To What Extent Slavery Contributed to the Outbreak of the US Civil War

The cause of the Civil War, America’s bloodiest conflict on her own soil, has been a controversial subject for the past 150 years. The polarization between the North and the South of the country had been growing for a long time, as Northern states embraced industrialization and modern ideas while the South stayed stuck in the 18th century.

The economy of the North was diversifying, and relied on immigration from Europe. The South’s main industry was agriculture, which was dependent on slave labor. Controversies arose during the Westward Expansion, which was driven by immigration, population growth, and an imperialistic movement. The North wished to turn the new territories into free states, while the South wanted them to become slave states. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 attempted to reach compromises. However, tensions continued to grow. The institution of slavery was ultimately the most divisive issue between the North and the South. The Southern economy was entirely dependent on slavery, and wanting to protect it, Southern states argued for their state rights, leading to political tensions and violence that gave way to the Civil War. The root cause of the Civil War was the heavy reliance of the economy of the South on the institution of slavery. While slavery had existed in the North, it had never taken root to the same extent as in the South. There are several reasons for this.

First, the Northern climate was harsher and less suitable for growing crops. The geography was also less favorable.

Second, the North was modernizing with the rest of the world. Its economy was dependent on commerce and manufacturing. Businesses, factories, railroad, and mining were developed, also fueled by the arrival of immigrants from Europe, who were seeking new opportunities. The North had many large cities, such as New York City, with a population of 185,000 in 1830. Through immigration, especially from Germany and Ireland, and natural population growth, that number grew to 1,068,000 by 1860. Seven out of eight immigrants chose to settle in the North rather than the South, due to the opportunities provided. People in the North were also far more likely to have careers in business, medicine, and education. Additionally, engineers were 6 times more likely to be living in the North. Modernizing also included letting go of certain beliefs, such as the institution of slavery.

Lastly, the abolitionist movement was most powerful in the North. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictional story that portrayed slavery and became the best selling book of the 19th century, second only to the Bible.

Many Northerners were horrified by the experiences of slaves, while many Southerners disagreed with the book’s contents. Generally, lives in the South were very different than Northern ones. The Southern economy was heavily dependent on agriculture, which relied on slavery, and had only been minimally impacted by the Industrial Revolution. The South had “little manufacturing capability, about 29 percent of the railroad tracks, and only 13 percent of the nation’s banks” (National Park Service). However, the South’s cotton exports accounted for two-thirds of the world’s supply, and were worth more than all other US exports combined. The fertile soil and warm climate made it ideal for large plantations and crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice. Unlike the North, the population was much more widespread and less dense. Education was also less valued than in the North, and many Southern men would have careers in either the military or farming.

This was all possible thanks to slavery, which was relied upon as a cheap source of labor to work in the fields. Abolishing slavery would devastate the Southern economy, possibly to the point of no-return. Fear of this prompted secessions among Southern states, who wanted to protect the institution of slavery. There was a clear correlation between the number of slaves a state had and how likely it was to secede. For example, the first six states to secede had a slave population of 44% to 57% of the total population. The other five had a slave population of 25% to 33%. By contrast, slaves represented only 2% to 20% of the population in other states. The seceding states were willing to defend their interests, and that meant protecting slavery. The North and the South were heavily polarized, with different economies and social beliefs, which made it difficult for them to come to agreements about slavery and led to the issue of state rights. In order to preserve the institution of slavery, Southern states argued for their state rights. State rights are the powers retained by the regional governments of a federal union under the provisions of a federal constitution. More simply, this meant that states (especially the Southern ones) believed that they should have jurisdiction over their most important affairs. John C. Calhoun, Vice President under John Quincy Adams (1824) and Andrew Jackson (1828) believed in nullification, the theory that a state had the right to nullify any federal law that it deemed unconstitutional.

Calhoun argued that states understood what was happening within them, and that the federal government should not be allowed to control the decisions that impacted them the most. As stated in the 10th Amendment, “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”. This led to the concept that states had certain political powers over the federal government. During the 19th century, state rights were used to address the issue of slavery. States got to decide for themselves whether slavery would be legal within them. Naturally, the Southern states, where the economy depended on slavery, voted to maintain it. This only increased tensions between the North and the South. As stated by Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, “Therefore, there are two apparent rudiments to this. One is slavery and the other is the rights of the state, but the latter is only a cover for the former. If slavery was irrelevant, it would not be difficult to protect the rights of the state”. In the end, many Southern states claimed that the federal government was not doing enough to protect their rights, which was simply a cover for slavery.

