cause of civil war essay

What Were the Top Causes of the Civil War?

• M.A., History, University of Florida
• B.A., History, University of Florida

The question “What caused the U.S. Civil War?” has been debated since the horrific conflict ended in 1865. As with most wars, however, there was no single cause.

The Civil War erupted from a variety of longstanding tensions and disagreements about American life and politics. For nearly a century, the people and politicians of the Northern and Southern states had been clashing over the issues that finally led to war: economic interests, cultural values, the power of the federal government to control the states, and, most importantly, slavery in American society.

While some of these differences might have been resolved peacefully through diplomacy, the institution of slavery was not among them. With a way of life steeped in age-old traditions of white supremacy and a mainly agricultural economy that depended on the labor of enslaved people, the Southern states viewed enslavement as essential to their very survival.

Slavery in the Economy and Society

At the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the enslavement of people not only remained legal in all 13 British American colonies, but it also continued to play a significant role in their economies and societies.

Before the American Revolution, the institution of slavery in America had become firmly established as being limited to persons of African ancestry. In this atmosphere, the seeds of white supremacy were sown.

Even when the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, very few Black people and no enslaved people were allowed to vote or own property.

However, a growing movement to abolish slavery had led many Northern states to enact abolitionist laws and abandon enslavement. With an economy based more on industry than agriculture, the North enjoyed a steady flow of European immigrants. As impoverished refugees from the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, many of these new immigrants could be hired as factory workers at low wages, thus reducing the need for enslaved people in the North.

How Slavery Spread Through the South

In the Southern states, longer growing seasons and fertile soils had established an economy based on agriculture fueled by sprawling plantations owned by White people that depended on enslaved people to perform a wide range of duties.

When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. At the same time, the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton created an even greater need for enslaved people. The Southern economy became a one-crop economy, depending on cotton and, therefore, on enslaved people.

Though it was often supported throughout the social and economic classes, not every White Southerner enslaved people. The population of the pro-slavery states was around 9.6 million in 1850 and only about 350,000 were enslavers. This included many of the wealthiest families, several of whom owned large plantations. At the start of the Civil War , at least 4 million enslaved people were forced to live and work on the Southern plantations.

Conflict Between the North and the South

In contrast, industry ruled the economy of the North and less emphasis was on agriculture, though even that was more diverse. Many Northern industries were purchasing the South's raw cotton and turning it into finished goods.

This economic disparity also led to irreconcilable differences in societal and political views.

In the North, the influx of immigrants—many from countries that had long since abolished slavery—contributed to a society in which people of different cultures and classes lived and worked together.

The South, however, continued to hold onto a social order based on white supremacy in both private and political life, not unlike that under the rule of racial apartheid that persisted in South Africa for decades .

In both the North and South, these differences influenced views on the powers of the federal government to control the economies and cultures of the states.

States and Federal Rights

Since the time of the American Revolution , two camps emerged when it came to the role of government. Some people argued for greater rights for the states and others argued the federal government needed to have more control.

The first organized government in the U.S. after the Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. The 13 states formed a loose Confederation with a very weak federal government. However, when problems arose, the weaknesses of the Articles caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create, in secret, the U.S. Constitution .

Strong proponents of states' rights like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were not present at this meeting. Many felt that the new Constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. They felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts.

This resulted in the idea of nullification , whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun —who resigned as vice president to represent South Carolina in the Senate—fought vehemently for nullification. When nullification would not work and many of the Southern states felt that they were no longer respected, they moved toward thoughts of secession.

Pro-Slavery States and Free States

As America began to expand—first with the lands gained from the Louisiana Purchase and later with the Mexican War —the question arose of whether new states would be pro-slavery states or free states. An attempt was made to ensure that equal numbers of free states and pro-slavery states were admitted to the Union, but over time this proved difficult.

The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820. This established a rule that prohibited enslavement in states from the former Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes, except for Missouri.

During the Mexican War, the debate began about what would happen with the new territories the U.S. expected to gain upon victory. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, which would ban enslavement in the new lands. This was shot down amid much debate.

The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay and others to deal with the balance between pro-slavery states and free states. It was designed to protect both Northern and Southern interests. When California was admitted as a free state, one of the provisions was the Fugitive Slave Act . This held individuals responsible for harboring freedom-seeking enslaved people, even if they were located in free states.

Tensions Around Slavery Rise

The  Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was another issue that further increased tensions. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free states or pro-slavery states. The real issue occurred in Kansas where pro-slavery Missourians, called "Border Ruffians," began to pour into the state in an attempt to force it toward slavery.

Problems came to a head with a violent clash at Lawrence, Kansas. This caused it to become known as " Bleeding Kansas ." The fight even erupted on the floor of the Senate when anti-slavery proponent Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was beaten on the head by South Carolina Sen. Preston Brooks.

The Abolitionist Movement

Increasingly, Northerners became more polarized against enslavement. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against enslavement and enslavers. Many in the North came to view enslavement as not just socially unjust, but morally wrong.

The abolitionists came with a variety of viewpoints. People such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass wanted immediate freedom for all enslaved people. A group that included Theodore Weld and Arthur Tappan advocated for emancipating enslaved people slowly. Still others, including Abraham Lincoln, simply hoped to keep slavery from expanding.

Many events helped fuel the cause for abolition in the 1850s.  Harriet Beecher Stowe  wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin ," a popular novel that opened many eyes to the reality of enslavement. The Dred Scott Case  brought the issues of enslaved peoples' rights, freedom, and citizenship to the Supreme Court.

Additionally, some abolitionists took a less peaceful route to fighting against slavery. John Brown and his family fought on the anti-slavery side of "Bleeding Kansas." They were responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which they killed five settlers who were pro-slavery. Yet, Brown's best-known fight would be his last when the group attacked Harper's Ferry in 1859, a crime for which he would hang.

The Election of Abraham Lincoln

The politics of the day were as stormy as the anti-slavery campaigns. All of the issues of the young nation were dividing the political parties and reshaping the established two-party system of Whigs and Democrats.

The Democratic Party was divided between factions in the North and South. At the same time, the conflicts surrounding Kansas and the Compromise of 1850 transformed the Whig Party into the Republican Party (established in 1854). In the North, this new party was seen as both anti-slavery and for the advancement of the American economy. This included the support of industry and encouraging homesteading while advancing educational opportunities. In the South, Republicans were seen as little more than divisive.

The presidential election of 1860 would be the deciding point for the Union. Abraham Lincoln represented the new Republican Party and Stephen Douglas , the Northern Democrat, was seen as his biggest rival. The Southern Democrats put John C. Breckenridge on the ballot. John C. Bell represented the Constitutional Union Party, a group of conservative Whigs hoping to avoid secession.

The country's divisions were clear on Election Day. Lincoln won the North, Breckenridge the South, and Bell the border states. Douglas won only Missouri and a portion of New Jersey. It was enough for Lincoln to win the popular vote, as well as 180 electoral votes .

Even though things were already near a boiling point after Lincoln was elected, South Carolina issued its "Declaration of the Causes of Secession " on December 24, 1860. They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests.

Southern States Begin Seceding From the Union

President James Buchanan's administration did little to quell the tension or stop what would become known as " Secession Winter ." Between Election Day and Lincoln's inauguration in March, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

In the process, the South took control of federal installations, including forts in the region, which would give them a foundation for war. One of the most shocking events occurred when one-quarter of the nation's army surrendered in Texas under the command of General David E. Twigg. Not a single shot was fired in that exchange, but the stage was set for the bloodiest war in American history.

Causes of the Civil War

• The U.S. Civil War stemmed from a complex web of tensions over economic interests, cultural values, federal government power, and most significantly, the institution of slavery.
• While the North and South clashed over these issues for decades, the Southern states, rooted in white supremacy and reliant on enslaved labor for their agricultural economy, viewed enslavement as indispensable to their way of life—thus setting the stage for conflict.
• The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, representing the anti-slavery Republican Party, triggered Southern states' secession from the Union, marking a point of no return and leading to the outbreak of the bloodiest war in American history.
• B.S., Texas A&M University

DeBow, J.D.B. "Part II: Population." Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census . Washington: Beverley Tucker, 1854. 

De Bow, J.D.B. " Statistical view of the United States in 1850 ." Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson. 

Kennedy, Joseph C.G. Population of the United States 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the 8th Census . Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1864.

• Order of Secession During the American Civil War
• American Civil War: Causes of Conflict
• Slavery in 19th Century America
• The American Civil War and Secession
• Did Uncle Tom's Cabin Help to Start the Civil War?
• American History Timeline 1851–1860
• The Hoax That a Tariff Provoked the Civil War
• The Corwin Amendment, Enslavement, and Abraham Lincoln
• The Missouri Compromise
• Top 9 Events That Led to the Civil War
• The Road to the Civil War
• U.S. Legislative Compromises Over Enslavement, 1820–1854
• Abolitionist Pamphlet Campaign
• Lecompton Constitution
• The Reconstruction Era (1865–1877)
• The Abolitionists

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 20, 2023 | Original: October 15, 2009

The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them. The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, ended in Confederate surrender in 1865. The conflict was the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and much of the South left in ruin.

Causes of the Civil War

In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions.

In the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, while the South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of Black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco.

Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America —and thus the backbone of their economy—was in danger.

Did you know? Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his famous nickname, "Stonewall," from his steadfast defensive efforts in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). At Chancellorsville, Jackson was shot by one of his own men, who mistook him for Union cavalry. His arm was amputated, and he died from pneumonia eight days later.

In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “ Bleeding Kansas ,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party , a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, the abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar institution” that sustained them. Abraham Lincoln ’s election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas—had seceded from the United States.

Outbreak of the Civil War (1861)

Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after less than two days of bombardment, leaving the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Four more southern states—Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among their citizens.

Though on the surface the Civil War may have seemed a lopsided conflict, with the 23 states of the Union enjoying an enormous advantage in population, manufacturing (including arms production) and railroad construction, the Confederates had a strong military tradition, along with some of the best soldiers and commanders in the nation. They also had a cause they believed in: preserving their long-held traditions and institutions, chief among these being slavery.

In the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) on July 21, 1861, 35,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson forced a greater number of Union forces (or Federals) to retreat towards Washington, D.C., dashing any hopes of a quick Union victory and leading Lincoln to call for 500,000 more recruits. In fact, both sides’ initial call for troops had to be widened after it became clear that the war would not be a limited or short conflict.

