FREE ESSAY ON CIVIL WAR

CIVIL WAR

In this meeting of the Southern Historical Association great emphasis has been placed upon
a re-examination of numerous phases of our history relating to the Civil War. While
several papers have dealt with certain forces which helped bring about the Civil War,
none has attempted a general synthesis of causes. This synthesis has been the task
assumed by the retiring president of the Association.
Before attempting to say what were the causes of the American Civil War, first let me say
what were not the causes of this war. Perhaps the most beautiful, the most poetic, the
most eloquent statement of what the Civil War was not fought for is Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address. That address will live as long as Americans retain their love of free government
and personal liberty; and yet in reassessing the causes of the Civil War, the address
whose essence was that the war was being fought so that government of the people, by the
people and for the people shall not perish from the earth is irrelevant. Indeed, this
masterpiece of eloquence has little if any value as a statement of the basic principles
underlying the war.
The Civil War was not a struggle on the part of the South to destroy free government and
personal liberty nor on the part of the North to preserve them. Looked at from the
present perspective of the world-wide attempt of the totalitarians to erase free
governments and nations living under such governments from the face of the earth, the
timeworn stereotype that the South was attempting the destruction of free government and
the North was fighting to preserve it seems very unrealistic and downright silly. In the
light of the present-day death struggle between freedom and the most brutal form of
despotism, the Civil War, as far as the issue of free government was involved, was a sham
battle. Indeed, both northern and southern people in 1861 were alike profoundly attached
to the principles of free government. A systematic study of both northern and southern
opinion as expressed in their newspapers, speeches, diaries, and private letters, gives
irrefutable evidence in support of this assertion. Their ideology was democratic and
identical. However, theoretical adherence to the democratic principles, as veil we know
all too well in these days of plutocratic influences in our political life, is not
sufficient evidence that democratic government exists. I believe that I shall not be
challenged in the assertion that the economic structure of a section or a nation is the
foundation upon which its political structure must rest. For this reason, therefore, it
will be necessary to know what the economic foundations of these sections were. Was the
economic structure of the North such as to support a political democracy in fact as well
as in form? And was the economic structure of the South such as to permit the existence
of free government? Time does not permit an extended treatment of this subject; it will
be possible only to point out certain conclusions based upon recent research. By
utilizing the county tax books and the unpublished census reports a group of us
conducting a cooperative undertaking have been able to obtain a reasonably accurate and
specific picture of wealth structure of the antebellum South, and to some extent that of
the other sections. We have paid particular attention to the distribution of capital
wealth and the ownership of the means of production. As has been generally known the
Northwest was agricultural and its population predominantly small farmers, though a
considerable minority were large farmers comparable with the southern planters. It seems
that in 1860 about 80 percent of the farmers in the Old Northwest were landowners. A
fairly large fraction of the remaining farm population in that area were either squatters
upon public lands or were the members of landowning families. Only a small per cent were
renters. In those areas farther west the ownership of land was not as widespread because
the farmers had not yet made good their titles to the lands that they had engrossed.
Taken as a whole the people of the Northwest were economically self-sufficient. They
could not be subjected to economic coercion and, hence, they were politically free. Their
support of free government-as they understood it-was effective.
The northeastern section of the United States had already assumed its modem outlines of a
capitalistic-industrial society where the means of production were either owned or
controlled by relatively few. That is to say, New England and the middle states were fast
becoming in essence a plutocracy whose political ideology was still strongly democratic;
but the application of this democratic ideology was being seriously hampered by the
economic dependence of the middle and lower classes upon those who owned the tools of
production. The employee unprotected by government supervision or by strong labor
organizations was subject in exercising his political rights to the undue influence of
the employer.
To sum up: the economic structure of the Northwest was an adequate foundation for free
government; but that of the East, though still supporting democratic ideals, was often
too weak to sustain these ideals in actual government.
