Misleading Causes of the American Civil War

Well, this week Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley said something that upset people who weren’t going to vote for her anyway. At a Town Hall setting someone asked her “What caused the American Civil War?” It’s not at all a question with great relevance 163 years later, but it is a modern litmus test for many people on the left, i.e. people who likely weren’t going to vote for her anyway.

History is amazing. Like all hindsight, it can be 20-20 in vision and clarity. Over the past 30 years, this is less and less the case. Led by late-night comics and pretend “news” history-when told in partiality and half-truth, is stranger than fiction. It’s entertaining. Political activists, politicians, media, and academia have all since found that telling half of history is a great way to manipulate people. Rather than be steered by what can be learned from studying all of history, they’ll tell us half a story that would lead to a conclusion that would support their activist causes. There is no better example of this, NONE, than the American Civil War.

Those who advocate for studying more “Black History” in school inevitably and emphatically declare that, unlike every war in all human history, the American Civil War was caused by one thing: slavery. Slavery was an aspect of the causes of the American Civil War, but the ultimate proof that it was NOT the cause, is to point out that even if there were no slavery, the war still would have happened.

Those who want to really learn about history-all of it-will study more than just “Black History.” One simply cannot learn with the intent of repeating mistakes, by studying a single facet. These people will remember the first time the United States almost fell to Civil War. In 1832 and 1833 there was an event in American history called, The Nullification Crisis. President Andrew Jackson was trying to balance the Federal budget. At the time, there was no income tax all income came from tariffs on goods. Led by states in the North, the tariffs were raised. This hurt southern agrarian-based economies. Not even 50 years old, people in the South wondered why they should be taxed to help get money to the North. They felt like their representation in Congress was zero. The issue got so hot that the Vice President resigned, and he went to South Carolina to lead the rebellion. There, the state was considering secession based on the idea that higher tariffs were unconstitutional/not for the general welfare, and just for the welfare of the Northern states. President Jackson prepared to personally lead troops into South Carolina and vowed to personally hang anyone who opposed him-including and specifically the former Vice President. The crisis ended when both sides agreed to raise tariffs temporarily, and then gradually lower them back down to about 20%.

Civil War over taxes was avoided.

In the following years, more and more states joined the Union. As they did, an agreement was made that for every state admitted that allowed slavery, another state could be admitted without slavery. The idea was that states where slavery existed would not be outnumbered in the House and Senate, and thus another tariff that would hurt slave/agrarian states would not happen. This worked until The Mexican War happened (1846-1848). After that war, the Federal government needed money again, and so politicians began examining ways to raise tariffs. In Kansas and Missouri, a micro Civil War erupted as wealthy people in the South tried to make both states slave states, and wealthy abolitionists in the North tried to make them both free states. If either group of powerful people had their way, then the balance of power in Congress would be tilted and increased tariffs would pass or fail.

The abolitionist movement in the North grew, but it never became a majority. Its leaders all had far more to gain from raising tariffs than they ever did from freeing slaves. Followers of the movement became increasingly radical. They threatened terrible violence in the South. John Brown, one of the popular followers (more celebrity than leader), went to Kansas and Missouri. There he led violent raids against people who wanted to make the states slave states. One night he and his family broke into some pro-slavery family homes, pulled people out in the middle of the night, and butchered them all. A few years later he and his family tried to seize control of the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry Virginia (1859). A young Colonel Robert E Lee led a band of US Marines and put down the pathetic attempt to start a slave rebellion.

Slave rebellions were a serious fear in the South. Many believe that the fear of reprisals is what convinced slave owners to stand firm and demand that the US Constitution allow slavery back in 1789. In fact, the year after it was ratified (1792) all the slaves in Haiti rebelled, tortured, and killed everyone who was white or even 1/8 white. There had been several smaller attempts at slave rebellion in the South as well. Given the choice to keep slavery or to risk being butchered in retaliation, most powerful people in the South chose to keep slavery. John Brown’s raid shocked the people in the North, but in the South, it spread terror.

Immediately following John Brown’s raid, Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party began their push for the Presidency. In his highly distributed debate transcripts, Lincoln said the way to handle the debt from the Mexican War was to dismiss the Compromise of 1833 and raise tariffs as high as 45%. This upset people in the South, but in Charleston, Carolina it caused fury. Lincoln was an abolitionist celebrity at the time-though not one pledging violence like most of the abolitionists in 1860. Southern states refused to allow someone like Lincoln to become President so they removed him from the Presidential ballots in the South.

THIS is a lesson today as blue states are doing the same thing to President Trump in an era when people are openly talking about Civil War. People who only study “Black History” and convince themselves that the Civil War was just about slavery, will never learn this important lesson for today and next year.

With only 32-34% of the popular vote, Abraham Lincoln was elected President. He made it clear to everyone that if keeping slavery would keep the Union together, then he’d support that. Still, people in South Carolina were enraged. Other states as well. Lincoln made no effort to free the slaves for the next two years. Both northern and southern states began assembling armies. In the North, people enlisted to protect the Union. In the South, most states made it so slave and plantation owners were exempt from serving in the army. There, most people enlisted to protect their homes and families. People on both sides still looked at states as independent nation-states bound by a loose union. People from Maine saw people from Florida in much the same way that people from Spain viewed people from Portugal.

In the South, states began having votes for or against secession. It did not go smoothly. Western Virginia voted against slavery and seceded from Virginia instead. Western Texas didn’t vote at all. In Western Louisiana, most people still thought they were ruled by France or Spain and voted to stay with them. The same thing happened in Eastern Florida. Across a wide swath of Appalachia from West Virginia down into the northern half of Alabama and central Georgia counties voted to form a new state called, Nickajack, and they wanted to stay in the Union (this included parts of eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina). Individual counties all around Mississippi, Alabama, etc. did so as well. Scott County Tennessee voted to secede from Tennessee and join the union (they didn’t officially rejoin until 1987). Lincoln had the US Navy surround the Maryland statehouse as they voted to stay in the Union (with slavery), but literally under the threat of being annihilated by the USN.

When Lincoln was inaugurated the abolitionist rhetoric increased severalfold. In turn, the fears of slave owners facing retribution and of wealthy people facing massive tax increases all resounded against the abolitionist rhetoric. Both sides became increasingly vitriolic. In the South, as county and state votes to secede weren’t working well, states held conventions instead. Here delegates were often ignored, bribed, threatened, or otherwise swayed to support and vote for secession regardless of the people or the slaves. At the time a slave counted as 3/5ths of a person, and were they to get even 3/5ths of a vote, surely they’d have voted against slavery, and no state could secede with that amount of popular opposition.

Having lost faith in the House, Senate, Judiciary, the Presidency, and banks (i.e. all of the controlling institutions in the Federal Govt), having a massive economic and cultural difference between industrial and agrarian, and having decidedly different cultures, the Southern states seceded.

Then they waited. Federal garrisons around the country were either abandoned if too indefensible or strengthened (as was the case with the forts around Washington D.C. In Charleson Harbor, Ft Sumter sat as a blocking piece that could interdict and sink any ship breaking Federal Law-including not paying an increased tariff. South Carolina-led by the powerful people in Charleston, couldn’t stand for that. It’s why they almost seceded in 1832 and why they did in 1860. They ordered the fort abandoned, and when the commander refused, it was reduced to rubble by South Carolina militia forces.

The Civil War began.

African Americans studying African American culture will think it was all about African Americans and slavery. Clearly, like all wars, it had many reasons and many lessons. Blaming it all on slavery ignores those lessons which as we see a candidate blocked from ballots-are increasingly important today.