Global InformationOrigins of the American Civil War information
A consensus of historians who address the origins of the American Civil War agree that the preservation of the institution of slavery was the principal aim of the eleven Southern states (seven states before the onset of the war and four states after the onset) that declared their secession from the United States (the Union) and united to form the Confederate States of America (known as the "Confederacy"). However, while historians in the 21st century agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict, they disagree sharply on which aspects of this conflict (ideological, economic, political, or social) were most important, and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede.[1] Proponents of the pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology have denied that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view that has been disproven by the overwhelming historical evidence against it, notably the seceding states' own secession documents.[2]
The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.[3] Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades.[4] The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.[5]
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by enslaved labor. They formed the Confederate States of America after Lincoln was elected in November 1860 but before he took office in March 1861.
Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession. No foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish its forts that were in territory claimed by the Confederacy. The war itself began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces bombarded the Union's Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."[6] Historian David M. Potter wrote: "The problem for Americans who, in the age of Lincoln, wanted slaves to be free was not simply that southerners wanted the opposite, but that they themselves cherished a conflicting value: they wanted the Constitution, which protected slavery, to be honored, and the Union, which was a fellowship with slaveholders, to be preserved. Thus they were committed to values that could not logically be reconciled."[7]
Background factors in the run up to the Civil War were partisan politics, abolitionism, nullification versus secession, Southern and Northern nationalism, expansionism, economics, and modernization in the antebellum period.
- ^ Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks", Civil War History (2005) 51#3 pp. 317–324
- ^ Loewen, James W. (2011). "Using Confederate Documents to Teach About Secession, Slavery, and the Origins of the Civil War". OAH Magazine of History. 25 (2): 35–44. doi:10.1093/oahmag/oar002. ISSN 0882-228X. JSTOR 23210244. Archived from the original on April 7, 2023. Retrieved April 7, 2023.
Confederate leaders themselves made it plain that slavery was the key issue sparking secession.
- ^ Patrick Karl O'Brien (2002). Atlas of World History. Oxford University Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-19-521921-0. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860 (1981)
- ^ Susan-Mary Grant, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000)
- ^ Elizabeth R. Varon, Bruce Levine, Marc Egnal, and Michael Holt at a plenary session of the organization of American Historians, March 17, 2011, reported by David A. Walsh "Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Houston, Texas" HNN online Archived December 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Potter, David M., The Impending Crisis, pp. 44–45.