"If you want one mistake above all mistakes in understanding the Civil War, here it is: "Both the North and the South were primarily motivated to fight it out over the same issue." They were not. So, if you adopt that principle interpretation, you will never accurately understand the Civil War. The South seceded to defend slavery. The North invaded because Abraham Lincoln decided to defend the Union militarily in order to collect the federal government's tariffs. Abolitionists in the North fully understood Lincoln's economic motivation, and they were deeply disappointed. But there weren't many of them, so their disappointment didn't have much political impact on events in 1861." - Gary North
"Though Northern agitation toward African slavery, especially fomenting slave insurrection in the American South, pushed the Southern States to political secession, economic questions that had been weakening the fraternal Union since 1788 had become a paramount concern of Northern business interests in early 1861. Those interests would not accept an independent South with a lower tariff structure which would leave Northern ports idle, and helped influence Lincoln to wage his destructive war." - Gary North "Lysander Spooner, writing in 1864, was professing a view that even today is considered to be utterly controversial: It is not only possible to oppose the institution of slavery while supporting secession, it is an absolute contradiction to hold any other combination of positions. In Spooner's view, all the northern supporters of the war accomplished, including Senator Sumner, was to replace chattel slavery with political slavery." - Chris Calton This website studies the causes of southern secession and the American Civil War (1861-1865), more accurately called the War of Northern Aggression or Lincoln's War. Some guidelines to keep in mind as you study the causes of Lincoln's War 1. Be open minded. In order to be right, one must first be willing to be wrong. 2. Examine both sides of the story, both pro Union and pro Confederate. You can learn from those that you disagree with. Read books and articles from both points of view. 3. Read the primary source documents for yourself, such as speeches, letters, newspaper editorials, pamphlets, etc. 4. Understand that "secession" and "war" are two different words with different meanings. Secession in and of itself did not cause the war. Just because the South seceded doesn't mean the North had to invade. Secession indirectly caused the war, but it was not the direct cause of war. The cause of secession and the cause of war are two separate, but related, issues. Read the article: Southern Secession Was One Thing — and the War to Prevent It Was Another by Ryan McMaken Introduction The best way to study these causes is to examine the primary source documents such as speeches, letters, newspaper editorials, pamphlets, etc. When the war is scrutinized this way it becomes crystal clear what was going on that led to secession and the war. This website uses historical documents as well as modern day books and articles. It is crucial to understand that the word "secession" and the word "war" have two different meanings. They are not interchangeable. Secession - the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state. War - a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state. Southern secession in and of itself did not cause the war. It indirectly caused the war, but just because the South seceded does not mean the North had to invade. The causes of Southern secession and the causes of the war are two different questions. They are related to each other, but not synonymous. When it comes to the War of Northern Aggression there is a lot of self serving amnesia on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. When you read pro southern literature, you rarely come across any document that advocated slavery. However, virtually all of the southern leaders said that slavery was the main reason why the South seceded. It wasn't until after the war that they switched and found other retroactive reasons for secession such as state's rights or tariff collection. The prime example is Alexander Stephen's book A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States. Pro northern historians on the other hand can't seem to differentiate between secession and war. They see that the South seceded to defend slavery and conclude that the war was about slavery. Slavery, however, does not explain why the North forced the South back into the Union. Lincoln said explicitly and repeatedly that slavery was not the reason for the invasion. Tariff collection was the reason for the war. All one has to do is read the northern editorials during the secession crises to see that economics and tariff collection was the only reason the North invaded the South. Most pro northern historians ignore the tariff issue. So slavery and tariffs were both part of the equation. Southern secession was primarily about slavery and Lincoln's war was about tariff collection. That is what the historical documentation teaches. Some Basic Facts About Lincoln's War 1. The South seceded primarily to defend slavery. 2. Lincoln and the North did not go to war to suppress slavery. 3. Lincoln and the North went to war for economic control of the South. 4. Contemporaries in Europe saw the war as a tariff war. 5. Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter to make the South look like the aggressors. Therefore it was a war of Northern aggression. 6. The war was a war of Northern aggression and imperialism because the North was trying to force the Southern states back into the Union. The South was not trying to force the Northern states into the Confederacy. It was the North's (or Lincoln's) war, not the South's. Why did the South secede? The South seceded to defend slavery. This was the stated reason of virtually all of the southern leaders. The South saw Lincoln as a threat to slavery, even though he wasn't. After the war, the South discovered other retroactive reasons for secession such as tariff collection and state's rights. Why did the North not let the South go? The North invaded the South to keep it the Union for economic reasons. Union and tariff were inseparable in Lincoln's mind. He was willing to let the South keep its slaves if it remained in the Union. The North did not go to war to suppress slavery. Moral High Ground When countries went to war in past centuries they sometimes tried to seek the moral high ground. They wanted to make sure they looked like the good guys to the rest of the world. The North won the battle of the moral high ground in the eyes of the public for two reasons. First, the South seceded primarily to defend slavery and second, the South literally fired the first shot of the war at Fort Sumter. As it turns out, Lincoln was successful in manipulating the South to fire the first shot. For these two reasons, the South was placed on the moral low ground in the public's mind. It has yet to recover. Slavery One thing that Lincoln's War did was to end slavery. Unfortunately, slavery ended peacefully in Europe without a war, but not in America. Slavery could have ended without a war if Lincoln had been more diplomatic. Slavery in the old South was mostly benevolent. The evidence for this is significant. In the Slave Narratives (1936-1938) most slaves spoke of their experience as good days. The book Time on the Cross by Fogel and Engerman concluded that most slaves were treated better than expected. With thousands of white men away from home fighting the war, there could have easily been a massive slave insurrection. While there were some small uprisings, there was no major slave insurrection. That speaks volumes about the relationship between master and slave in the old South. The North promoted, prolonged, and profited from slavery. Not until it became uneconomical did the North abolish slavery. French historian Alexis De Tocqueville, observed "Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known." Both Northern and Southern churches appealed to the Bible to support their view on slavery. The Bible contains pro-slavery and anti-slavery verses, but mostly pro-slavery. Was secession legal? It was not clear Constitutionally in 1860 whether a state legally could secede. James Madison and the Federalists of 1787 were careful never to discuss publicly this aspect of the Constitution. Had they publicly adopted Lincoln's no-secession position, the Constitution would never have been ratified. In 1860, the right of secession was still an open issue in Constitutional theory. Certainly a state had a moral right to leave the Union. Even Lincoln once said so. Several Northern states considered secession in the early 1800s. Abolitionists and John Brown The abolitionists and especially John Brown were largely responsible for starting the American Civil War. John Brown was a murderer. In addition to the people that he murdered in Kansas, the first person he murdered at Harper's Ferry was a black man who refused to help him and his gang. The Northern press made a martyr out of Brown. This alarmed the South because they felt that slavery was being threatened. Southern Secession In reaction to John Brown and the abolitionists, the South defended slavery from top to bottom. The South seceded when Lincoln was elected because they perceived he was a threat to slavery even though he was not. The South seceded to defend slavery. This was the stated opinion of virtually all of the Southern leaders. Not until after the war did slavery become politically incorrect in the South and they found other retroactive reasons for secession such as states' rights and tariff collection. Slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Secession and War Secession was not the cause of the war. Just because the South seceded does not mean the North had to invade. The North could have let the South go in peace. The cause of secession and the cause of war are two separate questions. Therefore slavery was not really the cause of the war. Slavery ended in other countries in Europe peacefully without a war and it could have ended peacefully in America if Lincoln had exercised more restraint. Fort Sumter and the First Shot Lincoln manipulated the Confederates to fire first at Fort Sumter. This helped to place the South on the moral low ground by making it look like they started the war. One does not have to look too hard to see through what Lincoln was doing. War of Northern Aggression The South may have seceded because of slavery but the North did not go to war to suppress slavery. Lincoln had a messianic view of the Union and so went to war to preserve it. Union and tariff collection went hand in hand. Union and tariff were inseparable in