Was the Civil War Actually About Slavery?

On 6 November 1860, the six-year-old Republican Party elected its first president. During the tense crisis months that followed – the “secession winter” of 1860–61 – practically all observers believed that Lincoln and the Republicans would begin attacking slavery as soon as they took power.

Democrats in the North blamed the Republican Party for the entire sectional crisis. They accused Republicans of plotting to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against direct federal attacks on slavery. Republicans would instead allegedly try to squeeze slavery to death indirectly, by abolishing it in the territories and in Washington DC, suppressing it in the high seas, and refusing federal enforcement of the Slave Laws. The first to succumb to the Republican program of “ultimate extinction,” Democrats charged, would be the border states where slavery was most vulnerable. For Northern Democrats, this is what caused the crisis; the Republicans were to blame for trying to get around the Constitution.

Southern secessionists said almost exactly the same thing. The Republicans supposedly intended to bypass the Constitution’s protections for slavery by surrounding the South with free states, free territories, and free waters. What Republicans called a “cordon of freedom,” secessionists denounced as an inflammatory circle of fire.

Thank you again for taking the time and effort for a thoughtful reply.

Pardon me for not copying, pasting, and italicizing your last post, but I think the majority of posters on this thread are here to debate slavery/Civil war vs our Second War of Independence.

First I do not agree that your point -which I take to be, that the War of 1812 was a war launched by the United States to conquer and annex Canada - is “obvious.” I do, however, agree with your point that Canada was not a real country, but simply the area occupied by 1) the British army 2) the remnant of New France and 3) those citizens of the United States who, in 1783, could not bear to live under a self-governing republic and followed whatever internal compass they had to a land where loyalty to a monarchy suited them.

Secondly, you err in stating that our invasions were all failures. Our invasions won the war for us; particularly the spectacularly successful invasion that at lead the British-Shawnee catastrophe at Moraviantown. That was the decisive land battle of the war.

Finally, your question was “what could possibly be the fate of any part of Canada, invaded and held by the United States, other than annexation?” Fortunately there is unambiguous historical answer to this. In 1748, Americans (NOT BRITISH MILITARY; AMERICANS) invaded the most brilliantly designed fortress in the hemisphere at Louisbourg. We took it; and to settle the War of the Austrian succession – the only on of the “French and Indian Wars" that France arguably “won”, it was returned to France in exchange for concessions on other war aims. That was how war was conducted in those days. We wanted to keep the Northwest Territories (and the last-held British war demand at the negotiating table, before our brilliant successes in the Autumn of 1814 forced theme to capitulate, was that we NOT keep the Northwest territories.)

Thank you again for taking the time and effort for a thoughtful reply.

Pardon me for not copying, pasting, and italicizing your last post, but I think the majority of posters on this thread are here to debate slavery/Civil war vs our Second War of Independence.

Castlebar: "First I do not agree that your point -which I take to be, that the War of 1812 was a war launched by the United States to conquer and annex Canada - is “obvious.” "

What's "obvious" and undeniable is that the US intended to drive the British out of Canada.
What's debatable is what might have been done with Canadian territory once the British were driven out.

So, you suggest that having fought a war to drive the British out, US negotiators would then negotiate them back in -- but in exchange for what, exactly?
And why?

You forget how much our Founders hated the British, having suffered under and fought them for a generation, they wanted the Brits out of North America.
So why, having conquered Canada would they negotiate the Brits back in?

Castlebar: "Secondly, you err in stating that our invasions were all failures."

I said no such thing.
Including the Revolutionary War, by my count the US invaded Canada eleven times.
Of those eleven, US forces were successful at the Battles of York and Fort George in spring 1813, before defeat at the battle of Beaver Dams.

In the fall of 1813 US was again successful at the Battle of the Thames -- aka Moraviantown.
But with his army's enlistments expiring, General Harrison soon withdrew from Canada, and so gained nothing there.

All other US invasions of Canada, including two more after Thames / Moraviantown, were defeated.

This sense of regionalism (or sectionalism or provincialism or what have you) was played upon and exploited in the years before the Civil War. Lost was Franklin’s “We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately” in favor of “They’re not like you” and (my favorite growing up) “You’re not from around here”. Growing up I was taught an appreciation for the ideals that we hold in common more than a sensitivity to our differences.

It is my personal opinion that this bias played a more instrumental part in decisions to raise arms against their fellow countrymen than almost any other consideration. They did so because they had been encouraged to believe that “those people” weren’t really their true countrymen.

Great post. Most of the Navy men and Marines, and I believe most of the Army non-coms, stayed with the Union, even if they were Southerners. They'd found a home there that included people from all parts of the country. But there was a growing tide of regional identity that pulled officers and people back home along with it.

Thank you again for your reply and please pardon the relative tardiness of my reply.

What's "obvious" and undeniable is that the US intended to drive the British out of Canada.

It was not feasible, given the astronomical disparity of forces at that time, that the tiny United states Military could have "driven the British out of North America." What seemed at least in the realm of the possible was to take something the British didn't what to give up, and force them to pay a price to return it. This is the way wars were fought at that point in history; a look at the wars of the first, second, third fourth, and fifth coalitions will tend to confirm.

What's debatable is what might have been done with Canadian territory once the British were driven out. So, you suggest that having fought a war to drive the British out, US negotiators would then negotiate them back in -- but in exchange for what, exactly? And why?

The United States negotiators would have liked to have had de jure as well as de facto assurance as to the end of impressment. As it was, Impressment was prevented on a go-forward basis by the Royal Navy's memory of possible defeat at the hands of the United States. Certain historians (with contempt for history) will deny this, and claim that impressment ended because of the end of the Napoeonic Wars. The proof of the falsity of this claim lies in the facts that:

1- Impressment of U.S citizens continued during the 1802-03 Peace of Amiens;

2- The Royal navy did not impress a single US sailor during 'The 100 Days', and

3- While the Royal Navy stopped ships of ever other nation during the Africn slavery patrols, U.S. ships were never stopped.

Castlebar: "Secondly, you err in stating that our invasions were all failures." I said no such thing.

Your words were, "despite defeat after defeat." Thank you for your clarification.

I am afraid that this line of discussion may be distaracting from this thread. Would you care to continue on a private e-mail chain, or shall we save it for another thread?

Castlebar: "I am afraid that this line of discussion may be distaracting from this thread."

;-)

Thanks for a most interesting and informed debate.
Doubtful if there are enough Americans who even remember the War of 1812 to pick sides, pro and con, on some issue about it.
And no Americans who think Canada should be invaded a twelfth time.

So the question here is our Founders' motivations in sending eleven -- count them, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven different invasions into Canada from 1775 through 1813.
Now you wish us to believe, oh, that was no big deal, they weren't really serious, they just wanted a "bargaining chip" to get the Brits to stop taking our seamen -- eleven invasions for a few seamen?

And you dismiss as irrelevant the opinion of President Jefferson, that taking Canada would be as simple as a walk in the park, and his obvious satisfaction anticipating British defeat and: "final expulsion of England from the American continent".
But I would suggest Jefferson's feelings are "unfinished business" left over from the Revolutionary War, and were therefore shared by most Founders, even as late as 1813.

Of course, it turned out that Jefferson and they were all wrong, that Canada was no push-over, and so we can only speculate what might have resulted had Jefferson been correct.

Seems to me the obvious answer is, our Founders would have done in 1813 just what they intended to do in 1775 when they first sent Montgomery and Arnold to conquer Canada -- annex it.

But since apparently there is no proof, the question cannot be resolved, and we'll just have to agree to disagree, agreeably, I trust.

;-)

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