The Causes of the Civil War

Traveling around the East Coast since August, I have visited many NPS sites that commemorate the Civil War. To begin to understand that war, we have to discuss its causes. Even 150 years later, this raises disagreements and even high emotions. I want to say from the beginning that slavery was the main cause. The following blog weaves experiences I had at various sites with a history of slavery in the United States. Finally, I will offer some thoughts on why some continue to debate what caused the Civil War.

The historical park Colonial Williamsburg has a core of interpreters who portray people from 1775. On the Duke of Gloucester Street, Revolutionary hero General Knox rallied the crowd with his shouts for freedom. Hearing this, slave Jacob turned to me and asked: “How can you trust a man who cries for freedom but has slaves? A man can’t love freedom and slaves at the same time.” Benjamin, also sitting on the bench with Jacob, chimed in: “If my master, Mr. Witt, stood on these steps and said ‘Freedom for all,’ he’d get cheered. If I stood and said ‘Freedom for all,’ I’d get jeered.” At Colonial Williamsburg, the contradiction of the American Revolution to make all men equal is evident to those who interpret slavery there.

Interpreters Jacob on left and Benjamin standing in grey vest talk to visitors about being slaves in 1775.
(Photo by Hunner)

Slavery came early to the shores of North America. In 1619, a Dutch ship carrying some twenty captured Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia and traded them for food. Then in 1626, Dutch merchants sold eleven West African slaves at New Amsterdam (which became New York). Slavery spread throughout the colonies and continued even after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal. By the start of the Revolution, 470,000 slaves lived in the British colonies, which equaled 22% of the total population. Colonies north of the Mason-Dixon line had a population of 4% slaves, while North Carolina had 35% slaves and South Carolina’s numbers totaled 61%.[1]

Map of slave population in the South (From exhibit at Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

Slavery increased in the 18^th century in both the North and the South. New York served as a center for trade between England, its American colonies (including West Indian plantations), and Africa, and so it transshipped slaves, sugar, and sterling in a profitable exchange of goods and peoples. Ships delivered slaves to docks outside of the fort on the tip of Manhattan. See the blog on The African Burial Grounds. New England shipping firms made money on building slave ships as well as transporting captured West Africans to the Americas.

Perhaps the first Muslims to land on the shores of North America were slaves. Some 15% of people taken in Sub-Saharan Africa and brought to the western hemisphere were Muslims according to the "Islam and the United States" podcast on Backstory.[2]

Many slaves worked in fields, growing tobacco, rice, and cotton, but some were skilled laborers who worked in blacksmith and wheelwright shops, restaurants and hotels, distilleries, shipyards, and lumber camps. As a NPS publication states: “African slavery was central to the success of British North America.”[3]

Slaves working in the cotton fields (From exhibit at Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

At Colonial Williamsburg, Benjamin-- one of the slave interpreters—told us: “These beautiful buildings were built by slaves. Nothing’s paid for here.” Without slaves, there would be no Williamsburg. In fact, before the Civil War, slaves worked on both the White House and the Capitol buildings in Washington D.C., a fact not lost on President Obama. Indeed, without slaves, the early history of America would be vastly different, our towns and cities would look vastly different, and our commerce would not have been as vigorous. Slaves fueled a lot of growth during the colonial and early Republic period.

Jacob offered another reason for the American Revolution. He said: “A couple of years ago, in 1772, England banned slavery. So are these white men going to war against taxes or because they are afraid of losing their slaves?” When the American Revolution ignited, slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies. But afterwards, northern states began to ban slavery—Vermont in 1777 and Massachusetts in 1783 or passed laws for its gradual abolition—Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire in 1783, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, and New York in 1785.[4]

The contradiction of a country established on liberty dependent on slaves troubled some people; however, the Constitution of 1787 side-stepped the issue and did not mention “slavery” once. Instead they used the term “property” to denote slaves. The Constitution did include the “three-fifths clause” that representation in the House of Representatives “shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons … three fifths of all other Persons.” So slaves were 3/5ths of a person for counting population toward determining legislative representation.