The Civil War in Virginia (1862)

George B. McClellan —who replaced the aging General Winfield Scott as supreme commander of the Union Army after the first months of the war—was beloved by his troops, but his reluctance to advance frustrated Lincoln. In the spring of 1862, McClellan finally led his Army of the Potomac up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers, capturing Yorktown on May 4. The combined forces of Robert E. Lee and Jackson successfully drove back McClellan’s army in the Seven Days’ Battles (June 25-July 1), and a cautious McClellan called for yet more reinforcements in order to move against Richmond. Lincoln refused, and instead withdrew the Army of the Potomac to Washington. By mid-1862, McClellan had been replaced as Union general-in-chief by Henry W. Halleck, though he remained in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Lee then moved his troops northwards and split his men, sending Jackson to meet Pope’s forces near Manassas, while Lee himself moved separately with the second half of the army. On August 29, Union troops led by John Pope struck Jackson’s forces in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas). The next day, Lee hit the Federal left flank with a massive assault, driving Pope’s men back towards Washington. On the heels of his victory at Manassas, Lee began the first Confederate invasion of the North. Despite contradictory orders from Lincoln and Halleck, McClellan was able to reorganize his army and strike at Lee on September 14 in Maryland, driving the Confederates back to a defensive position along Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg.

On September 17, the Army of the Potomac hit Lee’s forces (reinforced by Jackson’s) in what became the war’s bloodiest single day of fighting. Total casualties at the Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) numbered 12,410 of some 69,000 troops on the Union side, and 13,724 of around 52,000 for the Confederates. The Union victory at Antietam would prove decisive, as it halted the Confederate advance in Maryland and forced Lee to retreat into Virginia. Still, McClellan’s failure to pursue his advantage earned him the scorn of Lincoln and Halleck, who removed him from command in favor of Ambrose E. Burnside . Burnside’s assault on Lee’s troops near Fredericksburg on December 13 ended in heavy Union casualties and a Confederate victory; he was promptly replaced by Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker , and both armies settled into winter quarters across the Rappahannock River from each other.

After the Emancipation Proclamation (1863-4)

Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863. He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives.

In the spring of 1863, Hooker’s plans for a Union offensive were thwarted by a surprise attack by the bulk of Lee’s forces on May 1, whereupon Hooker pulled his men back to Chancellorsville. The Confederates gained a costly victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville , suffering 13,000 casualties (around 22 percent of their troops); the Union lost 17,000 men (15 percent). Lee launched another invasion of the North in June, attacking Union forces commanded by General George Meade on July 1 near Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania. Over three days of fierce fighting, the Confederates were unable to push through the Union center, and suffered casualties of close to 60 percent.

Meade failed to counterattack, however, and Lee’s remaining forces were able to escape into Virginia, ending the last Confederate invasion of the North. Also in July 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) in the Siege of Vicksburg , a victory that would prove to be the turning point of the war in the western theater. After a Confederate victory at Chickamauga Creek, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in September, Lincoln expanded Grant’s command, and he led a reinforced Federal army (including two corps from the Army of the Potomac) to victory in the Battle of Chattanooga in late November.

Toward a Union Victory (1864-65)

In March 1864, Lincoln put Grant in supreme command of the Union armies, replacing Halleck. Leaving William Tecumseh Sherman in control in the West, Grant headed to Washington, where he led the Army of the Potomac towards Lee’s troops in northern Virginia. Despite heavy Union casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania (both May 1864), at Cold Harbor (early June) and the key rail center of Petersburg (June), Grant pursued a strategy of attrition, putting Petersburg under siege for the next nine months.

Sherman outmaneuvered Confederate forces to take Atlanta by September, after which he and some 60,000 Union troops began the famous “March to the Sea,” devastating Georgia on the way to capturing Savannah on December 21. Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, fell to Sherman’s men by mid-February, and Jefferson Davis belatedly handed over the supreme command to Lee, with the Confederate war effort on its last legs. Sherman pressed on through North Carolina, capturing Fayetteville, Bentonville, Goldsboro and Raleigh by mid-April.

Meanwhile, exhausted by the Union siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Lee’s forces made a last attempt at resistance, attacking and captured the Federal-controlled Fort Stedman on March 25. An immediate counterattack reversed the victory, however, and on the night of April 2-3 Lee’s forces evacuated Richmond. For most of the next week, Grant and Meade pursued the Confederates along the Appomattox River, finally exhausting their possibilities for escape. Grant accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. On the eve of victory, the Union lost its great leader: The actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14. Sherman received Johnston’s surrender at Durham Station, North Carolina on April 26, effectively ending the Civil War.

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From States’ Rights to Slavery: What Caused the American Civil War?

The Northern and Southern sections of the United States developed along different lines. The South remained a predominantly agrarian economy while the North became more and more industrialized. Different social cultures and political beliefs developed. All of this led to disagreements on issues such as taxes, tariffs and internal improvements as well as states’ rights versus federal rights. At the crux of it all, however, was the fight over slavery.

Causes of the Civil War

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The texas civil war museum lowers its flag.

The burning issue that led to the disruption of the union was the debate over the future of slavery. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution.

The agrarian South utilized slaves to tend its large plantations and perform other duties. On the eve of the Civil War, some 4 million Africans and their descendants toiled as slave laborers in the South. Slavery was interwoven into the Southern economy even though only a relatively small portion of the population actually owned slaves. Slaves could be rented or traded or sold to pay debts. Ownership of more than a handful of slaves bestowed respect and contributed to social position, and slaves, as the property of individuals and businesses, represented the largest portion of the region’s personal and corporate wealth, as cotton and land prices declined and the price of slaves soared.

The states of the North, meanwhile, one by one had gradually abolished slavery. A steady flow of immigrants, especially from Ireland and Germany during the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, insured the North a ready pool of laborers, many of whom could be hired at low wages, diminishing the need to cling to the institution of slavery.

Th e Dred Scott Decision

Dred Scott was a slave who sought citizenship through the American legal system, and whose case eventually ended up in the Supreme Court. The famous Dred Scott Decision in 1857 denied his request stating that no person with African blood could become a U.S. citizen. Besides denying citizenship for African-Americans, it also overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had restricted slavery in certain U.S. territories.

States’ Rights

States’ Rights refers to the struggle between the federal government and individual states over political power. In the Civil War era, this struggle focused heavily on the institution of slavery and whether the federal government had the right to regulate or even abolish slavery within an individual state. The sides of this debate were largely drawn between northern and southern states, thus widened the growing divide within the nation.

Abolitionist Movement

By the early 1830s, those who wished to see that institution abolished within the United States were becoming more strident and influential. They claimed obedience to “higher law” over obedience to the Constitution’s guarantee that a fugitive from one state would be considered a fugitive in all states. The fugitive slave act along with the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped expand the support for abolishing slavery nationwide.

Harriet Beecher S towe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabins was published in serial form in an anti-slavery newspaper in 1851 and in book format in 1852. Within two years it was a nationwide and worldwide bestseller. Depicting the evils of slavery, it offered a vision of slavery that few in the nation had seen before. The book succeeded at its goal, which was to start a wave of anti-slavery sentiment across the nation. Upon meeting Stowe, President Lincoln remarked, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

The Underground Railroad

Some abolitionists actively helped runaway slaves to escape via “the Underground Railroad,” and there were instances in which men, even lawmen, sent to retrieve runaways were attacked and beaten by abolitionist mobs. To the slave holding states, this meant Northerners wanted to choose which parts of the Constitution they would enforce, while expecting the South to honor the entire document. The most famous activist of the underground railroad was Harriet Tubman , a nurse and spy in the Civil War and known as the Moses of her people.

The Missouri Compromise

Additional territories gained from the U.S.–Mexican War of 1846–1848 heightened the slavery debate. Abolitionists fought to have slavery declared illegal in those territories, as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had done in the territory that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Advocates of slavery feared that if the institution were prohibited in any states carved out of the new territories the political power of slaveholding states would be diminished, possibly to the point of slavery being outlawed everywhere within the United States. Pro- and anti-slavery groups rushed to populate the new territories.

In Kansas, particularly, violent clashes between proponents of the two ideologies occurred. One abolitionist in particular became famous—or infamous, depending on the point of view—for battles that caused the deaths of pro-slavery settlers in Kansas. His name was John Brown. Ultimately, he left Kansas to carry his fight closer to the bosom of slavery.

The Raid On Harpers Ferry

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and a band of followers seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in what is believed to have been an attempt to arm a slave insurrection. (Brown denied this at his trial, but evidence indicated otherwise.) They were dislodged by a force of U.S. Marines led by Army lieutenant colonel Robert E. Lee.

Brown was swiftly tried for treason against Virginia and hanged. Southern reaction initially was that his acts were those of a mad fanatic, of little consequence. But when Northern abolitionists made a martyr of him, Southerners came to believe this was proof the North intended to wage a war of extermination against white Southerners. Brown’s raid thus became a step on the road to war between the sections.

T he Election Of Abraham Lincoln

Exacerbating tensions, the old Whig political party was dying. Many of its followers joined with members of the American Party (Know-Nothings) and others who opposed slavery to form a new political entity in the 1850s, the Republican Party. When the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, Southern fears that the Republicans would abolish slavery reached a new peak. Lincoln was an avowed opponent of the expansion of slavery but said he would not interfere with it where it existed.

Southern Secession

That was not enough to calm the fears of delegates to an 1860 secession convention in South Carolina. To the surprise of other Southern states—and even to many South Carolinians—the convention voted to dissolve the state’s contract with the United States and strike off on its own.

South Carolina had threatened this before in the 1830s during the presidency of Andrew Jackson , over a tariff that benefited Northern manufacturers but increased the cost of goods in the South. Jackson had vowed to send an army to force the state to stay in the Union, and Congress authorized him to raise such an army (all Southern senators walked out in protest before the vote was taken), but a compromise prevented the confrontation from occurring.

Perhaps learning from that experience the danger of going it alone, in 1860 and early 1861 South Carolina sent emissaries to other slave holding states urging their legislatures to follow its lead, nullify their contract with the United States and form a new Southern Confederacy. Six more states heeded the siren call: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Others voted down secession—temporarily.

Fort Sumter

On April 10, 1861, knowing that resupplies were on their way from the North to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, provisional Confederate forces in Charleston demanded the fort’s surrender. The fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused. On April 12, the Confederates opened fire with cannons. At 2:30 p.m. the following day, Major Anderson surrendered.

War had begun. Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee, refusing to fight against other Southern states and feeling that Lincoln had exceeded his presidential authority, reversed themselves and voted in favor of session. The last one, Tennessee, did not depart until June 8, nearly a week after the first land battle had been fought at Philippi in Western Virginia. (The western section of Virginia rejected the session vote and broke away, ultimately forming a new, Union-loyal state, West Virginia. Other mountainous regions of the South, such as East Tennessee, also favored such a course but were too far from the support of Federal forces to attempt it.)