Lincoln's mind. He said in his first inaugural address that he would fight for tariff collection. He also said he would leave slavery alone. Slavery was used as a pretext for the war so the North could have the moral high ground, but it was not the real cause. The Civil War was a war of Northern aggression and imperialism for economic reasons and preservation of the Union. Lincoln Lincoln had no regards for the Constitution or the liberty of American citizens. He imprisoned many Northern citizens for speaking out against the war, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and closed newspapers that opposed the war. Lincoln was openly opposed to racial equality between blacks and whites. He wanted to ship blacks out of the country. His Emancipation Proclamation was a propaganda move only. On 26 December 1862, Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution in American history - 39 Sioux Indians in Minnesota whose guilt could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln intended the Emancipation Proclamation to serve four purposes – none of which had anything to do with emancipating the slaves. First, was his fond hope that it would trigger massive slave uprisings in the South. The second purpose was to facilitate the recruitment of free blacks into the Union Army. Third, the proclamation was designed to keep the British and French from recognizing and supporting the Confederacy. Fourth, the Emancipation Proclamation was to defang the arguments and accusations against him by the Radical Republicans in Congress who demanded abolition. The Emancipation Proclamation did serve Lincoln's immediate purpose – which clearly did not include abolition Gettysburg Address The Gettysburg Address was a political speech by a politician. Political speeches are not known for their full disclosure of what the politician really means. Flags There is nothing that occurred under the Confederate flag that did not occur under the U.S. flag and worse. No Confederate flag ever flew over a slave trading ship. The U.S. Flag is the one that was responsible for the slave trade. Under the U.S. flag the Indians were massacred by the bushel. The Trail of Tears is an example of mistreatment of Indians by the Union. Even the Confederates did not massacre the slaves. The KKK uses the American flag as often as they use the Confederate flag. Therefore, for the sake of consistency, if the Confederate flag is going to be banned then the U.S. flag should be banned also. However, the Confederate battle flag was a symbol of slavery. Secession versus War It is crucial to understand that the cause of Southern secession and the cause of the war that followed it are not the same. The word "secession" and the word "war" have two different meanings. They are not interchangeable or synonymous. Secession - the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state. War - a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state. Southern secession in and of itself did not cause the war. It indirectly caused the war, but just because the South seceded does not mean the North had to invade. The causes of Southern secession and the causes of the war are two different questions. They are related to each other, but not synonymous. Too often Civil War historians incorrectly assume that the very existence of the Confederacy caused the Civil War. Ryan McMaken in his article Southern Secession Was One Thing — and the War to Prevent It Was Another writes: There's an old saying that "he who distinguishes well teaches well." In other words, if one's going to talk about an important subject, one should be able to define his terms and tell the difference between two things that are not the same. This wisdom, unfortunately, is rarely embraced by modern pundits arguing about the causes of the American Civil War. A typical example can be found in an article at the Huffington Post in which the author opines: "This discussion [over the causes of the war] has led some people to question if the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War, was truly motivated by slavery." Did you notice the huge logical mistake the author makes? It's right here: "...the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War...." The author acts as if the mere existence of the Confederacy inexorably caused the war that the North initiated in response to it. That is, the author merely assumes that if a state secedes from the United States, then war is an inevitable result. Moreover, she also wrongly assumes that the motivations behind secession were necessarily the same as the motivations behind the war. But this does not follow logically at all. If California, for example, were to secede, is war therefore a certainty? Obviously not. The US government could elect to simply not invade California in response. Moreover, were war to break out, the motivations behind a Californian secession are likely to be quite different from the motivations of the US government in launching a war. For the sake of argument, let's say the Californians secede because they couldn't stand the idea of being in the same country with a bunch of people they perceive to be intolerant rubes. But, what is a likely reason for the US to respond to secession with invasion? A US invasion of California is likely to be motivated by a desire to extract tax revenue from Californians, and to maintain