Persistent disagreement over the Civil War - its causes, consequences and implications - is a testament to the strength of feeling that still remains over what many agree is the central event in American history. When historians argue, more than 150 years later, over the circumstances that brought America to the brink of dissolution, it is a sure sign that it is still a contentious subject, the roots of which are still with us. The debate over federalism vs. states’ rights, for example, is still very much alive, though it takes forms that are different from those that animated political debate in the 19th century. The accounts written by Howard Zinn, James McPherson and Paul Johnson view the Civil War from perspectives divergent enough to reflect the fact that controversy continues to underscore this seminal historical event. Ultimately, the Civil War is a subject broad enough to accommodate the unique political, social and economic viewpoints encompassed by the interpretations of Zinn, McPherson, Johnson and others.
The works of Zinn, McPherson and Johnson referred to in this paper show that Civil War scholarship is an organic creation, apt to shift along with changing opinion over the role of slavery, the moral rectitude of the Southern cause, Lincoln’s true motivation for emancipating the slaves, and so forth. Civil War historians and authors often appear to adapt their stance on such topics based on prevailing opinion and debate over relevant contemporary issues. As such,
the sheer enormity of the Civil War challenges historians to continually reassess their conclusions and expand their view of a cataclysm that defines modern American history.
Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States:
The predominant position has espoused slavery and the perceived need, at the federal level, to resolve the problem once and for all. Some however, contend that this is a facile answer, one that is absurdly one-dimensional and wholly inadequate to explain the deeper motivations behind the move toward war. In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn argues that the white power structure, which orchestrated events at the highest levels, was motivated by economic means when it came to the slavery question. The freeing of the slaves, in Zinn’s estimation, was part of a much more cynical process than history texts would allow. “Such a National Government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the north. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism” (Zinn, 187).
It is well-known that Lincoln “played politics” with emancipation. Until 1862, the fate of the slaves was a highly charged political matter, one that the president used as a kind of public relations broadside to be launched at just the right moment, after a key Union victory on the field of battle. Lincoln may well have been horrified by the treatment of human beings held as chattel, but as an astute and highly intelligent politician, he would not permit his personal
feelings to dictate his course of action. Thus, it does not push the bounds of credibility to suppose that a political realist like Lincoln might indeed have been acting in response to pressures from above. Under pressure from his own side as well as from Richmond, Lincoln leveraged emancipation. “He would keep the abolition of slavery not at the top of his list of priorities, but close enough to the top so it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage. Lincoln could skillfully blend the interests of the very rich and the interest of the black at the moment in history when these interests met” (Zinn, 187).
Zinn makes note of Lincoln’s famous 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, in which the president makes clear that his position on slavery was not necessarily high-minded and humanitarian. Lincoln wrote that if he could preserve the Union by permitting the slaves to remain in bondage, he would have surely done it. Slavery was clearly the dominant issue and it became even more important as the war dragged on, particularly in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation. But Zinn posits that it could only be taken so far given the interests of those whose wealth and power stood to be impacted. He adopts a cryptic stance toward the men who wielded power behind the scenes, arguing that “the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North” orchestrated policy and eventually forced significant constraints to be placed on the rights given to former slaves (Zinn, xv).
It was under these circumstances, then, that the promise of Reconstruction would go unfulfilled, a politically hollow initiative victimized by the conspiratorial machinations of the power elite. Zinn’s views on Lincoln support his thesis that the war, and the policy aimed at
bringing the people of the former Confederacy back into the union, were actually
manifestations of a titanic power struggle between the contending capitalist systems of North and South. Furthermore, Reconstruction mirrored the labor exploitation that predominated in the North, with disenfranchised former slaves and industrial workers in the nation’s largest cities existing within equally oppressive systems.
James McPherson – Battle Cry of Freedom:
Other historians counter that it really does not matter whether Lincoln was playing politics with the issue of slavery or not, that the outcome was what counted. Such is the basic position of James McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom stands as one of the great works of Civil War history. McPherson is concerned with the economics of the situation, but in a line of argument that more closely reflects convention, namely, that the planter elite of the South used its power and influence to force the common man, the poor farmers and economically disenfranchised to fight their battle. McPherson explains in voluminous detail how the Civil War truly was the inevitable and titanic clash of contrary economic ideologies. The North, which benefited from free labor, could not accommodate the institution of slavery and, as such, came to see the institution of slavery as a direct threat to its way of life. McPherson notes that the rhetoric of Northern politicians could have easily been mistaken for the Confederate position. “An Ohio Democrat amended the party’s slogan to proclaim ‘the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, and the Niggers where they are’” (McPherson, 560).