Turning to the South which was primarily agricultural we find the situation completely
contradictory to what has usually been assumed. While the plutocracy of the East owned or
controlled the means of production in industry and commerce, the so-called slave
oligarchy of the South owned scarcely any of the land outside the black belt and only
about 25 per cent of the land in the black belt. Actually, the basic means of production
in the black belt and in the South as a whole was well distributed among all classes of
the population. The overwhelming majority of southern families in 1860 owned their farms
and livestock. About 90 per cent of the slaveholders and about 70 per cent of the
non-slaveholders owned the land which they farmed. The bulk of slave holders were small
farmers and not oligarchs. While taken together they owned more slaves and more land than
the big planters, taken individually the majority of slaveholders owned from one to four
slaves and less than three hundred acres of land. The non-slaveholders, 70 percent of
whom, as we have noted, were landowners, were not far removed economically from the small
slaveholders to whom we have just referred. While the majority of slaveholders owned from
one to three hundred acres of land, 80 per cent of the landowning non-slaveholders owned
from one to two hundred acres of land and 20 per cent owned from two hundred to a
thousand. Let me repeat: the basic fact disclosed in an analysis of the economic
structure of the South, based upon the unpublished census reports and tax books, is that
the overwhelming majority of white families in the South, slaveholders and
non-slaveholders, unlike the industrial population of the East, owned the means of
production. In other words, the average southerner like the average westerner possessed
economic independence; and the only kind of influence that could be exercised over his
political franchise by the slave oligarchy was a strictly persuasive kind. The South
then, like the Northwest, not only held strongly to the democratic ideology but also had
a sound economic foundation for a free government.
If the destruction of democratic government by the South and its preservation by the
North were not the causes of the Civil War, what then were the causes? The surface answer
to this question is that in 1861 the southern people desired and attempted to establish
their independence and thereby to disrupt the old Union; and that the North took up arms
to prevent the South from establishing this independence and to preserve the Union.
Looking immediately behind this attempt of the South to establish a separate government,
and of the North to prevent it, we discover a state of mind in both sections which
explains their conduct. This state of mind may be summed up thus: by the spring of 1861
the southern people felt it both abhorrent and dangerous to continue to live under the
same government with the people of the North. So profound was this feeling among the bulk
of the southern population that they were prepared to fight a long and devastating war to
accomplish a separation. On the other hand, the North was willing to fight a war to
retain their reluctant fellow citizens under the same government with themselves.
The cause of that state of mind which we may well call war psychosis lay in the sectional
character of the United States. In other words, the Civil War had one basic cause:
sectionalism. But to conclude that sectionalism was the cause of the Civil War, and at
the same time insist -as has usually been done-that the Civil War was the climax of an
irrepressible conflict, is to seem to accept a pessimistic view of the future of the
United States. For if the antebellum conflict was irrepressible and the Civil War
unavoidable, we are faced with future irrepressible conflicts, future civil wars, and
ultimate disintegration of the nation into its component sections. I say this because I
do not see anyway save some cosmic cataclysm by which sectionalism can be erased from the
political, economic, racial, and cultural maps of the United States. Our national state
was built, not upon the foundations of a homogeneous land and people, but upon
geographical sections inhabited severally by provincial, self-conscious, self-righteous,
aggressive, and ambitious populations of varying origins and diverse social and economic
systems; and the passage of time and the cumulative effects of history have accentuated
these sectional patterns.
Before accepting the possibility of future wars and national disintegration as inevitable
because of the irrepressible conflict between permanent sections, let me hasten to say
that there are two types of sectionalism: there is that egocentric, destructive
sectionalism where conflict is always irrepressible; and there is that constructive
sectionalism where good will prevails-two types as opposite from one another as good is
opposite from evil, as the benign is from the malignant. It was the egocentric, the
destructive, the evil, the malignant type of sectionalism that destroyed the Union in
1861, and that would do so again if it existed over a long period of time.
Before discussing that destructive sectionalism which caused the Civil War, some
observations should be made of the constructive type, since, as I have suggested, the
very nature of the American state makes one or the other type of sectionalism inevitable.
The idea of either good or bad sectionalism as an enduring factor in American national
life has received scant consideration by historians as a rule, either because they, who
have usually been of the North, have desired to justify the conduct of their section on
occasion as being the manifestation of nationalism when in truth it was sectionalism writ
large; or because, and more important, they have apparently been unable to reconcile
sectionalism with nationalism.
