Essential Background: Causes of the American Civil War

What was the Civil War really fought over?

Let the people who lived through this emotional and complex time period tell you what it was like, and why they became involved in a war that would ultimately claim 620,000 lives.

Respond as each author might, to the following question:
"What was the cause of the Civil War?"

 

Alexander Stephens

Library of Congress

POLITICIANS' VIEWS

Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, March 1861:

"This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Our]foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."

Mississippi Declaration of Secession, January 1861:

"We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worthfour billions of money (the estimated total market value of slaves), or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property."

 

Frederick Douglass

NPS / FRDO 2169

Abraham Lincoln "House Divided" Speech, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free-I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall - - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and former-slave, speech delivered on March 26, 1860:

"If slaveholders have ruled the American Government for the last fifty years, let the anti-slavery men rule the nation for the next fifty years. If the South has made the Constitution bend to the purposes of slavery, let the North now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice. If 350,000 slaveholders have, by devoting their energies to that single end, been able to make slavery the vital and animating spirit of the American Confederacy for the last 72 years, now let the freemen of the North, who have the power in their own hands, and who can make the American Government just what they think fit, resolve to blot out for ever the foul and haggard crime, which is the blight and mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the whole United States."

 

Rewrite the following excerpted letters in your own words, answering the question:
"What was the cause of the Civil War?"

 

SOLDIERS' VIEWS

(Both soldiers perished from their wounds at the Battle of Gettysburg.)

Philip Hamlin, Sergeant, 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment, wrote home on March 1, 1862:

"The example of our nation has been a fountain of light to the people of the old world foreshadowing to the struggling nationalities a future destiny gloriously delivered from the weights and embarrassments of the past which have limited privileges, combated freedom, made the distributions of blessings unequal, and restricted the culture of the mind, and the consequent elevation of man in opposition to a class endowed with special privileges only by arbitrary enactment ... May God preserve us from ourselves."

Sidney Carter, Lieutenant, 14th South Carolina, had a big enough farm to own a few slaves. This makes his war reasoning in the last line all the more interesting (and perplexing from our modern viewpoint) from this January 1862 letter home:

"... One thing I must say I want you to do is if Judson will not ally you in making the [enslaved] know their place, I want you to call on Giles to do it. If you will be prompt when they need whipping, then they will think of this when help is not present ... I think it would be best not to plant any cotton except enough to keep seeds (and one bale for house use). ... Give my love to all and accept your own part. Kiss the dear little ones for me. If I never see them again, I will try to leave them a free home."

 

Questions for class discussion:

• Why do you think some contemporaries refer to the U.S. Constitution and some to the Declaration of Independence when referring to the coming of war?
• How were the soldiers' reasons for fighting alike? How were they different?
• How were the soldiers' reasons alike or different from the politicians' views?
• What is the difference between a contemporary and a post-war source? A primary and a secondary source? Which are most reliable, in your opinion?
• Based on these sources, and others you have read, what was the main cause of the Civil War? Support your answer.

For additional primary source material and more perspectives on what led to Civil War, email us at [e-mail].

 

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