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Prelude to war

• Comparison of North and South
• The high commands
• Strategic plans
• The war in 1861
• The Peninsular Campaign
• Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) and Antietam
• Fredericksburg
• The Emancipation Proclamation
• African American troops
• Trans-Mississippi theatre and Missouri
• Operations in Kentucky and Tennessee
• The Copperheads
• The Southern home front
• Photography
• Chancellorsville
• Conscription and the New York City draft riot
• Arkansas and Vicksburg
• Chickamauga and Chattanooga
• Grant’s Overland Campaign
• Sherman’s Georgia campaigns and total war
• Western campaigns
• Sherman’s Carolina campaigns
• The final land operations
• The naval war
• The cost and significance of the Civil War

What caused the American Civil War?

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The American Civil War was the culmination of the struggle between the advocates and opponents of slavery that dated from the founding of the United States. This sectional conflict between Northern states and slaveholding Southern states had been tempered by a series of political compromises, but by the late 1850s the issue of the extension of slavery to the western states had reached a boiling point. The election of Abraham Lincoln , a member of the antislavery Republican Party , as president in 1860 precipitated the secession of 11 Southern states, leading to a civil war.

The Union won the American Civil War. The war effectively ended in April 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The final surrender of Confederate troops on the western periphery came in Galveston, Texas, on June 2.

How many people died during the Civil War?

It is estimated that from 752,000 to 851,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War. This figure represents approximately 2 percent of the American population in 1860. The Battle of Gettysburg , one of the bloodiest engagements during the Civil War, resulted in about 7,000 deaths and 51,000 total casualties.

Important people during the American Civil War included Abraham Lincoln , the 16th president of the United States, whose election prompted the secession of Southern states; Jefferson Davis , the president of the Confederacy ; Ulysses S. Grant , the most successful and prominent general of the Union; and Robert E. Lee , Grant’s counterpart in the Confederacy.

The modern usage of Confederate symbols, especially the Confederate Battle Flag and statues of Confederate leaders, is considered controversial because many associate such symbols with racism , slavery , and white supremacy . The flag was revived as a popular symbol in the 1940s and ’50s by the Dixiecrat Democratic splinter group and others who opposed the American civil rights movement .

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American Civil War , four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America .

The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina , Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , Texas , Virginia , Arkansas , Tennessee , and North Carolina ) in 1860–61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over slavery . Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture—mostly smaller farms that relied on free labour—remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, along with the telegraph.

By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and that relied on slaves as the main labour force . Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners invested their money in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.

The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the “peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labour, came to believe, in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated . White Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through compromise. When Abraham Lincoln , the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party , won the 1860 presidential election , seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America .

In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the harbour of Charleston , South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under P.G.T. Beauregard . Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy.

With war upon the land, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states, although he insisted that they did not legally constitute a sovereign country but were instead states in rebellion. He also directed the secretary of the treasury to advance $2 million to assist in the raising of troops, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus , first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country. The Confederate government had previously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months’ service, and this figure was soon increased to 400,000.

The Reasons for Secession: A Documentary Study

Mass meeting endorsing the call for secession, Charleston, South Carolina. 

John Pierce

The root cause of the American Civil War is perhaps the most controversial topic in American history. Even before the war was over, scholars in the North and South began to analyze and interpret the reasons behind the bloodshed.

The scholars immediately disagreed over the causes of the war and disagreement persists today. Many maintain that the primary cause of the war was the Southern states’ desire to preserve the institution of slavery. Others minimize slavery and point to other factors, such as taxation or the principle of States' Rights.

In 2011, at the outset of the sesquicentennial, a Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were significantly divided on the issue, with 48% saying the war was "mainly about states' rights," 38% saying the war was "mainly about slavery," with the remainder answering "both equally" or "neither/don't know."

One method by which to analyze this historical conflict is to focus on primary sources.  Every state in the Confederacy issued an “Article of Secession” declaring their break from the Union. Four states went further. Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina all issued additional documents, usually referred to as the “ Declarations of Causes ," which explain their decision to leave the Union.

Two major themes emerge in these documents: slavery and states' rights.  All four states strongly defend slavery while making varying claims related to states' rights.  Other grievances, such as economic exploitation and the role of the military, receive limited attention in some of the documents.  This article will present, in detail, everything that was said in the Declarations of Causes pertaining to these topics.

1) Each declaration makes the defense of slavery a clear objective.

Mississippi:  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 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.

Texas:  The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.

South Carolina:  Those [Union] States have assumed 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.

Georgia:  That reason was [the North's] fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.

2) Some states argue that slavery should be expanded.

Georgia:  We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it… or an equal participation in the whole of it. The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice.

Texas:  The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

3) Abolitionism is attacked as a method of inciting violent uprisings.

Georgia:  For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. … These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

Mississippi:  [Abolitionism] advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst. It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

Texas:  The people [of non-slave holding states] have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States... They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.

4) Mississippi and Georgia point out that slavery accounts for a huge portion of the Southern economy.

Mississippi:  We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.

Georgia:  But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere.

States' Rights

1) The states argue that the Union is a compact, one that can be annulled if the states are not satisfied with what they receive in return from other states and/or from the federal government.

South Carolina:  We hold...that the mode of its [the federal government] formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

Georgia:  Our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offenses against the laws of nations. These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them.

2) The states argue that the North's reluctance to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (mandating that fugitive slaves be returned to the South) means that the compact is no longer satisfactory.

South Carolina:  In the state of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

Texas:  The States… by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the Fugitive Slave Clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation.

Other Grievances

1) All of the states negatively mention Abraham Lincoln's election and his suspected abolitionist leanings.

Georgia:  This is the party to whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

South Carolina:  On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

Texas:  And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

Mississippi:  It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood. Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it.

2) Georgia accuses Northern manufacturing interests of exploiting the South and dominating the federal government.

Georgia:  The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of  the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country.

3) Texas expresses dissatisfaction with federal military protection.

Texas:  The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

Debates concerning the true causes of the Civil War are unlikely to cease.  Historians often cherry-pick evidence that supports preconceived notions while ignoring large quantities of contradictory material.  When that impulse is fueled by a fervent desire to find reconciliation and consensus, as was the case after the Civil War, the work of historians becomes especially murky.  Primary sources such as the Declarations of Causes are essential to a balanced study of history.

The Lost Cause: Definition and Origins

The Dred Scott Case: Dred Scott v. Sanford

"Cotton is King"

Explore causes for the war.

The Causes of the American Civil War

Introduction.

The Civil War (1861-1865) was one of the most significant events in American history that paved the way for future generations to live in ways that were unimaginable a few years later. It preserved the unity of the nation, gave a much-needed boost to the American economy, and turned the country into the land of opportunity that it remains to this day. The positive outcomes came at a high price: the Civil War is by far the deadliest war that has ever been fought on American soil. It is now estimated that some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers lost their lives, millions more were injured, and much of the South was left in debris (Woodworth & Higham 1996). Still, decades after the Civil War ended, its causes and origins still generate controversies among historians. This essay argues that it was the political control, states’ rights, and economics that revolving around the issue of slavery that caused the Civil War.

The Causes of the Civil War

The great economic divide.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 was far from sudden or surprising: in fact, it was the logical result of the decades of simmering tension between the North and the South. The issue that led to the disruption of the Union was slavery – an exploitative institution dating back to the 15th century when the Transatlantic slave trade began. Fast forward to the mid-19th century, the United States was experiencing fast-paced economic growth as a whole, though with a growing divide in the economic capacity between the country’s Northern and Southern regions (Woodworth & Higham 1996). The North enjoyed well-established manufacturing and industry while its agriculture was primarily confined to small-scale farms.

In contrast, the South’s economy relied on large-scale farming sustained by the labor of African slaves that were growing certain crops with an emphasis on cotton and tobacco. By the year 1860, despite housing a fourth of the country’s free population, the South only had 10% of the country’s capital (Woodworth & Higham 1996). Other figures from back then are as convincing: after the Industrial Revolution, the North had five times more factories than the South (Woodworth & Higham 1996). Besides, nine out of ten skilled workers in the US resided in the North (Woodworth & Higham 1996). Since they were not enslaved, they could freely refine their skills, choose a workplace of their liking, and propel the economic growth.

The Start of the Abolitionist Movement

As early as the 1830s, the Union saw the emergence and development of the anti-slavery abolitionist movement in the North. It was probably triggered by the so-called Missouri compromise when in 1820, amidst growing tensions, the US Congress proclaimed Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state (Shi & Tindall, 2016). The majority of early abolitionists were religious, White people – they appealed to religion when making their argument and saw slavery as an abomination (Duberman, 2015). Soon, the movement was joined by Black men and women who escaped captivity. Together, abolitionists became an active group that was sending petitions to Congress, ran candidates for political office, and popularized anti-slavery literature in the South. In summation, by opposing slavery’s extension into the new territories and criticizing the entire institution, abolitionists were endangering the backbone of the Southern economy.

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Proposed by Abraham Lincoln’s main opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 defeated the progress made by the Abolitionist movement. The new bill mandated “popular sovereignty”: essentially, settlers of a territory now had the right to decide whether slavery will be legal within a new state’s borders (Shi & Tindall, 2016). The Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that made slavery in the territories north of latitude 36°30´ illegal. It further aggravated the tension between the North and the South. The North considered the 1820 Missouri compromise an imperfect but mutually beneficial agreement. The South, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly in support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act because the issue of slavery now could be handled locally.

It was clear that the election in Kansas would settle the first important precedent after the law went into effect. For this reason, both supporters and opponents of slavery hastily moved to Kansas to tip the outcome of the first election. At first, it was pro-slavery settlers who led the elections; however, the results were found to be fraudulent by anti-slavery settlers that refused to accept them. Soon, the anti-slavery settlers organized another election, in which pro-slavery settlers refused to partake. The conflict led to the emergence of two opposing legislatures on the Kansas territory.

It was not long until the clashes between slavery opponents and supporters became violent. As the number of deaths was rising, the territory was nicknamed “Bleeding Kansas.” After a series of events that included President Pierce’s attempts to disperse violence, Congress did not recognize the constitution drawn up by the pro-slavery settlers. Eventually, the anti-slavery sentiment came to dominate the scene, and on January 29, 1861, right before the start of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state.

The Dred Scott Case

Following the controversial 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act , the Dred Scott case was yet another event that increased tension between pro- and anti-slavery factions in the Nothern and Southern regions of the US (Shi & Tindall, 2016). Also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford , the Dred Scott case was a decades-long fight for freedom by a Black enslaved man and his wife. Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, were the property of John Emerson who moved several times throughout his life, taking his slaves to different states, including those where slavery was prohibited. After John Emerson’s death, his wife, Irene inherited the slaves who at that point, wanted to be freed. The woman refused, which led Dred and Harriet to file a lawsuit on the grounds of wrongful enslavement. After being brought to several courts, the case ended in the outcome favoring the pro-slavery sentiment, which, however, allowed the anti-slavery North to gain a momentum and consolidate around the issue.