Since sectionalism from the very nature of our country must remain a permanent and basic
factor in our national life, we should look it in the face and discriminate between the
good and the bad features. Above all else, we should recognize the fact that sectionalism
when properly dealt with, far from being irreconcilable with nationalism, is its
strongest support. It is only the malignant, destructive type that conflicts with
nationalism or loyalty to the national state or empire. Great Britain once failed to make
this distinction and to grasp the fact that the American colonials could be good
Americans and good British at the same time, and the result was the loss of the American
colonies. After the lesson learned from the American Revolution, the British mind grasped
the fact that good Canadians or good Australians are all the better British because of
their provincial or-may I say?-sectional loyalty. Provincialism, dominionism, and, in the
case of the United States, sectionalism, far from excluding nationalism, when properly
recognized and not constantly frowned upon, and the interests of sections ignored and
their ambitions frustrated, are powerful supports of nationalism. Such provincialism or
sectionalism becomes a national asset. It is a brake upon political centralization and
possible despotism. It has proven and will prove to be, if properly directed, a powerful
force in preserving free institutions. It gives color, variety, and vitality to all
segments of the national state. Because of this vitality in all its parts, the United
States, unlike France whose lifeblood seems to flow entirely through Paris, would prove a
difficult country to subjugate by a foreign enemy, and its government and society more
difficult, if not impossible, to Overthrow by violent revolution. It is because Great
Britain has, as the result of her lesson learned from the American Revolution, fostered a
good sectionalism within her empire, that she has baffled the orderly mind of the Germans
and defied conquest. By loosening the ties that bind the component parts of this
straggling union of colonies and dominions, Great Britain has made these bonds all the
stronger. She and her commonwealth of nations thus live in all their parts. Tragically'
the American people failed to learn adequately the very lesson that they so thoroughly
taught Great Britain: that local differences and attachments were natural, desirable, and
formed the very rootbed of patriotism; indeed, that such differences, when given decent
recognition, greatly strengthened nationalism and the national state. It was this failure
to recognize or respect local differences and interests, in other words, the failure to
recognize sectionalism as a fundamental fact of American life, that contributed most to
the development of that kind of sectionalism which destroyed national unity and divided
the nation. 
There were three basic manifestations of that egocentric sectionalism which disrupted the
Union in 1861. First, was the habit of the dominant section-that is, the section which
had the larger share in the control of the Federal government-of considering itself the
nation, its people the American people, its interests the national interests; in other
words, the habit of considering itself the sole possessor of nationalism, when, indeed,
it was thinking strictly in terms of one section; and conversely the habit of the
dominant section of regarding the minority group as factional, its interests and
institutions and way of life as un-American, unworthy of friendly consideration, and even
the object of attack.
The second manifestation of this egocentric sectionalism that led to the Civil War was
the perennial attempt of a section to gain or maintain its political ascendancy over the
Federal government by destroying the sectional balance of power which, both New England
and the South maintained, had been established by the three-fifths ratio clause in the
Federal Constitution.
The third and most dangerous phase of this sectionalism, perhaps the sine qua non of the
Civil War, was the failure to observe what in international law is termed the comity of
nations, and what we may by analogy designate as the comity of sections. That is, the
people in one section failed in their language and conduct to respect the dignity and
self-respect of the people in the other section. These three manifestations of
sectionalism were so closely related that at times they can be segregated only in theory
and for the sake of logical discussion. Indeed, as I have suggested, all were
manifestations of that egocentric sectionalism that caused a section to regard itself as
the nation.
Let me call to your mind some familiar facts of American history that illustrate each of
these phases of sectionalism. During the first twelve years of the government under the
Federal Constitution, the old commercial-financial aristocracy of New England, with the
aid of the same classes of people scattered throughout the urban centers of the seaboard,
controlled the national government through the instrumentality of the Federalist party.
An analysis of the chief measures of the Federalist regime and of the mental processes
behind their enactments-as disclosed in speeches and letters and newspaper editorials
-reveals the dominant section, New England, with its compact, homogeneous population, its
provincial outlook, thinking, talking, and acting as if it were the United States; its
way of life, its economic system, and its people the only truly American; while the
remainder of the country, the people, and their interests and ways of life were alien and
un-American. Most of the laws enacted during the control of the New England Federalists
were considered by the South and much of the middle states as being for the sole benefit
of the commercial and banking interests of the East, and as injurious, even ruinous, to
the agricultural sections. In order to give constitutional sanction to these
centralizing, sectional laws, the Federalist party under the brilliant leadership of
Alexander Hamilton evolved the doctrine of implied powers, which seemed to the
agricultural sections, now under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, to be pulling the
foundations from under constitutional government. This sectional and centralizing policy
of the New England-dominated Federalist party culminated in the Alien and Sedition Laws
which were met by the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. These resolutions may be
regarded as a campaign document to be used in ousting the Federalists and New England
from power. They were also a threat of the minority section to withdraw from the Union
should Federalist New England continue in power and continue its policy of ignoring the
agricultural sections of the country or of running roughshod over their interests.
