There were many books and articles written on the Civil War. Nowadays, people have access to many achievements, where they can find a world of useful information about the Civil War and find answers to their questions. But somehow the questions remain, and we still cannot say for sure that we understand all of the reasons behind the Civil War. Today, a lot of controversy behind this historical event was revealed. This war was supposedly quite different from how we used to view it. It’s still a question why the two sides of one of the strongest countries almost split. At schools, we used to be taught that the Civil War was all about slavery. The North was willing to abolish it once and forever, and the South wanted to stick to it and strengthen it even more. This is taught in schools due to an anti-racism policy of the United States, which is absolutely understandable and right to do. But do we really know if the South was completely wrong during the Civil War? Do we know what it actually stood for, and was the North right with the way it treated another, not less equal and important part of the country? This research paper is an attempt to answer some of these questions with the help of historical evidence, such as newspapers, journals and books. It explains the controversy and introduces the main arguments of both sides – the South and the North. With this research paper, I am hoping to bring some things to light and examine the importance of the Civil War.
The Civil War was one of the biggest wars in the history of the United States. It divided the country into two parts that disagreed with each other on plenty of things. The North, which was antislavery, had elected an antislavery President Abraham Lincoln. The South didn’t agree with the policy offered by the President, and decided to elect its own. It actually didn’t agree with some of the President elected before Lincoln, who came from that part of the world. The South lost its power in the government, and thus, wanted to elect its own. The first and only President of the Confederate States was Jefferson Davis. He came up with a plan for achieving independence, which was essentially failed. We used to believe that it was failed for the better of the whole country. With secession, the United States would lose its unity – something that it was struggling for so many decades. When the pilgrims arrived on “Mayflower”, they knew that only united could they achieve peace and build a new world. And they did manage to start their lives all over again, united together. During the Civil War, this understanding was somehow forgotten.
The question of independence was one of the most important during the Civil War. It was about the independence of Negros and the independence of the Southern States. Now, it is known that the economy of the United States was built on the institution of slavery. Slavery held the whole thing together. The South was pretty aware of the fact that if slavery was abolished, the economy would collapse, and it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to revive it. As we can see in the film called “12 years a Slave”, the economy of the country was based on crop production and free labor that Americans got from Africans. It was much stronger in the South, where people mostly depended on agriculture (although according to Loewen, some Southerners still claim that they never had slaves). The North, on the contrary, was more progressive and didn’t have to rely much on slavery. As Tocqueville writes in his book, “In the southern states man’s most pressing wants are always satisfied the southerner loves greatness, luxury, renown and, above all, idleness; nothing forces him to make an effort in order to live” (Tocqueville 844) And in the North, people were used to doing things without free servants. For the Northerners, it was much easier to accept the thought that the country would have to start functioning without slavery. Of course, because the North didn’t have to struggle for “greatness, luxury, and renown.” It had it already for a long time and took it for granted.
There were many things that the South hated about the contemporary situation in the country. According to “The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States”, the fact that the North was going to give freedom to Negros was unforgivable. It promoted revolts and didn’t respect the history, which started from the Founding Fathers. Another complaint given by the same article was that the North was destroying the equality of the South. The South was now in danger of Black revolts, and the North refused to protect it. The North was planning to free Africans without really knowing what they were going to do next. According to a controversial belief that I am familiar with, President Lincoln was originally planning on sending Africans back to their homeland since they didn’t have a language and couldn’t accommodate. But he was assassinated (by a Southerner!) before he could start fulfilling his plan.
In their papers, Rhett and Memminger write about how the South, in order to justify itself, compared the politics of President Lincoln with that of colonial Britain. This was a huge accusation, since we know that during the colonization period, the United States of America was humiliated and largely discriminated. They say that nowadays (during the Civil War, as they were contemporary writers), the North was in the position of Great Britain. It elected their own senators, and a majority of people in power was from the North. The South tried to remind the North how people felt when the bigger empire oppressed them. It was outraged by the fact that now the North turned into a despot who wasn’t willing to take the opinion of the South into consideration and banned it from joining the Congress. The South blamed the North for being corrupt and for its elections to be arranged. We still cannot say for sure if such serious accusation was true. On one side, it might have been, because Lincoln knew that many people were pro-slavery, and it would be extremely hard to change the opinions of the majority. On the contrary, it made perfect sense that in the antislavery part of the U.S., antislavery President and senators were elected. It wouldn’t be logical if people who fought against slavery would elect someone who promoted it.
