Often times in history there are events that you read about, events that make you think "Wow, if only So and So had done this, or if this set of actions had been taken that whole thing could have been avoided". These thoughts come to mind when reading about the War of the States or War for Southern Independence, but it's more commonly known as the Civil War. Many times we hear all about how it was about slavery slavery slavery, slavery was one of the causes in so far as it caused disputes primarily in regards to territories and power within the Senate . According to those who fought, slavery was not even on their list of concerns. It's impossible to cover all the events that led up to the War of the States in so short a time, therefore we will look take a brief look at some of the views held by the North before then looking at the Dred Scott case, the action taken by one John Brown, the views of Abraham Lincoln in regards to slavery and finally the views of the soldiers who actually fought in the war.
(By no means is this intended to provoke an argument in regards to slavery, nor is it meant in any way to demean members of any ethnicity and/or race. Nor is it in any way defending the institution of slavery as it was wrong to enslave members of any race. With that said, this was the way most countries acted at the time. Conquer the populace and either enslave them or make them submit to your rule. As a result of the labor intensive crops such as tobacco and cotton that could only be grown in the Southern climate the South naturally had slaves whereas the North did not have much need for them. Even then, one must keep in mind that not many of the citizens of the South owned slaves and in regards to slave owners, slaves were viewed as property, just as a horse or cow was, thus they were treated as such. The mentalities of both the North and the South were significantly different as a result, so please try and keep this in mind when reading this.)
Also, since people like the short version...Basically, Lincoln was not the "Great Emancipator" as people view him as...The North's intentions were not the great, noble abolitionist views that people generally make them out to have..the South was not the uncivilized, completely slave oriented society and they did actually have more abolitionist groups than the North..and it was Lincoln's foolish decision to send troops to quell the "rebellious" states that ultimately led to the War of the States (Civil War)..This quote sums it up nicely, a Northern soldier stated "We are fighting for the Union, a high and Noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment. They are fighting for independence and are animated by passion and hatred against invaders".
The ultimate point of this essay if you will, was to help shed light on some of the causes of the War of the States, to point out some views that appear to have been missed in History Courses (at least the courses i have attended) at times and to ask this one question, What action do you think members of either side could have taken to avoid the bloodshed that was the War of the States? To clarify the inquiry put forth, what do you think could have been done differently in regards to Lincoln's choices as well as the actions of both sides?
The north may have been the side viewed as the one that was all about freeing slavery, but often times we don't read that the South had numerous organizations that were lobbying for the freeing of the slaves. Unfortunately the Southern abolitionists cause was disregarded because of one William Loyd Garrison. His newspaper The Liberator helped sow nothing but contempt towards the South as his paper was highly influential. As of 1827 there were actually four times as many anti-slavery groups in the south then in the North. As a result of the contempt and such sowed by Garrison the anti-slavery movements in the South were viewed with suspicion and were not taken seriously.
The North, though pro-abolition did not want the freed slaves settling on land. They wanted to reserve the land for the "White man". Oh and while we're on the subject of the "white man", many early Puritans when settling did not actually steal the lands from the Indians as people love to claim. There were actually laws that stated if a Puritan settler settled on a land owned by an Indian he was actually made to give it back if the actual owner of the land presented himself. The Puritans also traded with the Indians for land, any trades made that were not sanctioned were punishable by law as was the murder of any Indian, but i digress...