The Election of Abraham Lincoln

Indeed, many events led to the eventual secession of several states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) from the Union. Yet, the final straw that caused the start of the Civil War was the election of Abraham Lincoln. When he was elected, Lincoln was a little-known Illinois legislator. Yet, he led the newly formed Republican party to victory against three major party candidates. Today, it is argued that what enabled Lincoln’s victory was the deep schism and inability to see eye to eye in the Democratic party. Both Democrats Douglas and Breckinridge supported popular sovereignty, though they had opposing views on the federal slave code (Woodworth & Higham 1996). The candidate from another young political party, the Constitutional Union, Bell sought to avoid the slavery issue altogether (Woodworth & Higham 1996). The election of an antislavery northerner as the 16th President of the United States enraged many southerners. Lincoln won without a single Southern electoral vote, which made Southerners feel as if their interests were dismissed and neglected.

The Counterargument and Its Validity

Even though today, the majority of historians agree that it was the economic, political, and social issues of slavery that led to the 1861 outbreak, there is a minor group of historical revisionists who think differently. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy , or simply the Lost Cause , is an American pseudo-historical, negationist theory that defends the Confederate States and their motivation to fight in the Civil War (Bonekemper 2015). Namely, the Lost Cause states that the cause of the Confederate States’ military actions was not only just but borderline heroic. Allegedly, the states were fighting to preserve the Southern way of living in the face of increasing aggression from the Union (Bonekemper 2015). The Lost Cause theory almost completely ignores the reality of slavery and its impact on the dynamics between the Northern and Southern states. Today, it is argued that such historical negationism served the purpose of perpetuating white supremacy in the form of nationwide policies such as the Jim Crow laws.

The historical thought negating the role of slavery persisted to this day. The most widespread myth about the causes of the Civil War has found its way into history books and school curriculums. Loewen (2008), the author of “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ about the ‘Lost Cause,’” reports that between 60% and 75% of school history teachers emphasize state rights as the cause of the Civil War. However, as argued by Loewen, the original documents of the Confederacy show how much the war revolved around slavery. For instance, when declaring its secession from the Union, Mississippi stated that “[its] position [was] thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world (Loewen 2008).” Similarly, Texas justified its decision to secede by saying that “[Black people] were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race.” According to the document, only slavery could make their presence on American soil “beneficial or tolerable (Loewen 2008).”

As seen from these two excerpts, the Confederate states were outspoken about their stance on slavery and its role in economics and politics. It was slavery that motivated them to make decisions as radical and profound as secession. Therefore, it is not correct to downplay slavery when discussing the causes of the Civil War. Yet, one can readily imagine why such views are likely to persist. Southerners may be reluctant to demonize their ancestors and feel defensive about their own legacy. Besides, the persistence of the Lost Cause helps to uphold institutionalized racism and serve White people’s interests before Black people’s interests.

The American Civil War is the deadliest war that has ever taken place on American soil. It was a turning point for the United States and shaped the way Americans live today. At present, there is little doubt that the main trigger for the Civil War was the issue of slavery and its political and economic implications. Before the start of the war, Southern states were inferior to Northern states economically as they relied heavily on slave labor and large-scale farming. The growing abolitionist sentiment endangered the very backbone of the Southern economy. After several acts and court rulings that could not reconcile proslavery and antislavery advocates, the election of Abraham Lincoln was the final straw that led to the secession of six states. Today, some people still support the Lost Cause theory that negates slavery as the main cause of the Civil War. The theory does not find any supporting historical evidence and is likely used by White supremacists to defend their views.

Bonekemper, Edward H. 2015. The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won . New York: Simon and Schuster.

Duberman, Martin B. 2015. The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Loewen, James W. 2008. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got wrong . New York: The New Press.

Shi, David E., & Tindall, George Brown. 2016. America: A Narrative History . New York: WW Norton & Company.

Woodworth, Steven E. & Robert Higham. 1996. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research . Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Causes of Civil War Cause and Effect Essay

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Introduction

Slavery as the cause of civil war, south carolina’s case, texas’ case.

Bibliography

The American civil war is a conflict that was experienced in the United States in the 19 th century. This war was fought between the Northerners and the Southerners in which the fate of slaves was the bone of contention. The Northerners were against the slavery institution in the South, and this was resented by the Southerners. This paper will provide an analysis of the American civil war with particular reference to slavery as the main cause.

Slavery was a very sensitive issue in the United States during 19 th century. The United States Constitution was relatively tolerant in respect to the slavery institution for the sake of uniting the country. The Constitution included a clause on slavery so as to avoid questions related to America’s peculiar institution of African slavery.

Slavery was regarded as the appropriate status for the Africans by the slave-holding states. Stephens observed that slavery “was an immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” [1] . Even though it was included in the Constitution, Jefferson predicted that African slavery was “rock upon which the old the old union would split” [2] .

Jefferson and other statesmen of the time were of the view that African slavery was illegal and ideally wrong. What was clear is that these statesmen did not have a clue on how to handle the situation but they hoped that in some way or the other, this vice would diminish. This idea was not entrenched in the Constitution despite dominating the minds of many people at the time. In fact, the Constitution secured essential guarantees to slavery for as long as this institution lasted.

Without a Constitutional backing, the ideas held by the various statesmen that slavery would diminish with time were not to be realized. The government that was put in place entrenched the concept of African slavery in that the Africans were regarded as lesser humans and unequal to the whites. The position of the Africans as slaves was justified as being in line with nature [3] .

The constitutions of various states in the United States included clauses that entrenched the enslavement of African Americans. However, on many occasions, the Federal Government would step in to act in violation of these provisions that emphasized on slavery. The states that encouraged slavery saw this as an encroachment of the Federal Government to the rights of the states. This prompted many of the states to contemplate withdrawing from the Federal Union [4] .

States like South Carolina became frustrated with the encroachments that were being advanced by the Federal Government and opted to secede when it could take no more. South Carolina held on the principles that it had the rights like any other state to govern itself without interference from outside. Also, it was asserted that the people did have the right to abolish a government when it was deemed as not adhering to the intended functions [5] .

South Carolina, in presenting its case for secession, it argued that some of the states had for a long time deliberately refused to adhere to the Constitutional provision which required states in the North to return fugitive slaves that escaped from the South [6] .

In fact, these states had enacted statutes which did not encourage slavery and the return of fugitive slaves to the South. It was argued that various states such as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa had put legislations in place that nullified Acts of Congress, or thwarted any efforts to implement such Acts [7] .

In most of these states, the fugitive slaves were discharged from service labor. In this regard, the slave-holding states argued that the Constitutional compact had been deliberately violated. The slave-holding states claimed that the non-slave holding states had assumed the right in which they wanted to decide on the domestic institutions of other states. The non-slave holding states were also accused of having violated the Constitution by denouncing the slavery institution that was protected by the Federal Constitution.

These states were also accused of having allowed the formation of societies that agitated for the abolition of slavery thereby disturbing peace and tranquility in the slave-holding states. In addition, these states were accused of offering assistance to the slaves in their quest to leave their ‘homes.’ With all these accusations being leveled against the Northern states, a line was drawn between the northern states and the Southern states [8] .

The Northern states were accused of being determined in their quest to eliminate slavery which was embraced in the Southern states. This drew a lot of resentments from the slave-holding states.

The Southern states feared that the south would be excluded from main issues in the country. It was also feared that the guarantees of the Constitution was at risk of being trounced and that there shall be no equal rights being enjoyed all states. Those states that upheld slavery feared that they stood to lose their self-government power and that the Federal Government was perceived as an enemy [9] .

Texas had opted to join the United States with the promise from the former that it would be regarded as an equal state just like the others. This proposal was accepted by the people of Texas in December of 1845 and Texas was admitted to join the Confederate Union.

The main reason for joining the Confederated Union was to enable Texas to enhance its well-being. In this case, Texas hoped that the Confederated Union would be beneficial to her in the promotion of the states’ welfare; insuring domestic peaceful co-existence; and securing the benefits of peace and liberty of the state to its people [10] .

Texas joined the Confederated Union while keeping its own state constitution with guarantees from the Federal Constitution and the Compact of annexation that Texas, like any other state, would be allowed to realize its potential. Texas joined the Confederated Union while still holding onto the institution of slavery which asserted that the Africans were to serve the Whites.

The people of Texas expected that this institution was to be protected and upheld even in the future. Texas, as a slave-holding state, established a very strong connection with the states of the Confederated Union that encouraged slave-holding. The ties between Texas and these states were enhanced by association as they shared something in common [11] .

Texas was suspect of the position taken by the non-slave holding states that looked determined to frustrate the much valued slavery institution. The Northern states, which had a controlling majority in the Federal Government, were accused of pushing for the destruction of the slavery institution that was highly valued in Texas and other slave-holding states [12] .

The Northern states were accused of being disloyal whereas the Federal Government was accused of not protecting the interests of the slave-holding states. In reference to the Northern state, it has been noted that, “infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws …” [13] The Northern states were also accused of waging a war on the property of the Southern states.

As the Northern states were being accused of working hard to destroy the slavery institution of the Southern states, the Federal Government was accused of failing to protect the lives and property of the slave-holding states and its citizens.

This was interpreted to mean that the federal government was partially supporting the Northern states in their mission. Texas in particular, asserted that the Federal Government had failed to offer protection to its people and property against the Indian communities that were regarded as savage.

Also, the Federal Government was accused of having failed to protect the people of Texas from the cruel attacks of banditti who came from Mexico. In addition, it was argued that when Texas had come up with a plan to facilitate the protection of the state, the Federal Government was accused of refusing to fund the plan. This caused a lot of frustrations among the Texans who argued that their state had become more insecure than it was before joining the Confederated Union [14] .

The Northern states including Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio and New York among others were accused of having enacted various legislations that were in violation of “the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution” [15] .

This opened a leeway for the passage of laws that annulled the material provision of the compact that had been designed to enhance friendship between the slave-holding states and the non-slave holding states. To the Texans and the citizens of slave-holding states, the compact was adopted to promote justice and wisdom. The slave-holding states accused the non-slave holding states of having imposed fines and penalties on the citizens and officers who implemented the provisions of the compact or the federal laws that related to slavery.

Given that the non-slave states were determined to violate the federal provisions and the compact provisions, the slave-holding states were frustrated and opted for secession. The Northern states were accused of championing for the abolition of slavery throughout the United States and called for equality of all human races.

This was contested by the slave-holding states which to them, equality of human races was “a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law” [16] .