But here I would like to argue the point of the South and ask if slavery wasn’t the same thing, which was done to the United States by Great Britain? Didn’t Americans understand from what they experienced while being under the oppression of the colonial power, that lack of freedom was the worst thing that could happen to a human being? How could they justify slavery if only one century ago, they were almost slaves themselves? They were not given any rights, and the Great Britain was making every little decision for them. A lot of their production went to Great Britain instead of remaining within the States and supporting its own economy, which was considered a normal thing. When their patience collapsed, they triggered off the war and after they established their own Constitution. How were the desires of Africans differ from their own? Was it just because Africans were brought to a foreign land? Well, for Americans the New England was once a foreign land too!
The South seemed to have approached the question of freedom from a different side. They brought up the Declaration of Independence and tried to protect their right to be free as it stated. Rhett and Memminger come up with the following quote about the South’s take on independence: “As free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do” (Rhett and Memminger 2) With this quote, the Southerners hoped that the North would understand and accept their right to freedom, by which they essentially meant secession. But wouldn’t it be the worst mistake ever made in the history of the United States?
The South, according to Rhett and Memminger, had some pretty definite plans. It wanted to organize its own industry that would keep depending on slavery, and thus they wanted to improve and strengthen the institution of slavery: “many fertile regions of the world, where the white man cannot labor, are brought into usefulness by the labor of the African, and the whole world is blessed by our productions” (Rhett and Memminger 4) Of course, as I already said before, the South didn’t view slavery as a wrong thing, because children of the South grew up with servants doing everything for them. Only due to its progress was the North able to see slavery from a different perspective.
Some of the Southerners’ requests were quite understandable. For example, according to Stille, the South demanded protection of its frontiers “more than fifteen hundred miles in length” (Stille 48) and asked the North to abandon Fortress Monroe and the Chesapeake Bay. They lost the feeling of being protected and searched for allies among the European enemies of the North. The North viewed this as an ultimate betrayal, and the conflict grew even bigger. But here, the actions of the North didn’t make much sense, because as I said, it refused to protect the South, but it also refused to give it its autonomy. President Lincoln didn’t want to lose the part of his country, but he also didn’t want to communicate with that part of his country.
Thus, we cannot deny that some of the Southerners’ requests weren’t completely ignored by President Lincoln and his government. First off, there was almost no representation of the Southern states in the Parliament. Lincoln was elected with a number of antislavery senators, and there didn’t seem to be any room for the representatives of another half of the country. This indeed could outrage the South. It was slowly isolated from the rest of the country. Secondly, President Lincoln preferred to solve the problem of the South by simply ignoring it and not letting it make its decisions simultaneously. Of course, he might have had a personal connection with the problem: after offering one of his best generals to fight for the North and getting a refusal, he didn’t seem to perceive the Southerners as co-citizens, but rather as enemies. He had his opinion of the Southerners shaped and wasn’t willing to change it.
However, things were not only concentrated on slavery. Owens claims that initially, the war was started without any controversy upon slavery. “According to the standard narrative, the Union turned to emancipation only reluctantly as a means to advance the Union war effort” (Owens 6) But the war turned into a horror, and the states became battlefields. I do believe that prior to the beginning of the war, no one even suspected that it would take long four years, and that the main topic of disagreement would be slavery.
In fact, prior to the Civil War, there was already a lot of misunderstanding between the North and the South. The North, being more progressed and having access to more money, controlled the South, which in some ways depended on the North. The two sides were not developing equally. Most of the trading took place in the North. Most goods from Europe arrived to the North. Canada, who was a huge trading partner, was situated near the North. The crime rate was lower in the North. The North provided people with job positions and with a high equality education. The North had access to so many institutions that the South didn’t even get to know about. The Confederate flag was initially a symbol of being independent from the rigid economic control, not racism, as it is believed nowadays. Although Lincoln did oppose slavery during his lifetime, this is what he said to the New York Tribune in his letter: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.” By saying “to save the Union”, the President meant to keep it from separating from the rest of the country. Of course, from a political point of view, such step wouldn’t be reasonable to make for either North or South. The United States would become more vulnerable, and by now it would be already conquered state by state by a larger and stronger empire like China. So, the will of Lincoln to keep the country together is more than clear and makes total sense. But the fact that he could have given more freedom to the South and helped its development without slavery stays the same.
The South, however, was pretty harsh during the Civil War, which was one of the reasons why it lost. The article called “The Secession of Virginia, and the American Civil War” (1861) tells us how the South behaved towards the states that declared neutrality after being a pro-slavery for a long time and eventually refusing to be so. Maryland was known to be one of the pro-slavery states where slavery was established pretty firmly. It was also one of the oldest states of the United States, and thus, it lacked democratic approach. However, during the Civil War, it proclaimed itself a neutral state and refused to pick a side. The South was outraged. Once Maryland refused to kill the fugitive slaves and promote pro-slavery politics, it fell in the eyes of the South and lost its respect once and forever. While I was studying the topic, I felt like the South lacked democracy and political correctness in its approach, and that’s why so many people turned their backs on it and joined the Lincoln’s party. Lincoln, being a strong and cold-blooded president (which is essential for making decisions, however), managed to remain a sympathetic human being, and that was what people found so attractive.