Getting back on track, we turn our sights to the famous case of the slave Dred Scott. For those who don't know what this was he was a slave in the United States who sued unsuccessfully in St. Louis, Missouri for his freedom in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857. He travelled to territories such as Illinois with his master in which slavery had been made illegal, thus he should have been freed in accordance with the law that stated if a slave was taken to a land where slavery was illegal by his master then he should be considered a free man. As said by Hamilton Gamble a Missouri chief justice on the matter "In this State, it has been recognized from the beginning of the government as a correct position in law that a master who takes his slave [to]reside in a State or territory where slavery is prohibited, thereby emancipates his slave". The South recognized this, and Scott would have been freed had it been up to a Southern circuit court. Unfortunately the US supreme court reversed the decision to free him on the grounds that the relevant law prevailing in Missouri was not prevailing in Illinois or the Wisconsin territory. Regardless, Scott lived happily ever after because he was emancipated by his owner not long after the case. Surprisingly, it was not so much the ruling that caused such an outcry from the North as it was what the Chief Justice Roger Taney said about Scott. He regarded Scott as a man who was not actually a citizen of the States arguing that because of all the disabilities placed on blacks in the union it showed that they were not considered members of the States in so much as actual citizenship went and that citizenship rights had not been intended to be extended to them. Textbooks often like to state that Taney stated that the blacks were "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". Taney was not actually claiming this was his position on the subject. Taney was instead stating that by the time of the Declaration of Independence the general consensus amongst the white man was that blacks were indeed inferior and that this view allowed them no rights. Taney's commentary regarding slavery in the territories is what really riled up the Northerners, basically Taney stated that because the Prohibition of slavery had been unconstitutional in the first place and that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional as well. Had Taney not stated these things perhaps there would not have been such hostility targeted at the South, however misguided this hostility was.
Now we move on to the subject of the murderer John Brown. Murderer? Oh yes, did your history teachers forget to tell you how he believed he was on a divine mission to end slavery? Or how he murdered five men in what was known as the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre? These men he murdered were not even slave owners. Brown and his followers targeted these five families because Brown considered them loyal to the wrong cause. He dragged the man of each house out of his bed and butchered him as his family was forced to watch in horror. After this incident Brown disappeared for some time before resurfacing in October of 1859 to carry out the infamous events that took place at Harpers Ferry. His plan was to arm slaves by raiding an armory and then arming the slaves around Harpers Ferry (of which there were very few in what is now Western Virginia) and help them to massacre their owners, in the hopes that this would then cause a massive slave insurrection in the South. His plan failed as he was surrounded by local citizens, US troops and militia. H surrendered after many of his followers were slain and later hanged. This event in and of itself was not outstanding, what was outstanding to Southerner's, who already believed their safety within the Union was a being threatened, was the fact that many viewed this mad man as a hero, a saint even! As stated by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott as well as Henry David Thoreau to name a few of the notable literary minds at the time. The one exception was Nathaniel Hawthorne who rightfully claimed that "Nobody was ever more justly hanged". The attitude of viewing such a man as a saint did nothing more then heighten this feeling of fear for safety in the South. Adding even more to this fear was the fact that six prominent Northerners had funded Brown's expedition, these six men came to be known as the "Secret Six", these men were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. Many Southerners concluded that they were so hated by the Northerners that the North may very well welcome the South's departure from the Union. Also creating fear in the South was the fact that because the North supported such a violent scheme to end slavery that the North considered violence the right way to end slavery. Mind you, slavery was ended peacefully in every other nation in the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps if both sides had taken a step back and assessed the situation they may have come to an agreement, slavery would by all indication die a natural death as long as it was not permitted to spread to other territories as the lands of slave owners would eventually become infertile due to over use and if the slave owners were not allowed to move to more fertile land they would have to find another way of making money.
