American Civil War FORUM
Abolitionism as the war's true premise ?
Draconifer
I question ending slavery on strictly humanitarian was truly the motivation behind the war between the states. It is more credible that the economic question of slavery was more immediate. The conflict between the agrarian model favoured by the Southern states v.s. the no less opressive and exploitative industrial model was really the catalyst.
Any thoughts?
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RESPONSES
| wardog |
1
Your one of the few people to understand the economic basis for the war. Two economic systems as different as Capitalism and Communism.
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 07:02
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| deankal |
2
As with many conflicts, especially intersectional conflicts, there were many sources of the conflict. Trade and tariff policies, settlement of the West, State's rights and abolition all had roles. But what was underneath all of this and fundimental to the South's economic system was slavery. Destruction of "slave power" was a rallying cry for Northern forces. Some had lofterier human rights goals. Many just wanted to ensure that the West was opened as free states and developed as small family farms; many others in the urban North did not want want to compete against workers who were not paid a wage.
While the Civil War's causes are more nuanced than popular history reports, slavery was the basic underpinning of the Southern economy. Slavery was the basic issue overwhich the war was fought. In an unusal case of the losers writing the history books, American history texts in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries manged to change to focus to economics and States rights while ignoring the the underlying stress which had been building up in Nation since its inception.
Posted: 28-Aug-2008 13:09
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| formwiz |
3
The issue was Secession (superficially). Read the northern papers in the run-up to Fort Sumter (the Old Gray Lady, for example). The feeling was, "Don't let the door hit you...", until Edmund Ruffin fired the first round. Northern papers treated that the way they later treated the sinking of the Maine or Pearl Harbor. That was the emotion.
The real reason was money (surprise!). The industrial North wanted a high tariff to sell its manufactured and the South a low one to import things from Europe
Posted: 01-Sep-2008 11:56
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| deankal |
4
I won't argue that money was at the root of this evil, most of the issues between the two sections can be traced to the different economic systems. At the foundation of the Southern economic system was slavery. Supporters of abolition as a human rights issue were probably a minority. But distruction of the slave labor system, and the associated tariff policy, escape slave laws, and Western settlement policies, was a major motivation for the North in the War. There is a reason why the fighting started on the Missouri-Kansas border.
Posted: 06-Sep-2008 15:58
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| Fernando, still in Nairobi |
5
I agree that the true politician's aim must have been "to destroy tye economics behind the slavery system", which is very easily showed as a humanitarian aim, and possibly very honestly believed by many. It is also true that the South had clinged to slavery for far too long, but possibly in the medium term, economics alone would have forced them to adopt some other production model.
I remember a Spaghetti western movie with Giuliano Gemma ("Marked Dollar" if memory doesn´t fail me) in which he impersonates an ex-Confederate officer. The first scene is a Yankee concentration camp at the war's end, and the prisoners are offered jobs in Northerners' farm for coins. One replies "Go on exploiting your own niggers..."
Posted: 12-Sep-2008 10:53
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| philsheridan |
6
I think the main cause of the war was more the South's fear of interference with slavery by the North especially after the election of Lincoln. The conflict was after all initiated by the South seceding and then attacking Fort Sumter. I don't think there was any plot in the North to provoke the South so that Northern based policies like a high tariif and free land for homesteaders could be implemented.
Of course once the war began radical republicans took advantage of the absence of Southern legislators in Congress to pursue those polices. Ironically if the South had stayed in the Union it seems certain that the Lincoln adminsistration would not have made any attempt to interfere with slavery.
Posted: 18-Aug-2009 09:43
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