Map of the Compromise of 1820 (From the exhibit at the Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

As the nation expanded westward, slavery took center stage. Would the new territories allow slavery? The Missouri Compromise of 1820 addressed this issue as it set the boundary between free and slave territories at the 36° 30’ parallel. Afterwards, Thomas Jefferson worried about slavery: “This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror…. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed … for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.” Over the first half of the 19th century, the reprieve and compromises slowly unraveled, strained by sectional conflicts and by competing moral and Biblical arguments about slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 sought to settle whether slavery would exist in the new territories gained from the Mexican-American War. This Compromise admitted California as a free state and allowed the territories of New Mexico and Utah to vote on the matter. As recompense to Southerners, the Fugitive Slave Act forced Northerners to assist in the capture of escaped slaves.

Map of the Kansas Nebraska Act 1854 (From exhibit at the Ft. Sumter Visitors' Center)

Slave labor was essential for the economy of the South. By 1860, the region produced 1,650,000,000 pounds of cotton.  Much of that cotton supplied the textile mills of the U.S. Northeast and England. During the first half of the 19th century, cotton far outpaced all other American foreign exports. The twelve richest counties in the country resided there, and in the 1840s and 1850s, the South constituted the fourth largest economy in the world. Part of this wealth came from slave labor, and some of it came from the value of slaves as property.

Many abolitionists fought hard to abolish slavery on moral and Biblical grounds. One of the most vocal opponents of slavery was Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave.  In 1852, he asked this question to an audience about the nation’s July 4^th celebrations: 

“This Fourth July is yours, not mine.... Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them…. To [a slave], your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity…. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”[5] Many abolitionists worked with Douglass to end slavery, including John Brown.

Frederick Douglass's parlor with his bust on the right (From Frederick Douglass's NHS in Washington, D.C.) 

When I toured the Petersburg Battlefield, a man walked up at the end of the tour. He said that everyone knows that the Civil War was about money. I politely differed with him. I agreed that the North fought to protect its growing industrial might and so profits were a motivation. But for the South, protecting slavery was the primary cause. Those politicians and elites who voted for secession, voted so to protect slavery. 

For example, here is the Vice-President of the Confederate State of America, Alexander Stevens: “[Our] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Numerous leaders in the South agreed with Stevens that preserving slavery was the cornerstone of the reason to leave the Union. I will discuss why individual soldiers on both sides of war fought in a future blog.

So why do people claim causes other than slavery? Descendants of Confederate veterans want to see their ancestors as not fighting to enslave fellow humans, but for more noble reasons—like ensuring states’ rights or resisting northern aggression. The Lost Cause myth grew post-Civil War to help shift the reason away from slavery to something more acceptable. For anyone interested in what motivated at least the leaders in the South, read the transcripts from the floor of the U.S. Congress and from the various secession conventions in the South between November 1860 and May 1861. Any reading of these documents will reveal that states seceded to protect slavery.[6]

Granted, this is tricky territory, partially because the Civil War is still contentious in many parts of our nation. But to dive into the Civil War as we will over the next few weeks, I wanted to be clear about what caused the war. Sure, not everyone fought for or against slavery. Yes, very few whites thought slaves were equal in either the North or the South.

Nonetheless, the United States had to reconcile our promise of liberty and freedom for all with the 4,000,000 slaves denied that promise. As Robert Watson, who portrayed a slave candle maker at Colonial Williamsburg, said after a long discussion about civil rights then and now: “We still got a lot of work to do.”

Robert Watson making candles and talking about human rights at the Randolph House in Colonial Williamsburg
(Photo by Hunner) 

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[1] Robert Sutton, John Latschar, and Rick Beard, Slavery in the United States: A Brief History (Washington, DC: Eastern National, 2013), 19.

[2] Backstory broadcast on Oct. 24, 2014. Archived at http://backstoryradio.org/shows/islam-the-united-states/

[3] Slavery: Cause and Catalyst of the Civil War, (NPS, Southeast Region, Division of Interpretation and Education), 2.

[4] Slavery in the United States, 22.

[5] Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Given in Rochester, NY, July 5, 1852. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13837.htm

[6] Thanks to Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, former chief historian of the NPS, for his work on plowing through these volumes of primary sources to uncover what people who debated and voted on secession said as to why they did so.