Was the War Fought Over Slavery?

Was the War Fought Over Slavery

The war was fought over Southern independence, not over slavery.  Lincoln said repeatedly the war was not being fought over slavery.  In August 1862, over a year after the war started, Lincoln wrote an open letter to a prominent Republican abolitionist, Horace Greeley, in which he said he did not agree with those who would only “save” the Union if they could destroy slavery at the same time.  Lincoln added that if he could “save” the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do so (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862, published in the New York Tribune).

In July 1861, after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) had been fought, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution, by an overwhelming majority, that declared the war was not being fought to disturb slavery, nor to subjugate the South, but only to “maintain the Union” (i.e., to force the Southern states back into the Union).  A few months later, in September, a group of Radicals visited Lincoln to urge him to make compulsory emancipation a war objective.  Lincoln declined, telling the Radicals, “We didn’t go into the war to put down slavery, but to put the flag back” (Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 155; Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 75-76).  Later on, about halfway through the war, the Radicals and other Republicans succeeded in making the uncompensated abolition of Southern slavery a secondary goal of the war.  However, the primary purpose of the federal invasion was always to destroy Southern independence.

The war itself really had nothing directly to do with slavery.  It’s true that issues involving slavery were the most important factors behind the first wave of secession, but secession and the war were two separate events, and four of the Southern states did not secede over slavery.  As noted earlier, secession was a peaceful, democratic process.  The seceded states posed no threat to the federal government, and they had no intention of trying to overthrow the government.  The Confederate states wanted to live in peace with the North and offered to pay their share of the national debt and to pay compensation for all federal forts in the South. 

If the Southern states had not seceded, there would have been no war and slavery would have continued.  If the Southern states had surrendered when Lincoln issued his call-up for an invasion force, there would have been no war and slavery would have continued.  If Jefferson Davis’s first announcement as Confederate president had been that the Confederacy was going to abolish slavery, Lincoln and the Radicals still would have invaded the South.  If the Confederacy had informed Lincoln at any point during the war that it was going to start an emancipation program, Lincoln would not have suddenly called off the federal invasion.  The issue was Southern independence, not slavery.

The reaction of the Northern abolitionists to the proposal of fellow abolitionist Moncure Conway is further proof the war was not fought over slavery.  At least a few of the abolitionists were Republicans, and nearly all of them strongly supported the Radicals.  Conway, on the other hand, was a pacifist.  Yet, at first Conway reluctantly supported the invasion of the South.  “But,” notes Jeffrey Hummel, “the increasing bloodshed sickened him.”  So, when Conway was in England in 1863, he proposed to a Confederate envoy that if the South freed the slaves the abolitionists would oppose the war.  Conway also said he would support the continuation of the Confederacy as long as the Confederacy abolished slavery.  Strangely enough, leading abolitionists had selected Conway to go to England in order to convince the British that the war was being fought to free the slaves.  However, when Conway’s proposal for Southern independence coupled with abolition was published, most abolitionists reacted with outrage and withdrew their support from him (Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, p. 206).

To most Southerners, independence was more important than the continuation of slavery.  This is not surprising, since less than 10 percent of Southern citizens actually held title to slaves, and since 69-75 percent of Southern families did not own slaves (John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War: 1837-1861, Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990, p. 34; Divine et al, editors, America Past and Present, p. 389; see also the 1860 Census).  Early in the war, James Alcorn, a powerful planter-politician from Mississippi, began to talk openly about emancipation.  Duncan Kenner, one of the most powerful slaveholders in the South and a chairman in the Confederate Congress, urged that slavery be abolished.  Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s most famous general, believed slavery was evil and favored gradual emancipation.  The Confederate secretary of state, Judah Benjamin, and Governor William Smith of Virginia, also supported ending slavery.  By late 1864, Jefferson Davis himself was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy, which shows that independence was more important to him than preserving slavery. 

A Confederate soldier who was captured early in the war expressed the South’s reason for fighting in simple yet eloquent terms.  He wore a ragged homemade uniform, and like most other Southerners he didn’t own any slaves.  When his Union captors asked him why he was fighting for the Confederacy, he replied, “I’m fighting because you’re down here” (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 311, emphasis added).