civil war
IN THIS meeting of the Southern Historical Association great emphasis has been placed upon a re-examination of numerous phases of our history relating to the Civil War. While several papers have dealt with certain forces which helped bring about the Civil War, none has attempted a general synthesis of causes. This synthesis has been the task assumed by the retiring president of the Association.Before attempting to say what were the causes of the American Civil War, first let me say what were not the causes of this war. Perhaps the most beautiful, the most poetic, the most eloquent statement of what the Civil War was not fought for is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. That address will live as long as Americans retain their love of free government and personal liberty; and yet in reassessing the causes of the Civil War, the address whose essence was that the war was being fought so "that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth" is irrelevant. Indeed, this masterpiece of eloquence has little if any value as a statement of the basic principles underlying the war.The Civil War was not a struggle on the part of the South to destroy free government and personal liberty nor on the
The overthrow of New England's control of the national government by the Jeffersonian party in 1800 resulted in a twenty-four-year regime of the Virginia dynasty, during fifteen years of which-that is, until after the War of 1812-the government was distinctly dominated by the South and Southwest. The cause of that state of mind which we may well call war psychosis lay in the sectional character of the United States. It was the egocentric, the destructive, the evil, the malignant type of sectionalism that destroyed the Union in 1861, and that would do so again if it existed over a long period of time. By utilizing the county tax books and the unpublished census reports a group of us conducting a cooperative undertaking have been able to obtain a reasonably accurate and specific picture of wealth structure of the antebellum South, and to some extent that of the other sections. The result was that urbanity, self-restraint, and courtesy-the ordinary amenities of civilized intercourse-were cast aside; and in their gracious place were substituted the crude, discourteous, and insulting language and conduct in inter sectional relations now so familiar in the relations between the totalitarian nations and the so-called democracies. However, theoretical adherence to the democratic principles, as veil we know all too well in these days of plutocratic influences in our political life, is not sufficient evidence that democratic government exists. During the period that ended with the Hartford convention and the treaty of peace the New England leaders were unceasing in their attack upon "slave representation," as they called it. But to conclude that sectionalism was the cause of the Civil War, and at the same time insist -as has usually been done-that the Civil War was the climax of an irrepressible conflict, is to seem to accept a pessimistic view of the future of the United States. A systematic study of both northern and southern opinion as expressed in their newspapers, speeches, diaries, and private letters, gives irrefutable evidence in support of this assertion. These resolutions may be regarded as a campaign document to be used in ousting the Federalists and New England from power. As has been generally known the Northwest was agricultural and its population predominantly small farmers, though a considerable minority were large farmers comparable with the southern planters. Indeed, both northern and southern people in 1861 were alike profoundly attached to the principles of free government. The agricultural sections of the country looked with considerable disfavor upon such a grant of powers. Looking immediately behind this attempt of the South to establish a separate government, and of the North to prevent it, we discover a state of mind in both sections which explains their conduct. Most of the laws enacted during the control of the New England Federalists were considered by the South and much of the middle states as being for the sole benefit of the commercial and banking interests of the East, and as injurious, even ruinous, to the agricultural sections.
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Acceptance Essays
