On this day one hundred and fifty years ago, Confederate secessionists fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, beginning the Civil War. All in all, a pretty momentous day in American history. This would lead you to believe that we’d have a pretty good handle on why it happened. We have documents galore from that time period, telling us about debates in Congress and in public, letters sent between political leaders on both sides, and the stated positions of all the states involved. It’s always seemed pretty clear to me, and I’m sure to most people who’ve gone through the American public school system, that the Civil War was fought largely because of slavery. There were other reasons, of course, but I just don’t see the South seceding from the Union if slavery had already been abolished. As it turns out, though, there are plenty of people who disagree vehemently with that idea.
CNN recently surveyed Americans to gauge our feelings on the Civil War. The results might surprise you. The poll shows that while a majority of Americans agree that slavery was the main cause for the Civil War, 54% of Tea Partiers and 52% of Republicans disagree. Unfortunately, the poll doesn’t ask them what they think the main reason actually was. I’d be very interested to hear some of those responses. Perhaps they would say that the main reason was that the dirty feds just couldn’t stop meddling in state business. Or maybe that Lincoln was too divisive a president on important issues. Of course, the fact that the business the federal government was meddling in was slavery, and the most divisive issue of the 1860 campaign was (wait for it) slavery, is entirely irrelevant to these people.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t even the worst part of the poll. 28% of Republicans sympathize more with the Confederacy than with the Union. And that rises to almost 40% of Southern males! It simply astounds me that over a quarter of our country feels very strongly that the people to be pitied most in the whole situation were slave-owners and people who supported slave-owners. It’s an unconscionable position to take. There’s simply no positive way to look at it. If they support the Confederacy, either they’re hypocrites who slept through American history or they’re racists who support the right of white people to own people of color.
“But wait!” someone might say. “The Confederacy is an important part of our past. How dare you denigrate the history of the South!” Well, I dare because South Carolina, the first state to secede and the leader of the Confederacy, wrote in its declaration of secession that the state had no other option because the federal government was not enforcing the fourth article of the Constitution. This article states “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” Let’s be clear: the only stated reason for secession is the unwillingness of the federal government to let southern states keep slaves. There is simply no mention of taxes or any other issue.
It’s becoming a popular thing to say that we live in a post-racial society. People love to go on about how we don’t need affirmative action or programs focused on minorities because we have moved on from the turmoil of the past. But polls like this show how absolutely false that is. We still very much live in a society that divides itself on racial lines. How else am I to understand the fact that 28% of Republicans support the Confederacy? Support for the Confederacy is entirely equivalent with support for slavery, but I hate to think that anyone in America still believes in such a terrifying and horrific abuse of human rights. With statistics like these it’s obvious that society as a whole is still fractured in ways we’d rather not admit. Historically, there is simply no way to reconcile anti-slavery positions and support for the Confederacy. Elected officials and civic leaders from all over the country and from all different backgrounds must unequivocally state that the Confederacy was wrong, and that the Union’s victory and subsequent abolition of slavery has led directly to our country becoming the beacon of freedom it is today. To do any less is to dishonor the brave men and women who fought tirelessly to keep this country whole and free for all people.
Yes, slavery was a divisive issue of the era. Yes, southerners owned slaves. But the Civil War was not a righteous northern campaign to end slavery as you make it out to be. The Union soldiers were not fighting to free the slaves and to believe that is naive.
It seems unfair to me that the legacy of the confederacy is slavery in the minds of most. Do I sympathize with the Confederacy? No. I do not and I do not sympathize with Rome or the Soviet Union or any other empire that has fallen. But we cannot forget that a nation is made up its citizens, and not just those at the top, not just those most visible. For every southern slaveowner there were ten more non-slave owners.
The reality is the Confederate romanticism is largely unwarranted and ignorant of history, but to impart idealism upon either side is unwarranted, Union or Confederacy.
It is actually pretty fair to say slavery was the reason most responsible for the Civil War. The original secession of the south was precipitated by a constitutional crisis due to the “slave state, free state” policy, whereby states were admitted to the union as free or slave in order that there be an equal balance of slave and free. This crisis was nearly twenty years in building and was extremely divisive for the nation. This disunity lead states to challenge the necessity and wisdom of remaining an a Union with other states that differed in views and laws so much from them. The crisis came to a head with the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, anti-slave politician came to the Presidency with promises to deal with slavery, something that scared the South into succession.
It is fair to say that the disunity of the union, the -comparative to today weak- Federal Government and other factors are the proximate causes of the succession of the southern states, the background reasons for these factors was the question of slavery, making slavery the ultimate, or at least foremost cause of the American Civil War. Unless I miss my guys, the Organization of American Historians said something similar earlier this year.
I understand that there were other issues beside slavery to be considered. But I think Mr. Nigrosh hits the mark squarely, in that it is not the original reason that is critical so much as it is the current perception of that reason. Regardless of the origins of the conflict, it is the fact that 20th century racists embraced the Confederacy as a symbol of their position, and that throughout the south that symbolism remains today, that is so meaningful. To African Americans, the Confederate flag is the visceral equivalent of a swastika, a symbol of the twisted powers that would deny them any semblance of human respect or dignity, deny even their very lives. To support the Confederacy today is to support its legacy of racism, a legacy that was spawned and maintained by ignorance and hatred. We will never escape that horrible legacy until we agree to condemn the roots from which it sprang.
