Why The War Was Not About Slavery

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org ^ | March 9, 2016 | Clyde Wilson

[NKP_Vet]

Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action.

Two generations ago, most perceptive historians, much more learned than the current crop, said that the war was “about” economics and was “caused by” economic rivalry. The war has not changed one bit since then. The perspective has changed. It can change again as long as people have the freedom to think about the past. History is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned.

I was much struck by Barbara Marthal’s insistence in her Stone Mountain talk on the importance of stories in understanding history. I entirely concur. History is the experience of human beings. History is a story and a story is somebody’s story. It tells us about who people are. History is not a political ideological slogan like “about slavery.” Ideological slogans are accusations and instruments of conflict and domination. Stories are instruments of understanding and peace.

Let’s consider the war and slavery. Again and again I encounter people who say that the South Carolina secession ordinance mentions the defense of slavery and that one fact proves beyond argument that the war was caused by slavery. The first States to secede did mention a threat to slavery as a motive for secession. They also mentioned decades of economic exploitation.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Well, both the Civil War and chattel slavery were great bumbles in American history, both for the formal losers and for the formal winners. There is no clean end by which to pick up a poop.

I don’t see a whole lot of hilarity in that. I do see, as always, the potential to depart the situation to one of greater joy.

[stanne]

“So in other words, even if there was no slavery the North would have invaded anyway.”

That’s what I ask myself anytime someone says. The civil war was not about slavery.

It was about resources? I don’t buy that.

In the south it is called the war of northern aggression.

[stinkerpot65]

So what? Buying and selling human beings like cattle is evil. Anyone who practices, supports, benefits from, or excuses slavery is evil. The Confederacy was evil because it practiced and profited from slavery.

Anyone who excuses that is scum.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The cotton gin and other inventions helped the south industrialize, too.

Philosophical differences were the formal start of the Civil War, but the warped thinking that got those differences bad enough to actually get a hot conflict going was born partly in acquiescence in chattel slavery. The bible said don’t do things that way, and a society that was striving ostensibly to act Christian was foolish to ignore that advice.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Except for free states, all America had their hand in that. There is no clean way to handle a poop.

[DHerion]

Come on...if slavery never existed in the South would there have been a secession/civil war?...no...

Slave owners, who were a wealthy but distinct minority, could never sell secession to the rest of the population on the premise of them keeping their slaves and their wealthy life style, so they sold it as ‘economic exploitation of the north’...politicians were charlatans back then too.

[NELSON111]

Don’t confuse revisionists with facts. I’m from the south as is my family. But facts are facts. The Vice President of the Confederacy said the civil war was about slavery. Who knows better?-the Vice President of the Confederacy or some people on a blog site 150 years later?

[DiogenesLamp]

Lincoln promoting the passage of the Corwin amendment is all the proof any reasonable person needs to understand that the North did not invade the South to stop slavery.

They invaded the South to stop independence.

[hawkaw]

I agree. There was a focus on slavery by the southern states as part of secession. To say otherwise is like reading Durbin’s op-ed in the Washington Compost about why Barr should recuse himself from anything related to Muller’s investigation.

[DiogenesLamp]

So in other words, even if there was no slavery the North would have invaded anyway.

If there was no slave produced money flowing through New York and Washington DC's pockets, they would not have invaded the South.

I point out that the Philippines was given independence. Cuba was given independence, and Puerto Rico has a standing offer to have independence if at any time it should wish it, but if you are producing 73-85% of all the European trade in your country, everyone wants you to remain under their control and continue being their milk cow.

Also John Brown was a wool merchant, and as such his product directly competed with cotton. He went bankrupt twice, and he was financed by wool merchants in Massachusetts who stood to make a huge amount of money if the cotton industry suddenly blew up for some reason.

So John Brown and his backers had a vested financial interest in disrupting the cotton industry, though you never hear anyone mention this bit.

[Fiji Hill]

Why wasn’t Mexico in the cotton biz too?

Probably because of the climate and soil. Mexico produces some cotton today, but it's less than one percent of its agricultural gross domestic product.