The overthrow of New England's control of the national government by the Jeffersonian
party in 1800 resulted in a twenty-four-year regime of the Virginia dynasty, during
fifteen years of which-that is, until after the War of 1812-the government was distinctly
dominated by the South and Southwest. If Hamilton had been positive that the welfare of
the nation depended upon reinforcing and maintaining by special government favor the
capitalistic system of the East, Jefferson was more positive that democratic and
constitutional government and the welfare of the American people depended upon
maintaining the supremacy in government and society of a landowning farmer-people whose
center of gravity was in the South and middle states. To Jefferson, commerce, finance,
and industry were only necessary evils to be maintained purely as conveniences and
handmaidens of agriculture. Such doctrinaire conception of government and society boded
it for New England; and the period from 1801 until the end of the War of 1812 was filled
with laws, decrees, and executive acts that seemed to threaten the economic and social
existence of that section. One measure in particular seemed to be destined to end forever
in favor of the South the sectional balance of power, namely, the purchase of Louisiana.
During all this time New England's standing committee on secession, the Essex Junto, was
maneuvering to bring about the withdrawal of New England from the Federal Union; nor is
there any sufficient reason to suppose that it would not have eventually succeeded in the
disruption of the Union had not the ending of the war with Great Britain brought a
termination of the policies that seemed so detrimental to the social and economic
interests of the East; and had not the outburst of genuine nationalism at the victorious
ending of the war actually resulted in the adoption of measures distinctly favorable to
New England. The point that I wish to emphasize is that the rise to power of the South
and middle states was marked by the same egocentric sectionalism as characterized the
dominance of Federalist New England: the agricultural sections thought of themselves as
the United States, thought of the American farmers as the only simon-pure Americans, and
looked upon the interests of the agricultural population as the national interests.
It is not the ambition of this paper to attempt a summary of the antebellum history of
the United States; but simply to use the twelve year sectional regime of the Federalists
and about the same length of rule by the Jeffersonian party to illustrate that tendency
of the dominant section to consider itself the United States and its people the American
people, and by the same token ignore or treat with contempt the peculiar needs of the
minority sections.
The second manifestation of that egocentric sectionalism which led to the American Civil
War was, as you will recall, the attempt of one section to gain a permanent ascendancy by
destroying the sectional balance of power or permanently undermining the prestige of the
other section. Let me pause for a moment, in discussing the overthrow of the balance of
power, and review for you very briefly just how and why there had been an approximate
balance of power established between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states during
the constitutional convention. The delegates to the convention, from both the northern
and southern sections of the country, were unanimously in favor of a constitution that
would establish a much stronger and more effective government than that which had so
signally broken down under the Articles of Confederation. There was a fundamental
difference, however, as to what specific powers should be granted to this new government.
New England and the capitalistic segments of the middle states were above all else
determined that the new government should be able to control foreign and interstate
commerce and to make commercial treaties that could be enforced. The agricultural
sections of the country looked with considerable disfavor upon such a grant of powers.
The South was so much opposed that it quietly passed out the word that it would never
enter a Union where commerce was so thoroughly controlled by the national government
unless it were assured a position of approximate political equality in that government.
Otherwise, the power over commerce would be used by the North, dominated by the East, for
its sole benefit and to the detriment of agriculture and the South.
Finally, the balance of power was worked out by the technique of counting three-fifths of
the slaves in apportioning representation in Congress and in the electoral college. This
was called the three-fifths compromise between the North, which wanted to count all the
slaves in apportioning direct taxes and none in apportioning representatives, and the
South, which wanted to count all the slaves in making up representation and none in
making up taxation. But an examination of the speeches and correspondence of the
delegates indicates that it was also, and more important, a means of giving the South
approximate equality in the Federal government in return for granting New England's
profound desire to have the Federal government control interstate and international
commerce.
That the sectional balance of power should be obtained by the process of counting
three-fifths of the slaves in determining representation was a natural but unfortunate
arrangement. It was natural inasmuch as the Southerner regarded his slave as a human
being and as part of the population; it was unfortunate in that it quickly identified the
political influence of the South with the institution of slavery, and in doing so it went
far toward engendering or increasing hostility in New England and finally in the whole
North toward both slavery and the South.