Many Hate groups also use the American flag along with the confederate flag yet there are no complaints about that. also the American flag flew over many slave ships. Flags only have meaning when someone assigns it to it. I see the confederate flag as the flag of my ancestors and southern pride while someone else sees a hate symbol.
The fact of the matter is that to ban the confederate flag is to infringe on free speech. and therefor it cant be done.
It appears this topic has hit a nerve. If you actually read through the article and the responses, nowhere is there a suggestion that the Confederate flag be banned. It is the idea of the Confederacy, and the fact that support of it implies the support of slavery, that is at issue here. No one mentioned banning flags; your defense of a non-existent issue perfectly illustrates the knee-jerk attitude of too many people today, be they actual southerners or merely supporters of that ill-fated and ill-intentioned attempt to continue the horror of slavery known as the Confederacy.
I think the Confederacy was fighting to continue a lot of policies that Northerners wanted to get rid of. In fact, the South during the Reconstruction was a very different place with very different policies and social/political behaviors then it had had before or since then. But federal corruption quickly ended Reconstruction and reversed both the positive and negative changes made
I say what is the united states was founded by black people and bought white slaves and brought them back to work the fields.The north and the south used white slaves to work the fields,and the south being more predominatley a farming economy and then one day,the north decides to take the white slaves and free them all completely affecting your economy.Free or nor not the white slaves would be working in the fields.
Yes the war was somewhat about slavery,but mainly it was about being free.Having white slaves was the norm back then,the north completely crippled the southern economy with a pen stroke,and then the north decided to take a cache of southern weapons.
I am tired of black against white.I think if black people were in the same shoes as the white people,they would have done the same thing.It was like the north was trying to start a war,which could have been fueled by the central banks,who knew they could have started a war by encouriging the slaves to be freed,which would have started war,which is did,and then the banks step in to lend money to the warring factions.This is in my opinion has been going on throughout world histroy,central banks starting wars,especially when lincoln was shot and its interesting that he printed our own money intererest free in competition with central banks of the time.
Hell is a place without reason,welcome to the usa.Wisdom is the ability to walk in many shoes and wear many hats,not finding fault or error in ones ways,is hard to do when you can see how things are actually are,instead of how we want them to be.The south was right to have slaves,and the north was right for wanting to abolish slavery.You wonder what people were thinking,ending slavery would put the south in complete poverty,if our founding fathers were so smart,they would have known this would cause a war,so the north literally wanted war.If slavery was so wrong,and abolishing it was the right thing to do,but it would also cause the souths economy to collapse,they could have allowed slavery for lets say 8 more years,giving the slaves some kind of civil rights,like no whipping or mistreatment,with arrest for landowners that did,and phase slavery out a little more slowly than the shock of just ending slavery on one given day,and collapsing the southern economy.
The South wasn’t stupid. They knew that slavery was protected under the Constitution and that it would take an amendment to ban slavery, and that wouldn’t happen as long as the South was in the Union. Over 60% of US exports in 1860 was cotton. It’s really not that hard to understand why there was a war. It was about money.
Anyone who actually thinks that the North was conducting a noble campaign to free slaves is absolutely delusional. The border states under Union control still had slaves. It was about money, just like everything else. If the Union didn’t want slavery, they could have paid a fair market price for slaves in the South, bought them, and freed them. But no, killing 600,000 people was a much better option.
Get real.
Expansion of slavery into the new western territories was THE major political issue in the first half of the 19th century. Many of the early presidents and influential “founding fathers” were tidewater plantation owners ( GW, Jefferson, Madison, et al ). The south, especially Virginia, had a disproportionate influence on shaping the early federal government compared to it’s voting population ( non voting slaves counted for 3/5ths of a person when determining Congressional districts ). The Industrial revolution and immigration from Europe ( where slavery was not popular ) was increasing northern population faster than southern population and threatening the sectional balance of power. The whole point of the Missouri Compromise was to maintain a power balance between northern and southern states.
The mountainous regions of the south ( especially western Virginia/ eastern Tennessee/ Kentucky ) weren’t good for large scale plantation “corporate farms”. Most of the agriculture was small family subsistence farming. That is why West Virginia seceded from Old Virginia; they didn’t have much use for the aristocratic wealthy life style of the tidewater plantation firebrands. Early enlistments in the Confederate army were predominantly from plantation areas. The average southern “little guy” didn’t have a dog in the fight until the North invaded the South. The original dispute wasn’t about personal “individual rights” versus government intrusion. It was to preserve the privileged life style and economy of the wealthy planters. But Southern leaders needed to rally the masses on personal terms.
On the other hand, the majority of the Northern population didn’t really care about the slaves; certainly not enough to die for them. Lincoln needed to rally his population on principles other than slavery; he stressed “preserving the Union” . Northern generals were way ahead of Lincoln in recognizing the strategic advantage of freeing slaves to undercut the Southern economy and military. The average Union soldier wasn’t on a moral crusade; enlistment bonuses, adventure, and patriotic peer pressure were key motivators.