The Real Cause of the American War Between the States
There is the old adage that “the winners get to write the history,” and there is a lot of truth to it. And they often demagogue it. In no case that I am aware of is this more true than in regard to the American “Civil War.”
Actually, it wasn’t really a “civil war.” A civil war is a war between two factions who are both trying to control the government. The South wasn’t trying to control the American government, they were trying to leave it and have a government of their own.
Both Abraham Lincoln and Congress made it clear, in the beginning of the conflict, that the war was not about slavery. Lincoln, in his inaugural address in 1861, said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists; I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." When Congress declared war in the summer of 1861, it also stated that the purpose was to keep the Union together, not end slavery.
The issue was money. The South, because of its agricultural economy, wanted a low tariff in order to purchase as many cheap goods as possible from overseas (especially England). The North, which was increasingly industrializing, wanted a high tariff, i.e., protection against those imported goods. The two sections of the country had been wrangling about the tariff for decades.
When the totally Northern Republican Party gained control of both houses of Congress, and the Presidency in 1860, the South indeed feared that the North would try to abolish slavery. Lincoln, as noted above, made it very plain that he had no intention of doing that, but hotheads in the South prevailed and eventually 11 Southern states seceded—something that Lincoln had said in 1848 they had every right to do. And much of that secession movement in the South was their conviction that the North would use its total dominance of the national government to pass a high, protective tariff. The South’s greatest fear, however, was to protect slavery; that was the main reason, though not the only one, the Southern states seceded.
Slavery was the primary cause of Southern secession. But it was not the cause of the war.
The South, for much of the pre-war era, was paying as much as 80% of the federal taxes, though only having about 33% of the population. Southerners felt they were being robbed by the national government, and with some justification. And Lincoln indicated that during the war. The North can’t let the South go, Lincoln opined, for “where then shall we get our revenue?”
Charles Dickens actually nailed it on the head: “So, the case stands, and under all the passion of parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many, many other evils.” He is exactly right.
Lincoln, in 1862, finally changed the purpose of the war to include the abolition of slavery—even though, technically, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free one slave. The EP didn’t liberate the slaves in Southern areas controlled by Northern troops. But it was symbolic, and it also gave Lincoln the “high moral ground,” something he did not have up to that point in the war. Indeed, the Europeans were mocking him: “Hey, Lincoln, you claim to believe in democracy, but you are prevented a third of your citizens from exercising their democratic rights to have their own government.” Lincoln was losing that battle, thus added slavery to preservation of the Union as a goal of the war.
But the real reason for the war was...money. Wars are always fought over money (resources). There probably hasn’t been a war in history fought for any other reason. It’s always about money, or getting wealthy in some shape, form, or fashion.
Secession—which was going to cost the North untold millions of dollars in revenue, both via government and industrial losses—drove the North to war. The North did NOT go to war to end slavery. And probably never would have.
Oh, well. There’s the truth. Americans will never believe it. But then, Americans know nothing about true history, including, and especially, their own.