By the time seven of the Southern states had already seceded Abraham Lincoln became president. Lincoln believed that whites were in fact superior and he fully supported the deportation of freed slaves. What caused the War of the States was Lincoln's foolish decision. South Carolina had seceded from the Union, naturally, federal troops should not remain on South Carolina's soil. Unfortunately, Lincoln sent a ship to re-provision the troops at Fort Sumter, giving the South Carolinian citizens the idea that Lincoln was not actually intending to remove the troops from their soil. As an act of resistance Southerner's fired the first shot in the war on Fort Sumter. There were no casualties and Lincoln claimed that it was a rebellion even though South Carolina had every right to try and force the federal troops out of their state because they were no longer part of the Union in which the federal troops served. Lincoln sent 75,000 militia troops to suppress the "rebel" states. This move resulted in the secession of four more states who believed that to use force against American states was a "mad project utterly at variance with traditional American principles". To definitively state that Lincoln, at the very least at the time the War of the States started was not an abolitionist he stated in his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858 that: "I will say that i am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that i am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Blacks (not the precise word used, the precise word is now considered "offensive" though it was viewed as a very polite term for quite a long time), nor of qualifying them to hold office , nor to intermarry with white people; and i will say that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which i believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they can not so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race". Now, how one could possibly place Lincoln on a pedestal as a great abolitionist is beyond me. These views are evident throughout Lincoln's career as he voted against black suffrage and refused to sign a petition allowing black testimony in court. Ultimately, we now come to what Lincoln's intentions were in regards to the War of the States. Following the actions of those in his time in which unifying territories was "all the rage", Lincoln was "drawn to this spirit of Nationalism, and along with Daniel Webster, viewed the Union and the Southern Secession through this ideological lens". He told Horace Greeley who was an American newspaper editor that if he could save the Union by abolishing slavery he would do it, if he could save the Union without abolishing slavery he would do it and if he could free some slaves whilst others remained in bondage to save the Union he would it.
Many in the North were also worried about the fact that if the South were allowed to remain outside of the Union with their policy of free trade that more international ships would start using Southern ports instead of Northern ports. This was because of the tariffs in the North, which was also a contributing factor the the discontent amongst the South. These tariffs would have raised the price of living in the South and make it much harder for Southern citizens to make a living, of which many citizens of the South were subsistence farmers, meaning that they did NOT own slaves nor were they by any stretch of the imagination wealthy, they lived on farms, grew their own food and sold whatever surplus they had for money. As soon as the Confederate Congress adopted a system of low tariffs an Ohio congressman by the name of Clement Vallindigham said "trade and commerce...began to look south". As a result, the commercial cities such as New York began demanding that this tariff be repealed. Seeing as it would not be, New England and Pennsylvania demanded that Southern ports be closed by way of force as a first step, then the issue of the low tariffs could be fixed peacefully. Many in the South also feared that Lincoln, as a member of the Republican party(which was notoriously abolitionist), would abolish slavery in the South, which would send the Southern society into chaos.
James McPherson, a respected and acclaimed Civil War historian, after consulting many primary sources has stated that two-thirds of the letters read from soldiers stated that members of each side were fighting due to patriotism. "Northern soldiers by and large said they were fighting to preserve what their ancestors had bequeathed to them: the Union. Southern soldiers also referred to their ancestors, but they typically argued that the real legacy of the Founding Fathers was not so much the Union as the principle of self government. Very often we see Southern Soldiers comparing the South's struggle against the US government to the colonies struggle against Britain." As one can see, the soldiers from both sides viewed the war as one that was fought to preserve self government. Even the acclaimed Union General Ulysses S. Grant stated that "If i thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side"
Surprisingly the Cherokee supported the Southern cause, in response to this support the Confederacy even offered to let the Cherokee have their own state. In the "Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America" which was issued in 1861 the Cherokee stated that, in regards to the North they "saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union a military despotism had displaced civilian power and the laws became silent with arms. Free Speech and almost free though became a crime". They then stated in regards to the Confedracy that the Southerner's only sought to repel the invaders from their own soil and to "secure the right of governing themselves.
Naturally not every topic that led to the War of the States has been covered here. The ultimate point of this essay if you will, was to help shed light on some of the causes of the War of the States, to point out some views that appear to have been missed in History Courses (at least the courses i have attended) at times and to ask this one question, What action do you think members of either side could have taken to avoid the bloodshed that was the War of the States? To clarify the inquiry put forth, what do you think could have been done differently in regards to Lincoln's choices as well as the actions of both sides?
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