The calls for abolition of slavery by the non-slave holding states was said to have undermined the slave-holding states and made them appear to be minority states in the Union. The abolition movements were accused of inciting the slaves and exacerbating hatred between slave-holding states and the non-slave holding states.

The slave-holding states were frustrated by calls from the non-slave holding states that wanted to do away with the slavery institution. It can be observed that slavery was a contested issue in the United States which ultimately led to the civil war. Each side in the war advanced its own justification, and since each side was willing to compromise, hell broke loose and the war was inevitable.

Dew, B. Charles. Apostles of disunion: southern secession commissioners and the causes of the Civil War . (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

Stephens H. Alexander. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861) In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868).

South Carolina Justifies Secession (1860) In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868).

University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.” The American Civil War Homepage. Web.

• Alexander H. Stephens. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861), In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868), 71
• Alexander H. Stephens. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861), 71
• Alexander H. Stephens. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861), In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868), 72
• Alexander H. Stephens. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy (1861), 72
• South Carolina Justifies Secession (1860), In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868), 60
• Charles B. Dew. Apostles of disunion: southern secession commissioners and the causes of the Civil War. (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 12
• South Carolina Justifies Secession (1860), In Frank H. Moor, ed. The Rebellion Record, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861-1868), 61
• South Carolina Justifies Secession (1860), 61
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.” The American Civil War Homepage. para 1
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States,” para 3
• Charles B. Dew. Apostles of disunion: southern secession commissioners and the causes of the Civil War. (Charlottesville; London: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 11
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.” The American Civil War Homepage. para 5
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States,” para 6
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States,” para 9
• University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.” The American Civil War Homepage. para 10
• Laws that the Victorious North Passed to Ensure Peaceful Cohabitation
• Slavery and the Old South
• How Statesmen Think: Deterrence Depends on Perceptions
• The Bay of Pigs Debacle: How It Began and Failed
• Slavery and the Underground Railroad
• Analyzing the Political Cartoons of Dr. Seuss
• Tracing the America’s History
• How much of a Role have the Issues of ”race” and ”class” played in U.S. History (1865)
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, October 25). Causes of Civil War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-of-civil-war/

"Causes of Civil War." IvyPanda , 25 Oct. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/causes-of-civil-war/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Causes of Civil War'. 25 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Causes of Civil War." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-of-civil-war/.

1. IvyPanda . "Causes of Civil War." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-of-civil-war/.

IvyPanda . "Causes of Civil War." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/causes-of-civil-war/.

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Who/What Caused the Civil War?

• By: John J. Tierney Jr.
• March 4, 2019

The Civil War, America’s worst experience, was caused by people, as are all wars. But which ones? The title of this essay implies that either certain people or their institutions caused this calamity. Who or what? Thus, the ultimate causation was “nature,” either human or human-created.

Interesting, but not much else. Neither explanation separates the American Civil War from any other war. But can they be separated? Kenneth Waltz, in his profound inquiry on war, Man, the State and War (1959) examines three “levels of analysis” — human beings, the nature of their political institutions, and the “international system” (anarchy). 

But the American Civil War was within a shared political institution (democratic republic) and was, thus, “domestic” and not international. That leaves only the first cause, human, but, again, who?

Today, the legacy of the Civil War, more than a century and a half later, can still dominate public discourse. Daily reminders of slavery and “racism,” erasing of memorials to both and to the Confederacy have become commonplace in the media, entertainment, politics, and most all aspects of contemporary culture. (I recently toured Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, and heard more of his slave/lover Sally Hemmings than of Jefferson).

Within this perspective, it is commonly held that slavery caused the Civil War. How can that be? The institution of slavery was present from the beginning and was still legal in all thirteen colonies in 1776. During the Civil War it existed only in the south and was not legally outlawed until after the war (thirteenth amendment). The United States was the only country in the world where a war was required to end slavery, but did the institution pull the trigger at Fort Sumter? 

How can an institution that existed for centuries in a country, and was universal, cause a military conflict that nearly terminated its own existence? What took so long? Why didn’t the Civil War begin in 1661 or 1761 or 1850?  And if slavery was the reason, why wasn’t it announced at the beginning of the war instead as a moral causation after the Battle of Antietam (Emancipation Proclamation).

The logical answer, of course, is that slavery was a “background” cause, not a precipitate one. But that relieves human decisions as causations and blames the institutions they created. That also means that only backgrounds cause wars.

The same can be said of democracy as inherently “peaceful,” as opposed to dictatorships as inherently warlike. In American history (“Wilsonianism”), this has grown into an article of faith. So has the slavery myth.

In turn, slavery has its own background: cotton and the invention of the cotton gin (1792). Translated into human beings, this means that Eli Whitney (the inventor) was more responsible for the war than Jefferson Davis. It means that the British demand for cotton was more important than the 1000 (or less) men who owned plantations. And it might mean that the southern climate created both plantations and cotton, then slaves, and then war.

If this list is too conflated for reality, then a closer examination is needed. What is more important for the Civil War, slavery or its mortal enemy, abolitionism? Slavery was condoned in the Bible, both Old and New, and was present in North America before Columbus. The abolition movement began around 1830 and was confined to the North, especially New England. Secession started in December 1860 in South Carolina, and the war began four months later.

Do the math.

In his classic study of “pragmatism” in America, The Metaphysical Club (2001), Louis Menand (CCNY Professor) notes the impact that the Civil War had upon abolitionism and its philosophical supporters, principally Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey. Holmes, in particular, was wounded three times and looked upon the war as an unnecessary and tragic calamity engineered in large part by the insistence of abolitionism as a total and final solution to slavery. They later formed a “Metaphysical Club” at Harvard that tried to reconcile their pre-war beliefs with the calamity that the war had inflicted on the whole society, especially the horrible death toll (over 700,000 in a population of 32 million).

Thus, “pragmatism” was born, the sole American contribution to historic philosophic thought. Pragmatism sought to relieve “ideas” from immediate, drastic, or ideological action and to seek solutions in orderly, moderate (“pragmatic”) manners. This approach is often explained by a metaphor: if one tries to eat soup with a fork, he should not destroy soup or forks; he should simply invent spoons.

The impact upon Holmes, in particular, is described graphically by Menand: “The moment Holmes returned from the war he seems to have fast-frozen his experience, and to have sealed its meaning off from future revision. … he could not bear to read histories of the Civil War. He rarely mentioned the issues that had been the reason for the fighting or expressed a political opinion about the outcome. The war had burned a hole, so to speak, in his life.”

Thus, immediately after the war, the instigators knew full well who was responsible, and it wasn’t the slaveholders. Yet, it takes two to make a fight. While abolitionism was the immediate spark (the “primary” cause), blame also goes to the heirs of John C. Calhoun and the “sovereignty” apostolates of South Carolina. They erroneously viewed Lincoln’s election as a violation of “states’ rights” and the end of their cultural life. But Lincoln was not an abolitionist and opposed only the westward extension of slavery.

South Carolina voted for secession, and the die was cast.

Thus, the Civil War, like most all others, was begun by normal people, “politicians,” making terrible mistakes and not stopping long enough to see the consequences. Like it died almost everywhere else, and in the American North, slavery did not need a war to end it. It would have gone quietly (or “quieter”). 

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What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature

Causes of the Civil War

By michael e. woods.

Without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery's presence make that outcome inevitable?

What caused the Civil War? To ask the question is to invite intense debate. History’s present-day relevance is on full display in the countless discussions—online and offline—that this topic continues to generate. Americans remain deeply and personally invested in the Civil War, making it an exciting but challenging field for anyone committed to rigorous scholarship. When South Carolina diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut explained secession in 1861, she focused on visceral rage: "We are divorced, North from South, because we hated each other so." [1] Today, traces of these feelings linger, making careful study essential to a thorough understanding of the war that Chesnut’s contemporaries fought.

Students of Civil War causation should clearly state the historical problem they wish to solve and carefully decide where in time to begin and end their narratives. Good history begins with precise questions. Asking what caused the war is not the same, for example, as asking why soldiers enlisted, or whether the North and South were more alike or different by 1861. Our questions must also inspire nuanced answers. “ What caused the war?” invites us simply to list sectional differences or major events. We might quarrel over how to rank the enumerated items. We might (more profitably) explore the connections between them. But the “what” question risks implying that history is a series of isolated episodes rather than an intricate process of change over time. Historians do their best work when they ask “why” or “how” questions. These questions reflect and respect the complexity of the past and invite more satisfying answers. We might ask: “ Why did the Civil War happen?” Or: “ How did disunion and war become possible?”

The narratives we write in response must start and stop at specific points in time. Most studies of Civil War causation conclude in April 1861 with the outbreak of war in Charleston, South Carolina. But when should the narrative start? This decision dramatically influences accounts of the war's origins. If we start with the Constitutional Convention, sectional conflict might appear as an unavoidable result of compromises made, and decisions postponed, by the Founding Fathers, with the war serving as a bloody climax to philosophical debates commenced at Independence Hall. But if we begin in 1819 with the clash over slavery in Missouri, or in 1845, with the annexation of the slaveholding Texas Republic, our narrative might spotlight a series of crises over westward expansion. The war would grow from sectional wrangling over the spoils of continental empire. To choose a third starting point, if we commence in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the war will be a battle over the legitimacy of secession.

Each of these narratives offers considerable insight. But each one inevitably obscures important points as well. The first account, for example, situates the war within a longer struggle between southern defenders of states’ rights against primarily northern champions of federal power. But what about the ways in which southern statesmen used the federal government to defend their interests, particularly in the recovery of runaway slaves? This narrative would make little sense to northerners like Gideon Welles (later Secretary of the Navy under Abraham Lincoln), who denounced the Fugitive Slave Act as a "consolidating measure," an “abandonment” of the “doctrines and teachings of Jefferson,” and an "invasion of the states." [2] Similarly, despite the significance of the territorial issue, the final secession crisis commenced with a presidential election, not the conquest of fresh acreage. And while the war’s immediate trigger was secession, thorough accounts of its origins must explain why an election that followed the letter of constitutional law provoked disunion.

This essay offers a basic framework for thinking about Civil War causation. It proceeds from two foundational questions and adopts a unique approach to the chronology. The questions open up layers of puzzles to solve: Why did eleven states secede after the 1860 presidential election? Why did secession trigger war? I will address them in reverse order, working backward from 1861. Each episode on the road to war grew out of earlier conditions and events, and this essay reverses the timeline to explore what made each one possible. This does not mean that the outcome was inevitable. But it shows that every historical explanation leads to more questions, which can only be answered by moving further back in time. Each layer of historical excavation uncovers a few answers and many more challenges.

