Was the War Fought Over Slavery

Was the War Fought Over Slavery

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Many historians seek to justify the federal government's invasion of the South by claiming that the war was fought over slavery, and that Union forces were fighting to free the slaves while the South was fighting to keep them in bondage. A number of critics claim the South only fought in order to ensure the continuation of slavery. A detailed refutation of these assertions would require a separate paper. However, for now, I offer the following points in response to them:

* The war was fought over secession, not over slavery. If the South had not declared its independence, Lincoln would not have launched an invasion, and there would have been no war. The only slave states that were charged with insurrection and then invaded were those that belonged to the Confederacy. Would Lincoln and his fellow Republicans have accepted secession if the Confederacy had announced it was abolishing slavery as the first official act of its existence? Would the Republicans have allowed a peaceful separation if the Confederacy had started an emancipation program right after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)? Any serious student of the Civil War will agree that the answer to both of these questions is no.  I don't think anyone who has studied the subject believes the Republicans would have allowed the South to go in peace no matter when the Confederacy would have started to abolish slavery.

* In July 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a nearly unanimous vote, that affirmed that the North was not waging the war to overthrow slavery but to preserve the Union (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 66-70). McPherson notes,

. . . in 1861 the North was fighting for the restoration of a slaveholding Union. In his July 4 message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated the inaugural pledge that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists." (Ordeal By Fire, p. 265)

* When Lincoln assumed office, he was entirely willing to allow slavery to continue. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment that would have given additional legal protection to slavery. When Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation about two years later, he did so largely because he was under intense pressure from abolitionist Republicans in Congress, who were threatening to cut off funds from the army if Lincoln didn't issue some kind of emancipation statement. One only has to read the Emancipation Proclamation itself to see that it was a war measure that only applied to slaves who were in Confederate territory; it did not apply to any slaves who were in Union-controlled territory, not even to slaves who were in the four Union slave states. In addition, Bennett presents evidence that Lincoln himself tried to undermine the proclamation soon after he issued it, and that he issued it unwillingly (Forced Into Glory, pp. 22-29, 411-508). For that matter, Lincoln only began to consider issuing the proclamation after the Union war effort continued to falter (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 134-139; Robert Divine et al, America Past and Present, p. 460.)

* To be sure, some members of the Republican Party did believe the war should be waged for the purpose of abolishing slavery. Those who belonged to this faction of the party were commonly known as "Radical Republicans."

* There were important economic and political differences between the North and the South that were major reasons for the South's desire for independence. Prior to secession, the South had complained for decades about unfair, unconstitutional Northern economic policies, especially tariff policy. One of the seven ordinances of secession and two of the Declarations of Causes of Secession of the Deep South states mention unfair Northern economic policies. Jefferson Davis mentioned the South's complaints about Northern protectionist tariff policies in his first message to the Confederate congress (he cited the North's imposition of "burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests"). In his famous speech on secession to the Georgia legislature, Robert Toombs spent the first half of the speech listing some of the South's economic complaints against the North, and he cited these complaints as reasons the South needed to be independent. Historian Frank Owsley discussed some of the reasons for these complaints:

The industrial North demanded a high tariff so as to monopolize the domestic markets, especially the Southern market. . . . It was an exploitative principle, originated at the expense of the South and for the benefit of the North. . . .

The industrial section demanded a national subsidy for the shipping business and merchant marine, but, as the merchant marine was alien to the Southern agrarian system, the two sections clashed. It was once more an exploitation of one section for the benefit of the other.

The industrial North demanded internal improvements--roads, railroads, canals, at national expense to furnish transportation for its goods to Southern and Western markets which were already hedged around for the benefit of the North by the tariff wall. . . .