective of the North's stated war aims, which at first addressed strategic military concerns as opposed to ultimate political and Constitutional ones. Hostilities began as an attempt, from the Northern perspective, to defend the nation after it was attacked at Fort Sumter. Lincoln's war goals evolved as the war progressed. Lincoln mentioned the need for national unity in his March 1861 inaugural address after seven states had already declared their secession. At first Lincoln stressed the Union as a war goal to unite the War Democrats, border states and Republicans. In 1862 he added emancipation because it permanently removed the divisive issue of slavery that caused secession, an issue that Lincoln said was "somehow the cause of the war". In his 1863 Gettysburg Address he added preserving democracy to emancipation and the Union as a war goal.

Related issues

Hinton Rowan Helper's book The Impending Crisis of the South, was banned in the South and publicized by Northern Republicans. Helper, a native of North Carolina, argued in his book that slavery was bad for the economic prospects of poor white Southerners. Southern Courts refused to convict the owners of illegal slave ships such as the Echo and the Wanderer, even though hundreds of kidnapped Africans could die on a single voyage. A significant number of Southern politicians attempted to legalize the African Slave Trade and pass laws that would require every free black in the South to choose a master or mistress. Pro-slavery literature dominated the Southern media to the extent that famous Southern writers and poets didn't emerge until after the war. Even Edgar Allen Poe had to migrate to Philadelphia to earn even a meager living as a writer.

Many people on both sides of the war (with exceptions including Robert E. Lee and William T. Sherman) thought that the war would be short at first. Nineteenth century Americans didn't believe in peacetime armies, and the process of building armies was time consuming. War profiteers sold badly made equipment and rancid food at high prices when the war began.

Confederate guerrillas or bushwhackers such as William Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, the Younger Brothers and Jesse and Frank James killed pro-Union civilians in Missouri and Lawrence, Kansas. There were also attacks on Southern civilians by pro-Union Jayhawkers.

The germ theory was rejected by the medical establishment until after the war, and a large number of soldier deaths were caused by this. Army surgeons used the same saw to amputate limbs of different soldiers without cleaning or sterilizing, and, although some anesthesia existed, it was rarely used, and many injured soldiers had to drink liquor or bite leather or a bullet during amputations.

The North had its share of problems with desertion, bounty jumpers, and the New York Draft Riot. The South had even greater problems with desertion especially during the last two years of the war.

The vagaries of 19th century law allowed some (including Union soldiers Daniel Sickles and Jefferson C. Davis and Southern secessionist William Yancey) to get away with murder, and required the execution of soldiers who fell asleep at their posts or for desertion. Lincoln pardoned many of the latter group of soldiers.

Jefferson C. Davis (not to be confused with Confederate President Jefferson Davis) was especially notorious. He shot fellow Union soldier William "Bull" Nelson during an argument, and later pulled up a bridge to keep emancipated slaves from following Sherman's army. Trapped ex-slaves were then killed by Confederate Wheeler's army, and others drowned trying to flee into Ebeneezer Creek.

Women who raised money for a sanitary fair needed the written permission of their husbands to send the money to Union hospitals. Any money a married woman had legally belonged to her husband.

There were many flag controversies. The original Confederate flag was the Stars and Bars, which looked similar to the Union Stars and Stripes and caused confusion on battle fields. The Stars and Bars was replaced with the Stainless Banner, which was mostly white, and was sometimes mistaken for a white flag of surrender when the wind was down. Near the end of the war, a red vertical bar was added to the right edge of the flag to show that the South would never surrender, although this flag was quickly followed by Appomattox and Confederate defeat. The Confederacy had other flags as well, including the Bonnie Blue Flag. The Confederate Battle Flag was originally the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, and was square.

Modern Confederate flag controversies include the Confederate Battle Flag design that was added to the Georgia state flag as a protest against civil rights for blacks. Decades later, Georgia flaggers claimed that the Confederate Battle Flag design was a symbol of Southern heritage, although others saw it as a symbol of the Klan and slavery. The flag was redesigned by governor Barnes and redesigned again with the Stars and Bars replacing the Confederate Battle Flag on the Georgia state flag. South Carolina had a Confederate Battle Flag next to the state capital, which stirred controversy that local newspapers referred to as the "flag flap." Mississippi residents voted to keep the controversial Confederate Battle Flag as part of the Mississippi state flag.