Like Zinn, McPherson would not have the reader believe that the people of the North, other than the radical abolitionist faction, were any more likely to embrace emancipation in
humanistic terms than the people of the South who fought and died to preserve institutionalized racial inequality. Politics was politics, regardless of region or ideology. “The Democratic party’s professed egalitarianism was for whites only. Its commitment to slavery and racism was
blatant in the North as well as the South” (McPherson, 30). The North’s highly industrialized, technologically developed economy not only gave it a decided material advantage; for many, its
affluence allowed it to stand apart from philosophical issues that were used to animate the nation politically, to position the country for a war that would scourge it of a great evil. For Northern industrialists, the Civil War was a struggle aimed at removing a competing economic system.
The general understanding of the phrase “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight,” which Confederate soldier Sam Watkins made famous in Company Aytch, applied to the North as well as to the South (37). McPherson echoes this point, explaining that this expression applied to the underclasses of both South and North, where those with money and influence could buy their way out of impressment into the Union army. Indeed, many a rich man and rich man’s son avoided the slaughter of Civil War battlefields in this way. The vast majority of citizens from Northern cities had no recourse but to comply when Lincoln enacted the nation’s first military draft.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Battle Cry of Freedom is the extensive consideration that McPherson gives to the political machinations and territorial positioning that led to the war itself. McPherson is determined to lay the groundwork for what was to follow, so that when he presents the causes of the war and the reasons for its outcome it is in full understanding of all that led up to the conflict. Thus, Battle Cry of Freedom is a richly layered
and laboriously researched work of scholarship that, though it avoids the conspiratorial arguments that Zinn puts forth, offers a detailed socio-economic account of the events and political juxtapositioning that made war inevitable.
Paul Johnson – A History of the American People:
British essayist and historian Paul Johnson approaches the dual subjects of the Civil War and American nationhood from the standpoint of a moralizing outsider, who understood the war to be a moral crusade led by a president whose lyrically beautiful writings recall biblical passages and core Christian tenets. For Johnson, the Civil War was the inevitable result of ethical and religious pressure levied by abolitionists in the North and inspired by the Second Great Awakening. The great uprising that overthrew the “peculiar institution” of slavery had a unifying effect that had been absent. “The Civil Warmade America a nation, which it was not before. For Americawas, rather, an artificial state or series of states, bound together by negotiated agreements and compacts, characters and covenantsTheir contract to become Americans – the Declaration of Independence – did not in itself make them a nation” (Johnson, 1997). Johnson devotes considerable attention to the fact that the word “nation” was reviled by the nation’s founders (and certainly by Southerners); indeed, it was not until 1821 that the idea of America as a nation was asserted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall (1997).
Johnson, however, is rather too much the essayist in his interpretation of the Civil War. He under-emphasizes the fact that regionalization in pre-Civil War America was, at least in part, a function of the vastly different economic systems of the North and South. When he points out that “Only two states wanted a civil war – South Carolina and Massachusetts” (Johnson, 1997),
Johnson makes reference to the two most polarized states from an ideological standpoint, but does not consider deeply enough the socio-economic factors at work in the Union and the Confederacy, where the economically un-empowered were manipulated by the wealthy, poor farmers who became cannon fodder and perished in the hundreds of thousands.
Johnson does, however, bring a certain “outsider’s” objectivity to some of the era’s key figures. Johnson observes that Jefferson Davis, whom many historians have reviled for having ruthlessly pursued the union’s destruction, leading to horrific slaughter, was actually quite progressive in many aspects of governance and jurisprudence (Davis commuted the death sentences of many Confederate soldiers who were convicted of desertion). Lincoln, on the other hand, seriously considered the possibility of shipping freed slaves out of the country in the interest of politics and national unity (Lind, 1998). However, Johnson cannot resist the temptation to oversimplify the Reconstruction period, a notoriously complex phenomenon, implying that only freed slaves and other members of the African-American population supported Reconstruction. In fact, the South’s population consisted of more than the economically preponderant planter class, former slaves and poor farmers. “In reality, significant parts of the Southern white population – particularly Highland Southerners and German immigrants in Texas – despised the Confederacy and welcomed the federal armies and the Republican regimes” (Lind, 1998).
Conclusion:
Johnson, Zinn and McPherson have contributed accounts of the Civil War that that seek to understand the roots of the conflict in ways that transcend widely accepted over-
simplifications. The Civil War was a cataclysm so vast in its effect that it must be seen as something much larger than a contest of military power, or even of contrasting ideologies. Ultimately, the Civil War was caused by a confluence of socio-economic factors that brought about a violent rending of capitalistic systems that could no longer co-exist peacefully.
Works Cited
Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Lind, Michael. “Johnson’s America.” National Review, 1998.
http://old.nationalreview.com/09Mar98/.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 2003.
Watkins, Sam R. Co. Aytch: Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment, Or, a Side Show of the
Big Show. Chattanooga, TN: Times Printing, 1900.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Classics,
1980.
Zinn, Howard. The Other Civil War: Slavery and Struggle in Civil War America, New York:
Harper Collins, 2011.