As long as New England was able to dominate the Federal government there was no important
opposition to the theoretical balance of power obtained by the three-fifths ratio; but
when New England lost her status with the collapse of the Federalist party her leaders
immediately seized upon the three-fifths ratio as the explanation. During the period that
ended with the Hartford convention and the treaty of peace the New England leaders were
unceasing in their attack upon slave representation, as they called it. At the Hartford
convention it formed the leading grievance. The convention demanded an unconditional
repeal.
During this same time Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory, not for the purpose of
destroying the sectional balance of power, but complacent in the belief that it would do
so. We thus behold, during the earlier Jeffersonian period, the spectacle of the
agricultural South and the commercial East tampering with the sectional balance of power.
Of course, permanent balance of power was impossible in a rapidly expanding country, and
both sections must have realized that eventually the forces of nature would tip the
balance in favor of one section or the other or in favor of a section not yet born. Such
eventualities were regarded as remote and were not permitted to disturb the peace of
mind. It was the overthrow of the sectional balance by artificial, political methods
which caused uneasiness and wrath, for it indicated inter-sectional ill will or gross
selfishness.
The Missouri controversy, 1819-20, marked the decline of the agitation by the Northeast
to repeal the three-fifths ratio clause as a means of weakening the political power of
the South and inaugurated the second and final phase of the struggle of the North to
destroy by artificial methods the sectional balance of power. This second phase was to
prevent the formation and admission into the Union of any more slave states, which meant,
from the political and social point of view, the exclusion of southern states. While the
demand for exclusion was based partly upon what we may call moral reasons, Rufus King and
the other northern leaders in this debate were quite frank in asserting that the Missouri
debate was a struggle between the slave and free states for political power. 
The two phases of that sectionalism which led to the Civil War, while causing a slow
accumulation of sectional grievances, were not marked during the thirty years prior to
the Missouri debates by excessive ill will or serious disregard for the comity of
sections. Indeed, up until the time of the Missouri debates, despite the rivalry of
sections which almost disrupted the Union, there was maintained a certain urbanity and
self-restraint on the part of the leaders of the rival sections; for as long as the
founding fathers lived and exercised influence over public affairs, there seems to have
been a common realization-indeed, a common recollection-that the nation had been founded
upon the principle of mutual tolerance of sectional differences and mutual concessions;
that the nation had been constructed upon the respect of each section for the
institutions, opinions, and ways of life of the other sections. But the years laid the
founding fathers low and their places were taken by a new and impatient generation who
had no such understanding of the essence of national unity. The result was that urbanity,
self-restraint, and courtesy-the ordinary amenities of civilized intercourse-were cast
aside; and in their gracious place were substituted the crude, discourteous, and
insulting language and conduct in inter sectional relations now so familiar in the
relations between the totalitarian nations and the so-called democracies. It was the
Missouri debates in which intersectional comity was first violated; and it was the
political leaders of the East, particularly the New Englanders and those of New England
origin, who did it when they denounced in unmeasured terms slavery, the slaveholder, and
southern society in general. It is noteworthy that the southern leaders, with the
exception of one or two, including John Randolph, ignored this first violent,
denunciatory, insulting language of the northerners during and immediately after the
Missouri controversy; ignored them at least in that no reply in kind was made with the
possible exception of two or three, including John Randolph, who demanded that the South
withdraw from the Union before it was too late. The private correspondence of the
southerners, however, reveals them as resentful and apprehensive of future bad relations
with the North.
Ten years after the Missouri Compromise debates, the moral and intellectual leaders of
the North, and notably those of New England origin, took up the language of abuse and
vilification which the political leaders of that section had first employed in the
Missouri debates. Quickly the political leaders resumed the tone of the Missouri
controversy: and thus was launched the so-called antislavery crusade, but what in fact
was a crusade against the southern people. For over three decades this attack upon
slavery and the entire structure of southern society down to the custom of eating corn
bread and turnip greens grew in volume and in violence. (A discussion of the motives
behind this crusade would lead us far afield and into bitterly controversial questions.
It does seem clear, however, that political and economic considerations were thoroughly
mingled with the moral and religious objection to slavery.) One has to seek in the
unrestrained and furious invective of the present totalitarians to find a near parallel
to the language that the abolitionists and their political fellow travelers used in
denouncing the South and its way of life. Indeed, as far as I have been able to
ascertain, neither Dr. Goebbels nor Virginio Gayda nor Stalin's propaganda agents have as
yet been able to plumb the depths of vulgarity and obscenity reached and maintained by
George Bourne, Stephen Foster, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and other abolitionists
of note.