Why did secession lead to war? Many accounts focus on President Abraham Lincoln's handling of the secession crisis. But the Confederates fired first; President Jefferson Davis's perspective is, therefore, equally important. Obviously, the U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter, an island installation in Charleston, South Carolina’s expansive harbor, defied the Confederacy's claim to independence. Most other federal property in the seceded states had been seized peacefully, but Fort Sumter capitulated only after enduring the opening salvos of the war. There were, however, deeper motivations for the bombardment. By April 1861, Davis faced two challenges: one was to vindicate the independence of the seven Deep South states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) which then comprised the Confederacy. The second was to convince the other eight slave states, home to most of the South's industry and white manpower, to join them. Many upper south states, including Virginia and Arkansas, had rejected secession so far, and even in the Deep South it had been controversial. War offered a solution to both problems. In the seceded states, armed conflict would transform dissent and apathy into martial zeal. "[U]nless you sprinkle a little blood in the face of the people of Alabama," warned one correspondent, "they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days!" [3] War would also force upper south whites to choose sides, and Davis expected they would fall in with the Deep South once the shooting started. Davis chose war, and at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, southern artillery commenced a bombardment of Fort Sumter that lasted more than thirty hours. Ironically, the cannonade killed no one. But it inspired citizens on both sides to rally to the colors. Northerners responded to Lincoln's April 15 call for 75,000 volunteers with patriotic fervor. Four slave states—Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—responded by seceding. Davis did not win over the border region, but the Confederacy swelled to eleven states and nine million inhabitants. The war had begun.

But why did Lincoln cling so tenaciously to Fort Sumter? The unfinished and undermanned citadel was ill-prepared to withstand a determined barrage. Some of Lincoln's closest advisors, including Secretary of State William Seward, urged him to abandon it in order to preserve an uneasy peace and prevent strategic upper south states like Virginia from seceding. But Lincoln's resolve grew from his understanding of the Union and his duties as president. He believed that the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” was perpetual and that Confederates had rebelled against lawful authority. Like Andrew Jackson in the Nullification Crisis (1832-33), he would execute the laws peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary.

Lincoln outlined his intentions in his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1861. No other American president inherited such a volatile situation: seven states had seceded, eight more seemed poised to follow, and most federal property in the Deep South, including forts, arsenals, and dockyards, had fallen to Confederates. Lincoln pledged neither to seek war, nor to buy peace at any price. He repudiated secession and deemed the Union "unbroken." He promised that the laws would be "faithfully executed in all the States" and that the government would "defend and maintain itself." This need not cause bloodshed, but if force was required to maintain normal government operations, he would use it. Lincoln concluded that his opponents would decide the outcome. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine , is the momentous issue of civil war....You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.'" [4] This meant holding federal property, including Charleston’s Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida. Lincoln resolved to replenish both garrisons' dwindling provisions and keep the Stars and Stripes flying. Fort Pickens never surrendered, but Confederates blasted Fort Sumter into submission before supplies arrived.

War exploded at the Charleston flashpoint because neither side could back down without sacrificing principle or losing face. But the confrontation resulted from secession. Confederates necessarily defended its validity; to Unionists, secession amounted to anarchy and treason. But why had the first wave of secession, in which seven states departed the Union between December 1860 and February 1861, not been halted? Threats of disunion had permeated American political rhetoric and a secession scare had been averted in 1850. Why was there no Compromise of 1861?

It was not for a lack of effort. Throughout the winter of 1860-61, members of the 36 th Congress scrambled to enact compromise legislation. Moderates nationwide begged them to preserve the Union and keep the peace. "For God's sake," urged a Kentuckian, "and for the sake of humanity, persevere in the noble efforts at conciliation." [5] Both houses of Congress formed special committees to tailor a compromise. The content of their proposals reflected slavery’s central importance. No one doubted that a viable compromise must address slavery’s expansion and the return of fugitive slaves to their masters; these were the rocks on which the Union was foundering. Dozens of ideas circulated in Washington, but the leading plan came from Senator John Jordan Crittenden of Kentucky. The "Crittenden Compromise" consisted of six proposed constitutional amendments. Crittenden sought to avert secession by redefining the relationship between the federal government and slavery. His amendments would do the following:

Together, Crittenden's amendments would have weakened the federal government's ability to restrict slavery and required it to protect the institution. They were controversial not because they limited or expanded federal power generally, but because pro- and antislavery politicians disagreed about how that power should be used.

Despite provoking intense discussion, neither Crittenden’s proposal, nor anyone else’s, forestalled secession. To state the challenge Crittenden faced is to indicate why he failed: he and other would-be compromisers had to satisfy the most ardent proslavery extremists and the most unwavering antislavery zealots. To secessionist fire-eaters, the amendments offered only paper guarantees, not the ironclad security that they associated with southern independence. To antislavery Republicans, Crittenden's plan seemed destined to make the federal government an openly proslavery agency. Lincoln threw his influence as president-elect against any compromise that would allow slavery to expand. He offered concessions on other points, including the recovery of fugitives and a constitutional amendment prohibiting Congress from abolishing slavery. But against slavery expansion he urged congressional Republicans to stand firm, lest they forsake a core tenet of their party's platform. Lincoln clarified the issue in a letter to his friend, future Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens: “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” [6] But it was a world of difference. In this formulation, the conflict was both a matter of policy—should slavery be extended (by active federal protection) or restricted (by active federal prohibition)?—and of morality. Neither facet of the problem was easily compromised. The prospects for compromise faded away as Congress adjourned in early March.

But why was compromise necessary? Lincoln received only a plurality (just under 40%) of the popular vote, but his share of the electoral votes (180 out of 303, with 152 needed to win) far exceeded the constitutionally-required majority. He would likely face a hostile Congress, as well as the Supreme Court that had rendered the stridently proslavery Dred Scott decision. How much damage could Lincoln do? Why did his by-the-book election push seven Deep South states to secede?

Lincoln's letter to Stephens and his party's rejection of Crittenden’s amendments help explain why the Republican victory so deeply disturbed proslavery southerners. Historians have labored to show that most Republicans were not “radical abolitionists,” that they did not immediately threaten slavery in the fifteen states where it was legal. Lincoln wearily reiterated this point in his Inaugural, disavowing any intention to “interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” [7] But Republicans did endorse an antislavery agenda calculated to contain slavery and facilitate its eventual collapse. The fact that this would be entirely constitutional was of little comfort to those with an economic, political, or social stake in slavery as a labor system and a means of racial domination, and in the billions of dollars invested in four million enslaved people.

Antebellum Republicans acknowledged that slavery was a state institution which Congress could not touch. Most abolitionists actually agreed, leading some of them to denounce the Constitution as a wickedly proslavery compact. But Republicans combined a variety of antislavery policy proposals to craft a strategy for bringing slavery to a gradual end. They advocated a two-pronged campaign: Congress would outlaw slavery in areas under its direct jurisdiction, including western territories and Washington, DC. This would hem in the slave states, surrounding them with free soil and depriving slaveholders of fresh land. Meanwhile, the federal government would stop supporting slavery, leaving it up to the states to return fugitive slaves and otherwise protect masters’ property claims. Thus, Republicans defied proslavery politicians by demanding that slavery truly be treated as a state institution – not one entitled to federal aid. Under these conditions, Republicans predicted that, like a scorpion encircled by fire, slavery would sting itself to death. Their pledge to respect slavery in the states, therefore was attached to predictions of slavery’s destruction. As New York Congressman Anson Burlingame put it, the “Republican party does not wish to interfere in the internal government or social institutions of the slave States, but merely to place around them a cordon of Free States. Then this horrible system will die of inanition; or, like the scorpion, seeing no means of escape, sting itself to death .” [8] Slavery would die by state-level abolition, as border and upper south states abandoned it, or by constitutional amendment, once the number of Free states reached three-quarters of the total. Republicans candidly discussed these goals. Their 1860 platform, for example, proclaimed that the “normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom” and condemned efforts to legislate for slavery’s expansion. [9]

The 1860 election was an unprecedented Republican triumph, and the prospect of a Lincoln administration alarmed many white southerners. Fresh memories of John Brown’s October 1859 raid made Lincoln’s victory seem even more dangerous. Lincoln’s predecessor had dispatched federal troops to crush the abolitionist conspirators—but could a Republican be trusted to do the same? Convinced that Republicans menaced slavery’s growth and stability, secessionists candidly justified their decisive response. South Carolina secessionists blamed antislavery “agitation” for the “election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” Upon Lincoln’s inauguration in March, they warned, the government would fall to a party that had “announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory…and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.” [10] Republican gradualism did not make slavery’s death easier to swallow, especially for white South Carolinians, who lived among an enslaved black majority in a state where nearly half of white families owned slaves. They had every reason to secede first, which they did on December 20, 1860. Georgians agreed, recognizing that “anti-slavery” was the Republican Party’s “mission and purpose.” To avoid the “evils” of Republicans’ encirclement strategy, Georgia secession convention delegates led their state out of the Union. [11] Other secession documents followed similar logic; Mississippi’s was the most forthright. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” proclaimed Magnolia State secessionists, and now they had to choose between “submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.” Confronted by a party dedicated to “extinguish[ing]” slavery “by confining it within its present limits,” Mississippi secessionists chose disunion. “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede.” [12]

Given secessionists’ reading of Republican aims, their response to Lincoln’s election appears drastic but not necessarily irrational. But why did the Republicans win in 1860? Their party was six years old. It is not overly dramatic to call the party’s rise “one of the most striking success stories in political annals.” [13] How did Republicans convince a majority of free-state voters, few of whom favored abolitionism or any semblance of racial egalitarianism, to support them at the polls?

Lincoln did not face united opposition in 1860. Rather, the election developed into a four-way race. Democrats split into rival northern and southern wings, nominating Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas and the current vice president, Kentucky’s John Cabell Breckinridge, respectively. Led by upper and border south moderates, a new Constitutional Union Party rallied behind John Bell of Tennessee. But the proliferation of competitors did not by itself bring Republican success. Lincoln would have won even if all his rivals’ votes had gone to a single opponent. [14] Moreover, the four-sided contest largely became a pair of two-way races, pitting Bell against Breckinridge in the South, and Lincoln against Douglas in the North. It was Lincoln’s near sweep of the Free states (he divided New Jersey’s electoral votes with Douglas), coupled with northern demographic might, that secured his victory. Why did a commanding 54% of free-state voters support the rail splitter?

The Republican Party’s origins provide clues about its appeal. In 1854, the United States reached a fateful milestone on the road to civil war: the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was in opposition to this law—condemned by Michigan Republicans as a “gigantic wrong” [15] —that the Republican Party coalesced. Ironically, the divisive law was not necessitated by the acquisition of new land. Rather, it was designed to organize governments for a region that, on paper, had belonged to the U.S. since 1803. Most of the Louisiana Purchase was already carved into states or territories, but a massive “Unorganized Territory”—covering part or all of modern-day North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska—remained in legal limbo.

