Several myths have been recently perpetuated about the causes of the American Civil War. I'd like to give my views on the subject.
Gradually over the 40 years prior to the Civil War, Southerners came to see themselves as guardians of a civilization within a civilization. Theirs was an agricultural economy dependent on cotton and slave labor. Northerners, they said, had betrayed Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic by moving steadily toward an industrialized and commercial economy. As the North grew more populous through immigration and Northern banks accumulated the nation's wealth, Southern politicians saw the shifting power in Congress as a threat to their section's long-standing dominance in national affairs.
With alarming frequency, politics divided along geographical lines over such issues as protectionism, tariffs, the Mexican War, and extending slavery into the territories. More threatening, the South seemed to lose ground to aggressive antislavery factions. As abolitionists railed against the immorality of slave-holding and lobbied to prevent its expansion, Southerners rushed to defend their way of life. Ultimately, this impassioned defense of an agrarian system, which included slavery, became the cornerstone of a nascent Southern nationalism.
To South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, the Missouri Compromise promised nothing but evil for his region. He spent 30 years perfecting the States Rights theory that eventually carried his beloved South through the secession crisis. While Calhoun waged political war against Northern domination, romantic novelists William Gilmore Simms and John Pendleton Kennedy glamorized Southern plantation life and the cavalier tradition. From pulpit, newspaper and political platform, Southern leaders denounced Yankees as money-grubbing, abrupt, self-interested aggressors, while stressing the hospitality, independence and genteel characteristics that distinguished the democracy-loving South.
Fearing that their society faced destruction, Southerners retreated into the romanticized image they had created for themselves, convinced that the South alone guarded the revolutionary principles of 1776. The basis for Southern nationhood had been well established before the Confederate Congress met in Montgomery, Alabama in February 1861.
Now let's consider states rights.
In the decades before the Civil War the states rights issue hung over the nation like a saber. The doctrine held that certain rights and powers remained the sovereignty of the state, and the exercise of that sovereignty lay in the will of its citizens. Through elected delegates the people bestowed on the central government certain powers, among them the ability to declare war and conduct diplomacy, with all those left unspecified remaining in state control. Those who adhered to the doctrine felt the Constitution was not binding since it represented a contractual agreement that could be invalidated as public sentiment dictated.
In the antebellum years, authority granted the Federal government during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was held to be vague, and conflicting interpretations escalated into rigid sectional differences. As the Northern economy and population grew, the Southerner's political edge in Congress seemed to erode. They rallied to the states rights banner, seceded, and patterned the Confederacy around the doctrine.
But states rights destroyed the Confederate nation it created. Citing the sovereignty of their states, Confederate governors refused to comply with the centralizing measures Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress passed to meet the war crisis. They witheld the taxes Richmond needed to finance the war, denied Davis' power to suspend habeous corpus, kept control of military installations within state borders, and rejected impressment and currency devaluation. With devastating effects, unyielding Secessionists like Joseph E. Brown and Zebulon Vance opposed conscription, arming slaves and giving Richmond sorely needed use of state militias.
Occasionally the North cried states rights, but for Southern states it was a defiant, defense extreme. Jealousy, pride and obessive self-interest rendered them incapable of winning a common victory. State leaders turned against Davis and each other so completely that the states rights weapon they had turned northward destroyed any chance of Confederate nationhood.
Gradually over the 40 years prior to the Civil War, Southerners came to see themselves as guardians of a civilization within a civilization. Theirs was an agricultural economy dependent on cotton and slave labor. Northerners, they said, had betrayed Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic by moving steadily toward an industrialized and commercial economy. As the North grew more populous through immigration and Northern banks accumulated the nation's wealth, Southern politicians saw the shifting power in Congress as a threat to their section's long-standing dominance in national affairs.
With alarming frequency, politics divided along geographical lines over such issues as protectionism, tariffs, the Mexican War, and extending slavery into the territories. More threatening, the South seemed to lose ground to aggressive antislavery factions. As abolitionists railed against the immorality of slave-holding and lobbied to prevent its expansion, Southerners rushed to defend their way of life. Ultimately, this impassioned defense of an agrarian system, which included slavery, became the cornerstone of a nascent Southern nationalism.
To South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, the Missouri Compromise promised nothing but evil for his region. He spent 30 years perfecting the States Rights theory that eventually carried his beloved South through the secession crisis. While Calhoun waged political war against Northern domination, romantic novelists William Gilmore Simms and John Pendleton Kennedy glamorized Southern plantation life and the cavalier tradition. From pulpit, newspaper and political platform, Southern leaders denounced Yankees as money-grubbing, abrupt, self-interested aggressors, while stressing the hospitality, independence and genteel characteristics that distinguished the democracy-loving South.
Fearing that their society faced destruction, Southerners retreated into the romanticized image they had created for themselves, convinced that the South alone guarded the revolutionary principles of 1776. The basis for Southern nationhood had been well established before the Confederate Congress met in Montgomery, Alabama in February 1861.
Now let's consider states rights.
In the decades before the Civil War the states rights issue hung over the nation like a saber. The doctrine held that certain rights and powers remained the sovereignty of the state, and the exercise of that sovereignty lay in the will of its citizens. Through elected delegates the people bestowed on the central government certain powers, among them the ability to declare war and conduct diplomacy, with all those left unspecified remaining in state control. Those who adhered to the doctrine felt the Constitution was not binding since it represented a contractual agreement that could be invalidated as public sentiment dictated.
In the antebellum years, authority granted the Federal government during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was held to be vague, and conflicting interpretations escalated into rigid sectional differences. As the Northern economy and population grew, the Southerner's political edge in Congress seemed to erode. They rallied to the states rights banner, seceded, and patterned the Confederacy around the doctrine.
But states rights destroyed the Confederate nation it created. Citing the sovereignty of their states, Confederate governors refused to comply with the centralizing measures Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress passed to meet the war crisis. They witheld the taxes Richmond needed to finance the war, denied Davis' power to suspend habeous corpus, kept control of military installations within state borders, and rejected impressment and currency devaluation. With devastating effects, unyielding Secessionists like Joseph E. Brown and Zebulon Vance opposed conscription, arming slaves and giving Richmond sorely needed use of state militias.
Occasionally the North cried states rights, but for Southern states it was a defiant, defense extreme. Jealousy, pride and obessive self-interest rendered them incapable of winning a common victory. State leaders turned against Davis and each other so completely that the states rights weapon they had turned northward destroyed any chance of Confederate nationhood.