A total of eleven states and one territory seceded from the US and formed the Confederate States of America. Four of these states, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina wrote Declaration of Causes, explaining their reasons for seceding. A major theme was the defense of slavery. In the Mississippi declaration, about 73% of the words were devoted to slavery. In the Georgia one, 56% of the document was related to slavery. 54% of Texas’s and 20% of South Carolina’s grievances were related to slavery. These states claimed that slavery accounted for a large portion of their economy and that they would not survive without it. As previously stated by Charles Sumner, state rights were simply a front for the larger and more immoral issue, slavery, that the South was willing to defend at all costs. For decades before the Civil War, there were a series of political events and violent incidents that increased tensions in the country. The main cause was the firm division between the North and South on the issue of slavery.

A border between the two regions was effectively drawn by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Missouri wanted to be admitted into the Union as a slave state, but doing this would disrupt the Congressional Balance. In the end, Missouri became a slave state and Maine became a free state in order to maintain the equilibrium between the number of slave states and free states. Furthermore, a line was drawn along the 36°30’ parallel line through the Western territories, in an attempt to establish a border between any future slave and free states. Another agreement that caused an increase in tensions was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act allowed two more states, Kansas and Nebraska, to join the Union. The states could decide by popular sovereignty if the state would become free or enslaved, which caused settlers from the North and the South to arrive quickly. A guerilla war began, known as Bleeding Kansas, that ended in 1859, after the deaths of more than 50 settlers.

Both the Compromise of 1820 and the Act of 1854 contributed to the destabilization of the country, by drawing a border between the North and the South and by pitting citizens against each other. In the early 19th century, it seemed that the South merely wanted to protect its interests. However, during the 1850s, it became more aggressive in asserting what it perceived to be its rights to slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act was one of the five bills enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850. It was to apply to the entire country, and “required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law” (Accessible Archives). Many slave and bounty hunters not only captured escaped slaves, but went as far as kidnapping free black people and sell them as slaves. This terrified free black people and runaway slaves, who felt that they were no longer safe in the United States. This also meant that by law, abolitionists were supposed to turn over runaway slaves.

This only served to enrage the North over Southern actions. Another landmark ruling was the Dred Scott v. Sanford case of 1857. Dred Scott, a slave, was taken by his slave owners from Missouri to Illinois and Wisconsin, both free states. He attempted to fight for his freedom, but lost. The judge declared that slaves were property, and he did not want to prevent owners from moving their property around. Since Dred Scott was a slave, and therefore property, this meant that no free state could interfere with the right of slave owners to own slaves within them. The judge also claimed that no black person would ever become a US citizen and have the rights of a white person. This terrified the North, as it effectively allowed for the movement of slaves, and therefore slavery, into free states. Although the South committed horrible and immoral acts, they were not without resistance. An example is the 1831 uprising of the slave Nat Turner. He, and other slaves, led an insurrection that killed about 60 white people.

Two days after it had begun, they were stopped, tried, and executed by militia infantry and artillery. Another 200 slaves were lynched by white mobs. Education of slaves was banned and their right to assemble was either prohibited or supervised. The tensions between slaves and their owners continued to increase over time. What was perhaps the final event to take place before the country dissolved into full warfare was the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. Historian Arthur Cole said that “Lincoln was pictured in many quarters not only as a black Republican but ‘as an Abolitionist; a fanatic of the John Brown type; the slave to one idea, who, in order to carry that out to its legitimate results, would override laws, constitutions, and compromises of every kind’, as a Robespierre ready to overturn the whole fabric of society” (Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom). The South viewed his election as a loss, and by Lincoln’s inauguration, seven states had seceded and the Confederate States of America had been created. Lincoln did not win any of the electoral votes in the South, but he took most from the North.

This election was proof of the sectionalism movement that was splitting the country in half. Political tensions between the North and the South that ultimately culminated into the Civil War were primarily caused by slavery. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War. The Southern economy was heavily dependent on slave labor, which prompted them to fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo. State rights and a series of Congressional Acts were used as tools to maintain the institution of slavery. As time went on, the North, which had already abolished slavery and did not depend on it economically, could no longer tolerate this abhorrent and morally reprehensible practice. Southern states went as far as seceding, and since Lincoln did not agree to the dismantling of the country, this led to an outright conflict. Following the war, many did not want to admit that slavery was the true cause of the conflict.

History was rewritten with the myth that states rights, and not slavery, had caused the Civil War. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, stated, “The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident… [North-South hostility was] not the consequence of any difference on the abstract question of slavery… it would have manifested itself just as certainly if slavery had existed in all the states, or if there had not been a negro in America”. The truth was simply too shameful. Not coming to terms with the real reason of the conflict prevented the country from truly acknowledging and addressing the extent of racism. The legacy of this denial and the impact it has had on generations of African Americans is still felt today.