White farmers who coveted these lands had an ally in Stephen A. Douglas. The pugnacious Democrat’s career was a product of westward migration; born in Vermont, Douglas thrived on the Illinois prairies and, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, he vigorously promoted western political and economic development. He yearned to establish governments in the Unorganized Territory, but earlier efforts had failed. Much of the opposition came from the South because the proposed territories lay north of the 36° 30’ line, which since 1820 had divided the Louisiana Purchase into slave and free zones. In 1854, Douglas offered a new plan: organize two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, not under the free soil restriction, but under the principle of popular sovereignty, which allowed territorial voters to decide for or against slavery. Southerners demanded that the bill explicitly repeal the Missouri Compromise. Douglas acquiesced, Congress approved, and in May President Franklin Pierce signed it into law.

Rather than stifle sectionalism, the Kansas-Nebraska Act unleashed a frightful debate that propelled the nation closer to war. To many northerners, the Act seemed like a conspiracy to transform land preserved for freedom into slave territory. Indeed, northern opposition began even before it became law. Shortly after Douglas introduced the bill, six northern legislators published an “Appeal of the Independent Democrats,” in which they castigated the proposal “as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region, immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary reign of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” [16] Many critics of the bill began to build a new party opposed to slavery expansion. Some hoped that non-slaveholding white southerners might join, but many imagined it as a sectional organization; one editorialist concluded that “the People of the North and West” must “unite in a Party of Freedom, with a fixed purpose to regain possession of the Federal Government” from the Democratic Party, which had become an agent of slaveholders. [17] From this this wave of indignation the Republican Party was born.

Still, the party’s presidential triumph was not inevitable. Republican success required fusing disparate factions into a single organization. What could unite former Whigs, who wanted protective tariffs and federal support for railroads, with former Democrats, who demanded free land for western settlers and strict economy in public expenditures? How could seasoned antislavery activists cooperate with racists who objected to slavery expansion because they wanted the west reserved for whites? The Republicans were not a single-issue party and championed a variety of causes, including Democrats’ long-cherished homestead legislation and a Whiggish program of public support for internal improvements. But opposition to slavery’s expansion, and to the political power of slaveholders and their allies, glued the Republican coalition together.

Two features of antebellum politics made this possible—and boosted the Republicans’ popular appeal. First, the line between “slavery” and “other issues” was blurry. Northerners noticed, for example, that southern votes repeatedly blocked Senate approval of a homestead bill. They resented this stranglehold on this and other measures, especially when, as a Pennsylvanian wrote in 1850, “Northern interests as usual must succumb to Southern.” [18] It was a short step from this broad dissatisfaction to a much sharper critique of the so-called “slave power.” The notion that southern politicians exerted disproportionate power in the federal government was not far-fetched. The Constitution’s 3/5 Clause inflated slave-state influence in Congress and the Electoral College and it was no accident that a slaveholder was president for 50 of the 62 years before 1850. National policy—from the Fugitive Slave Act to the removal of Native Americans from rich cotton-planting lands in the Deep South—seemed to confirm that slaveholders wielded the levers of national power. Republicans capitalized on the issue, warning that the “national Government…is as fully under the control of these few extreme men of the South, as are the slaves on their plantations.” [19] Northerners opposed the slave power for diverse reasons, but their shared grievance swelled Republican vote tallies and embedded the slavery controversy into apparently unrelated issues.

Second, the Kansas-Nebraska Act’s results validated Republican opposition to popular sovereignty and to slavery’s champions. Popular sovereignty invited opponents and proponents of slavery to race to Kansas to determine its fate. The result was widespread fraud and violence. During a March 1855 election to choose a territorial legislature, thousands of Missourians, led by Senator David Rice Atchison, crossed the border to vote illegally for proslavery candidates. Antislavery settlers refused to acknowledge the proslavery legislature and established a rival government. Heavily armed northern migrants arrived to resist Missouri Border Ruffians and over the next four years, between fifty and two hundred people died in the clashes between them. Republicans pointed to Bleeding Kansas as proof of popular sovereignty’s failure and of the brutality of proslavery zealots.

The hostilities spread eastward from the Great Plains. In May 1856, Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts Republican, condemned proslavery violence in Kansas, comparing slavery expansion to the “rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery” for the purpose of “adding to the power of slavery in the National Government.” [20] His deliberately provocative speech infuriated South Carolina Congressman Preston Smith Brooks, who beat Sumner into unconsciousness on the Senate floor two days later. For many northerners, Brooks personified the slave power, a menace to freedom in Kansas and free speech in Congress. The Bleeding Sumner incident increased support for the Republicans in the presidential election that November. Republican John C. Frémont finished second to Democrat James Buchanan, but came within two states of winning the contest and received a plurality of northern ballots.

Subsequent efforts to close the book on Kansas only reaffirmed, to Republicans at least, that slaveholders sought to use federal power to safeguard slavery’s expansion. In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its notorious decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford . Most famously, it held that Scott, a slave who had been taken from Missouri into free territory and sued for his liberty, could not sue because African Americans could not be U.S. citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” [21] But the decision was also calculated to foster slavery expansion by ruling that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could bar slavery from a territory. The fact that five of the nine justices hailed from slave states fueled conspiracy theories and supported claims that the slave power, as a New York editorialist wrote, had “converted” the Court “into a propagandist of human slavery.” [22] Similarly, President Buchanan’s subsequent efforts to push Congress to admit Kansas as a state under the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, which had not been fully submitted to Kansas voters for approval, provoked fierce resistance from Republicans and most northern Democrats, including Douglas, who believed that the “Lecompton swindle” violated popular sovereignty. [23] This political environment fertilized Republicans’ growth into the North’s leading party.

Of course, this account of the short- and medium-term roots of the Civil War leads to more questions. Why were many southerners so adamant about Kansas? The security of slavery’s northwestern flank had something to do with it, as did the desire to establish a precedent for territorial property rights that might be needed later in Mexico or Cuba. Why were many northerners primed to react so fiercely to the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) kept slavery in northerners’ minds and refreshed hostility toward the slave power that had flourished after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Why was westward expansion so divisive? One could trace the slavery expansion issue back in time, through the Compromise of 1850, the clash during and after the Mexican War (1846-48) over slavery’s status in the freshly-conquered southwest, Texas annexation, the admission of Missouri, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which barred slavery from the region between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. Why did northerners fear southern domination? One could follow northern hostility to the slave power back through the Gag Rule debates (1836-44) over the reception of antislavery petitions in Congress, the lasting resentment of the 3/5 Compromise, to the Constitutional Convention – where, as James Madison put it, “the real difference of interests lay, not between the large and small but between the N. and Southn. States,” with the “institution of slavery and its consequences form[ing] the line of discrimination” between them. [24] To understand these sectional issues, we would then have to explore politics within regions and states. We could study how northern political candidates used the slave power theory to denounce local opponents who courted southern allies. We might examine how differences between the upper and lower south exacerbated sectional conflict by convincing cotton-state planters that their counterparts along the South’s vulnerable northern border might not defend slavery to the last ditch.

A thorough account of Civil War causation, therefore, could easily grow into a history of the United States to 1861. It would show that without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery’s presence make that outcome inevitable? When Abraham Lincoln warned that the country could not endure half slave and half free, Stephen Douglas asked, why not? It had done so for generations. To understand why this precarious balance ultimately failed requires that we do much more than list the issues that divided Americans into hostile sections. Participants made it clear that war, secession, and slavery were inextricably interconnected. But there is always more to learn about why so many decent people were willing to kill for what they believed.

• [1] Diary entry for March [between 11 and 15], 1861, in C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War , (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 25.
• [2] Gideon Welles to My Dear Sir, October 16, 1861, Gideon Welles Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT.
• [3] Quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 273.
• [4] “First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp (accessed October 13, 2014).
• [5] Thomas H. Clay to John J. Crittenden, January 9, 1861, in Mrs. Chapman Coleman, ed., The Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches ,  2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1873), 2:253.
• [6] Quoted in Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 178.
• [7] “First Inaugural Address.”
• [8] Quoted in James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 26.
• [9] “Republican Party Platform of 1860,” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29620 (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [10] “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [11] “Georgia Secession,” Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [12] “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union,” Avalon Project,  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [13] William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3.
• [14] For an excellent discussion of these important what-if questions about the election, see the Appendix entitled “1860 Election Scenarios and Possible Outcomes” in Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).
• [15] Quoted in Francis Curtis, The Republican Party: A History of its Fifty Years’ Existence and a Record of its Measures and Leaders, 1854-1904 , 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 1:189.
• [16] Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress, to the People of the United States ([Washington, DC]: Towers, Printers, [1854]), 1.
• [17] National Era , June 1, 1854.
• [18] Paul S. Preston to Jackson Woodward, January 2, 1850, Preston-Woodward Correspondence, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
• [19] Cong. Globe, 35 th Cong., 2d Sess., appendix, 190 (1858).
• [20] Charles Sumner, The Crime Against Kansas. The Apologies for the Crime. The True Remedy. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, in the Senate of the United States, 19 th and 20 th May, 1856 (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1856), 5.
• [21] Quoted in Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 347.
• [22] Quoted in Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Fanatics and Fire-eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 52.
• [23] Opponents of the Lecompton Constitution often used the “swindle” term to denounce it. For one example of its use in Congressional debate, see the remarks of Massachusetts Republican Henry Wilson in the Cong. Globe , 35 th Cong., 1 st Sess., 499 (1858). For Douglas’s opposition to Lecompton, see especially ibid., 15-18.
• [24] Quoted in Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 77.

If you can read only one book:

Levine, Bruce. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.

• Causes of the Civil War Essay
• Causes of the Civil War Resources
• Author's Biography Michael E. Woods

Ashworth, John. The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Bonner, Robert E. Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Bowman, Shearer Davis. At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Cooper, William J. We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860 – April 1861. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2012.

Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.

Egerton, Douglas R. Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011.

Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press 1995.

Forbes, Robert Pierce. The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery & the Meaning of America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Freehling William W. The Road to Disunion, Volume 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

———. The Road to Disunion, Volume 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Huston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Mason, Matthew. Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Oakes, James. The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Richards, Leonard L. The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Rugemer, Edward Bartlett. The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Shelden, Rachel A. Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Woods, Michael E. Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Organizations:

Society of Civil War Historians

The SCWH is among the leading professional organizations for historians of the Civil War era of all types. The organization hosts a biennial conference and has adopted the Journal of the Civil War Era as its official journal.

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Web Resources:

This website provides links to numerous primary source documents related to the sectional conflict and the coming of the Civil War.

Run by the National Park Service, this site offers a brief overview of Civil War causation and links to pages on historical sites of interest related to the coming of the war.