control of military bases along the coast. Thus it would be absurd to equate the motivations of the California secessionists with those of the advocates for the invasion of California. To put it simply: an act of secession, and a war that may follow it, are not the same thing. And yet we find that commentary on the Civil War repeatedly conflates secession with the Civil War itself as if they were the same thing. Tom Mullen in his article Both Lincoln and the Confederacy Were Awful writes: Americans sympathetic to the Union generally believe the war was fought to end slavery or to “rescue the slaves” from political kidnapping by the slave states, that seceded from the Union to avoid impending abolition. “No,” say those sympathetic to the Confederacy. The states seceded over states’ rights, particularly their right not to be victimized by high protectionist tariffs, paid mostly by southern states, but spent mostly on what we’d now call corporate welfare and infrastructure projects in the north. That the states seceded for a different reason than the war was fought seems to elude everyone. Historian Gary North writes in his article Yes, Virginia, The South Seceded Over Slavery: If you want one mistake above all mistakes in understanding the Civil War, here it is: "Both the North and the South were primarily motivated to fight it out over the same issue." They were not. So, if you adopt that principle interpretation, you will never accurately understand the Civil War. The South seceded to defend slavery. The North invaded because Abraham Lincoln decided to defend the Union militarily in order to collect the federal government's tariffs. Abolitionists in the North fully understood Lincoln's economic motivation, and they were deeply disappointed. But there weren't many of them, so their disappointment didn't have much political impact on events in 1861. Chris Calton writes in his article Did Tariffs Really Cause the Civil War?: It is important to stress, of course, that the Union apologists who argue that the Civil War was waged over slavery are distorting the history as well. Secession was one thing, and the war to end it was another, as Ryan McMaken succinctly reminded us in a recent article. The fallacy that the war was fought over slavery is based on the inappropriate application of algebraic logic to historical analysis: according to the transitive property of algebra, if secession was driven by slavery and the war was driven by secession, then the war must have been driven by slavery. But this kind of mathematical logic cannot logically apply to history, which as Mises reminds us in The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science, is one of the two sciences of human action (page 41). Human action is driven by ideas. Action is purposeful. Action employs means to obtain desired ends. The study of history attempts to establish what these ends were during different historic episodes, and what means humans employed historically to achieve these ends. To determine this, Mises explains, historians must look at the historical evidence (unlike the other science of human action, praxeology, which is an a priori deductive science). The evidence is clear. For the South, the ends aimed at was the preservation of slavery, and the means they employed to realize these ends was secession. The historical evidence makes this interpretation entirely evident. For the North, the ends aimed at was the preservation of the Union, and the means they resorted to in order to achieve this end was war. |
Introductory Articles
Southern Secession Was One Thing — and the War to Prevent It Was Another Both Lincoln and the Confederacy Were Awful Yes, Virginia, The South Seceded Over Slavery The Causes of the “Civil War” in the Words of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis The Civil War: Both Sides Were Wrong Did Lincoln Want War? Books Pro-Northerners Should Read The Real Lincoln When in the Course of Human Events Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States A Century of War Understanding Abe Lincoln's First Shot Strategy: Inciting Confederates to Fire First at Fort Sumter Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History Conceived In Liberty Books Pro-Southerners Should Read Apostles of Disunion Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-April 1861 Defending Slavery Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War Primary Source Documents Causes of the Civil War Northern and Southern Editorials on Secession 1860-1861 Confederate Documents Teaching American History Nineteenth Century Documents Project Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-April 1861 Lincoln's First Inaugural Address Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Republican Party Platform of 1860 Letter to Charles Sumner from Lysander Spooner Slavery, Secession, and Civil War: Views from the United Kingdom and Europe, 1856-1865 Websites Confederate Reprint Company North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Causes of the Civil War Student of the American Civil War Thomas J. DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" --- a rebuttal A Factual Analysis and response to James Epperson Podcast The March to America's Civil War California Gold and Clay's Compromise Nationalized Slavery: The Fugitive Slave Law The Christiana Resistance: The First Shots of the Civil War . |