Let us look into the reasons why the North won not from a political point of view, but from a moral one. There were many books written by the abolitionists and by slaves themselves during and after the Civil War that shaped the understanding of the event. Many of those books were based on true events, and the characters were real people. Everyone has “Uncle’s Tom Cabin” in mind, which is said by some of the Southerners to be a completely made-up story. One book that I want to bring up is “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs. This book fully illustrates how the slaves were treated in pro-slave states, and for many people, it has completely answered the question of why slavery should have been abolished. Books such as “Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Coloured Woman” hit people’s feelings pretty strongly. Some say that those books were nothing but a political propaganda, which justified the North and made people believe that everything the North did was right only because it struggled for the abolishment. The Southerners didn’t buy it, of course, as they benefited from slavery and believed that the slaves somehow benefited from it too (they at least had homes, and once free, where would they go? What civil status would they get?)
It becomes clear that during any war, each side does everything in order to protect its interests and win people’s votes. The same went for the Civil War. In my opinion, none of the sides was right just because none of them was actually willing to listen to its opponent. Each of them ignored each other and acted like if they already were separated. Each acted according to its own interests, which is unforgivable for the country that is still united. According to the “The Rebuke or Secession Doctrines”, he defenders of the North asked questions like “What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied?” (“The Rebuke or Secession Doctrines” 51) without, of course, looking into the arguments of the South. And as we figured out in this paper, the South did have some convincing arguments against the way the North treated it. Fortunately, the war was over, but sadly, there were a lot of victims, and the problem somewhat remains. There is a lot of controversy nowadays connected to the Confederate flag, which is fully viewed as a sign of racism today. We cannot deny the fact that this flag was connected to violence and death to many people who survived the Civil War, but we also cannot claim that one side was fully right, and another one was all wrong.
This paper examined the reasons why the South wasn’t satisfied with the situation in the country prior to the Civil War. The main issue was, of course, slavery, which wasn’t where the war started. However, when it did start, slavery became something that the states disagreed upon. The South didn’t imagine its life and progress without free labor, because it fully depended on agriculture. The North was more progressed and it could live without servants. The South struggled for secession, but was never heard of President Lincoln. It also was concerned about its safety, which Lincoln also refused to give. The South tried to emphasize the importance of the Constitution and everything it said about freedom. It compared Lincoln’s policy to that of colonial Britain. But it failed to keep in mind, however, that keeping Africans as slaves contradicted the rules of the Constitution as well. Because Lincoln emphasized that, he won the respect of a lot of people.
With the help of a number of articles I also tried to explain the South’s take on the war and answer the question why the South lost. Partly it was due to political propaganda that justified all of the North’s actions just because it was anti-slavery, and partly it was because of the approach of the South, which was pretty rigid. Whatever it was, it’s extremely hard to find out who was right and who was wrong during the wars. All the conflicts have to be viewed from various points of view, including the Civil War. It is believed that we can objectively judge the events when several decades after they pass. However, I want to disagree and claim that sometimes, even hundreds of years are not enough. Some questions will never be answered, including, for example, the question of who actually won World War II (some claim it was the Russians, some claim it was Americans, and others claim there was no World War II, which is a pretty brave argument, but still an argument.) Such questions include the history of the American Civil War, which will always divide America into two parts and which we will never agree upon.
Works Cited:
"The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States." 1861. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
12 Years a Slave. Dir. Steve McQueen. 2013. Film.
Tocqueville, Alexis De, Phillips Bradley, Henry Reeve, and Francis Bowen. Democracy in America. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1945. Print.
"The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States." 1861. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Rhett, and Memminger. "Two Papers Regarding the Justifying Causes of Secession | Teaching American History." Teaching American History. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
Stillé, Charles J. Northern Interests and Southern Independence: A Plea for United Action. 1863. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Owens, Mackubin Thomas. "The South Was Right, the Historians Are Wrong: Taking the Antislavery Origins of the Civil War Seriously." Http://www.libertylawsite.org. 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
Loewen, James. "Five Myths about Why the South Seceded." Washington Post. The Washington Post. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
The Rebuke of Secession Doctrines by Southern Statesmen. Philadelphia, 1863. Print.