Furman University’s Department of History has organized this helpful site, which provides scores of editorials related to Bleeding Kansas, the caning of Charles Sumner, the Dred Scott case, and John Brown’s raid.

Hosted by the Civil War Trust, this website features teacher resources, including lesson plans, related to the Civil War. “The Gathering Storm” offers an online exhibit and lesson plans for all grade levels related to the coming of the Civil War.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History offers a “Civil War 150 Multimedia” page that includes podcast videos related to the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War. Videos related to Civil War causation cover topics such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln’s inauguration, and African American abolitionists.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — History of the United States — Civil War

Essays on Civil War

Civil war essay topic examples.

The American Civil War is a significant part of our nation's past, filled with fascinating stories, debates, and events. Whether you want to argue, compare, describe, persuade, or narrate, we have a wide range of essay topics that will take you on a journey through this pivotal period in American history. Join us as we delve into the heart of the conflict, examine key figures, analyze strategies, vividly depict battles, and explore the moral imperatives that shaped the course of the Civil War. These essay topics will guide you on your historical voyage, offering insights into the complexities and enduring legacies of this era.

Argumentative Essays

Argumentative Civil War essays require you to analyze and present arguments related to this historical conflict. Here are some topic examples:

• 1. Argue whether the Civil War was primarily about slavery or states' rights.
• 2. Analyze the role of key political figures, such as Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis, in shaping the outcome of the Civil War.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Civil War Essay: The American Civil War stands as a monumental chapter in our nation's history, marked by conflicting ideologies and profound repercussions. In this essay, I will argue that at its core, the Civil War was a struggle over the institution of slavery and its implications for the United States.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Civil War Essay: In conclusion, the argument for the centrality of slavery in the Civil War underscores its deep-rooted impact on our nation's evolution. As we reflect on this defining period, we are challenged to confront the enduring legacy of this conflict and its implications for our society today.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast Civil War essays involve examining the differences and similarities between various aspects of the conflict. Consider these topics:

• 1. Compare and contrast the strategies and leadership styles of Union and Confederate military commanders.
• 2. Analyze the impact of the Civil War on the lives of soldiers and civilians in the North and the South.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Civil War Essay: The American Civil War featured diverse military strategies and leadership styles, alongside varying experiences for those directly affected. In this essay, I will delve into the differences and similarities between Union and Confederate military commanders and the profound effects of the war on individuals on both sides of the conflict.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Civil War Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of military leaders and civilian experiences during the Civil War provide a multifaceted view of this historic event. As we examine these aspects, we gain a deeper appreciation for the complexities of this period in American history.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive Civil War essays enable you to vividly depict events, battles, or notable figures from the era. Here are some topic ideas:

• 1. Describe the Battle of Gettysburg, emphasizing its pivotal role in the outcome of the war.
• 2. Paint a detailed portrait of Abraham Lincoln, focusing on his leadership qualities and the challenges he faced during the Civil War.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Civil War Essay: The American Civil War witnessed significant battles and iconic figures that have left an indelible mark on our history. In this essay, I will immerse you in the vivid details of the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the conflict, and provide a descriptive portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the leader who steered the nation through this tumultuous period.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Civil War Essay: In conclusion, the descriptive exploration of the Battle of Gettysburg and Abraham Lincoln's leadership underscores the indomitable spirit of a nation in crisis. As we reflect on these historical aspects, we gain insight into the resilience and determination that defined this era.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive Civil War essays involve convincing your audience of a particular perspective or interpretation of the conflict. Consider these persuasive topics:

• 1. Persuade your readers that the Emancipation Proclamation was a turning point in the Civil War and a moral imperative.
• 2. Argue for or against the notion that the Reconstruction era effectively addressed the issues arising from the Civil War.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Civil War Essay: The Emancipation Proclamation and the Reconstruction era represent critical chapters in the aftermath of the Civil War. In this persuasive essay, I will present the argument that the Emancipation Proclamation not only altered the course of the war but also marked a moral imperative in the struggle for freedom.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Civil War Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument for the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation challenges us to acknowledge the moral dimensions of the Civil War. As we examine this transformative period, we are urged to consider the enduring impact of this historic document on the journey toward equality.

Narrative Essays

Narrative Civil War essays allow you to tell a compelling story from the perspective of a historical figure or a fictional character during the Civil War era. Explore these narrative essay topics:

• 1. Narrate a day in the life of a Civil War soldier, conveying the challenges and emotions they faced on the battlefield.
• 2. Imagine yourself as a journalist covering the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and recount your experiences and emotions during that historic event.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Civil War Essay: The American Civil War was a time of upheaval and turmoil, experienced firsthand by soldiers and civilians alike. In this narrative essay, I will transport you to the battlefield and the tumultuous events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, offering a personal perspective on these historical moments.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Civil War Essay: In conclusion, the narrative accounts of a Civil War soldier's life and a journalist's experiences during the Lincoln assassination bring history to life in a profoundly human way. As we immerse ourselves in these narratives, we gain a deeper appreciation for the individuals who lived through these tumultuous times and the resilience they displayed.

The Missouri Compromise: a Precursor to Civil War

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The Civil War – a Sectional Fight Between North and South

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An Analysis of The Reason for Participating in The American Civil War

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April 12, 1861 - April 26, 1865

United States

Confederate States of America, United States

Battle of Antietam, Fort Pillow Massacre, Battle of Gettysburg, Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, Battle of Monocacy

Abraham Lincoln, who served as the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln's leadership and steadfast commitment to preserving the Union were instrumental in guiding the Northern states to victory. General Robert E. Lee, who served as the commander of the Confederate Army. Lee's military prowess and strategic genius earned him respect even among his adversaries. Clara Barton, known as the "Angel of the Battlefield," made a lasting impact as a nurse and humanitarian during the war. She later founded the American Red Cross, which continues to provide humanitarian assistance worldwide.

The American Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, was a defining moment in the history of the United States. It emerged from a complex set of circumstances and prerequisites that spanned several decades. One of the primary prerequisites was the issue of slavery. The institution of slavery had long been a divisive issue between the Northern and Southern states. The expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories, such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, heightened tensions and fueled regional conflicts. Economic differences also played a significant role. The Northern states had undergone rapid industrialization, while the Southern states relied heavily on agriculture, particularly cotton production. This led to differing priorities and conflicting interests between the two regions. Political factors, such as debates over states' rights and the balance of power between the federal government and the states, further exacerbated the tensions. The election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, who opposed the expansion of slavery, intensified the divide and prompted several Southern states to secede from the Union. The historical context of the American Civil War was characterized by deep-rooted divisions over slavery, economic disparities, and political conflicts. These factors ultimately culminated in a devastating conflict that reshaped the nation's history and had long-lasting consequences for both the United States and the institution of slavery.

One of the most significant effects was the abolition of slavery. The Civil War served as a catalyst for the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which declared slaves in Confederate territories to be free. Ultimately, the war led to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865, officially abolishing slavery nationwide. The Civil War also had far-reaching political consequences. It solidified the power of the federal government over the states and established the supremacy of the United States as a single, indivisible nation. The conflict clarified the relationship between the federal and state governments, paving the way for the expansion of federal authority in subsequent years. Moreover, the war's aftermath brought about significant social and cultural changes. Reconstruction efforts aimed to rebuild and integrate the Southern states into the Union, but the process was marked by challenges, resistance, and the rise of racial segregation. These struggles set the stage for the civil rights movement in the following century. Economically, the war transformed the United States into a more industrialized nation. The demand for supplies and weaponry during the war accelerated industrialization in the North. Additionally, the emancipation of slaves created a labor force that contributed to the country's economic growth.

In the Union states, there was a prevailing sentiment that the war was necessary to preserve the Union and end the institution of slavery. Many Northerners supported the cause, viewing it as a fight for justice and the preservation of the nation's democratic ideals. Abolitionists and those who opposed the expansion of slavery were particularly vocal in their support of the Union cause. In the Confederate states, public opinion leaned towards defending their perceived rights to self-governance and the institution of slavery. The idea of states' rights and the defense of Southern traditions resonated strongly among many Southerners. They believed in the necessity of secession to protect their way of life and preserve their economic system. Public opinion within individual communities could also vary. Families were often divided, with some members fighting for the Union and others for the Confederacy. People in border states, such as Kentucky and Missouri, experienced particularly complex and nuanced views due to their proximity to both sides. Over time, public opinion on the Civil War has evolved. The war's causes and consequences have been reevaluated and interpreted through different lenses, leading to ongoing discussions and debates. Today, the Civil War is widely recognized as a pivotal moment in American history, with public opinion encompassing a range of perspectives that continue to shape our understanding of the conflict.

Films: "Gone with the Wind" (1939), "Glory" (1989), "Lincoln" (2012). Literature: "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane, "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier, "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara.

The topic of the American Civil War holds immense importance for academic exploration and essay writing due to its significant impact on American history and society. This conflict, fought between the Northern and Southern states from 1861 to 1865, centered on fundamental issues like slavery, states' rights, and the preservation of the Union. Studying the American Civil War allows us to delve into the complexities of the nation's past and comprehend the deep-rooted divisions that led to this brutal conflict. It provides a platform to analyze the moral, political, and socioeconomic factors that shaped the war's outcomes and repercussions. Furthermore, exploring the Civil War fosters a deeper understanding of the struggle for civil rights and the long-lasting consequences that continue to shape the United States today. By examining primary sources, historical narratives, and varying perspectives, essays on the American Civil War can shed light on pivotal events, influential figures, military strategies, and the experiences of individuals affected by the war. It offers an opportunity to critically analyze the causes, motivations, and legacies of this watershed moment in American history, ultimately contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the nation's past and its ongoing pursuit of equality and justice.

1. Foner, E. (2010). The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W. W. Norton & Company. 2. McPherson, J. M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. 3. McPherson, J. M. (2003). Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam. Oxford University Press. 4. McPherson, J. M. (2007). This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War. Oxford University Press. 5. Miller, R. J. (2003). Lincoln and His World: The Civil War Era. University of Nebraska Press. 6. Oakes, J. (2012). Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. W. W. Norton & Company. 7. Potter, D. M. (1990). The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. Harper Perennial. 8. Robertson, J. I. (2002). Civil War: America Becomes One Nation. DK Publishing. 9. Symonds, C. L. (2001). The American Heritage History of the Battle of Gettysburg. HarperCollins. 10. Ward, G. C. (1990). The Civil War: An Illustrated History. Alfred A. Knopf.

Relevant topics

• Civil Rights Movement
• American Revolution
• Manifest Destiny
• Pearl Harbor
• Industrial Revolution
• Great Depression
• Westward Expansion
• Declaration of Independence
• Frederick Douglass

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