[sphinx]

It is a bit of a misdirection to frame the question as whether “the war” was about slavery.

SECESSION was about slavery. The pro-slavery radicals in the South had become convinced that slavery could not survive much longer in the Union because growth in the North was far outstripping growth in the South, which meant that the South would eventually be outvoted in Congress on the slavery question. The Union fought the war, at least initially, to preserve the Union. But all recognized that preservation of the Union meant the eventual end of slavery. Lincoln’s house divided speech was on target and most people knew it, even if many preferred not to acknowledge it in the hope of postponing the reckoning.

Part of the calculation for the slavery perpetualists was also the fact that important parts of the South were not strongly attached to the peculiar institution. The plantation aristocracy could not take its own base for granted. Slavery had withered and died in the North in the colonial and early federal periods. By the 1850’s, it was visibly declining in the upper border — so much so that only seven Southern states seceded prior to Fort Sumter, and four slave states fought for the Union. The slavocrats recognized that their time was running out. Secession was a last ditch gamble. Didn’t work out.

[rockrr]

That’s right - we know that it was about slavery because the ones trying to secede TOLD us that it was about slavery.

[DiogenesLamp]

For largely economic reasons, slave states wanted an expansion of slavery to other states so as to increase the market value of a slave.

And your proof for this is what? The fact that it has been repeated endlessly since the 1860s? I decided to investigate this claim, and I found a curious thing. The number one cash crop produced by slavery was Cotton, and Tobacco was second.

Could cotton grow in the territories? I decided to look up a modern map of cotton growing states. Guess what I found?

People in the know have informed me that cotton only grows in west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California as a consequence of modern motor-driven irrigation systems which weren't possible in the 19th century. In other words, Cotton wouldn't grow in the "territories" for any part of the 19th century.

So what would these slaves do in the territories? Apparently not much. This article about New Mexico territory says this.

"Regardless of its official status, slavery was rare in antebellum New Mexico. Black slaves never numbered more than about a dozen"

There appears to be no market in the territories for slaves, so this makes me wonder why people claimed that it would "expand" into the territories?

I have what I believe is an explanation for what we were told, and it has nothing to do with the practicality of putting slaves in the territories to make profit.

It has to do with the balance of power in Congress in Washington DC, and what this would do to affect the existing money streams feeding New York and Washington DC.

[DiogenesLamp]

The civil war was caused by the secession of the southern states.

And why would states deciding they no longer want to be a part of a system rigged against them be a cause for war?

Here's why five southern states said they were seceding.

Don't care. According to the Declaration of Independence, they had a right to independence for any reason they saw fit. They don't have to justify why they wanted to leave. The North has to justify why it needed to kill people to stop them from leaving.

[Tejas Rob]

The biggest problem with the Civil War was that there was no plan in place afterwards concerning what to do with the freed slaves. Thousands of people without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out were left to their own accord, which caused chaos for decade upon decade, and we are still paying for that today.

[DiogenesLamp]

Things are often not quite as the professors like to present.

And this "expansion of slavery" theory is quite prominent among them. I used to believe it until I looked at the facts. Now I recognize it is just propaganda to justify the real motivation for containing the Southern states representation in congress. See my previous post on the topic.

[LS]

Wrong. It was all about slavery. Slave capital was greater than all the railroads and textile mills in the north put together.

CSA Constitution had no fewer than THREE radical clasuses protecting slavery even if states (oh, remember “state’s rights”) voted to prohibit slavery. Nope. all about slavery and Wilson is not entitled to his own facts.

[DiogenesLamp]

between 20-25% of each years cotton crop went to the textile manufactures in the U.S. mostly in the Northern States. The balance was shipped to Europe.

Where it produced 73-85% of the total US export value to Europe, and which were exchanged for European goods taxed at a very high rate if they were likely destined for Southern consumers.

Almost all the money and trade routed through New York, with Washington getting it's huge greedy cut of the slave produced money.

[sparklite2]

unreconstructed Southern books

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So we’re moving along with separate histories now?
That’s a troubling trend, and I’m a southerner.