THE CIVIL WAR
The Civil War was the result of a series of political crimes and
blunders of which both sections of the country were equally guilty.
It was not inevitable or necessary to fight in order to abolish
slavery. In every other country of the world slavery had been
abolished without war. The question of slavery had never been a
party issue until after the Mexican War, but from then until the
election of 1860 slavery was the leading political issue. During the
war with Mexico, Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, offered what is known as
the Wilmot Proviso, which provided that the territory acquired from
Mexico should be closed to slavery. Although this bill was defeated
in Congress it brought up the question of the further extension of
slavery.
At the time of the Mexican War there were two national parties--the
Whigs and the Democrats. These two parties embraced almost all of
the people, and as both were strong in both sections of the United
States, they tended to cement the union, for parties on a national
basis tend to unify a nation while sectional parties lead to
disunion. The anti-slavery people and the moderates gravitated
towards the Whig party while the pro-slavery people gravitated
towards the Democratic party.
The Whigs elected General Zachary Taylor President in 1848. Although
he was a large slave holder of Louisiana, he was a moderate, and was
satisfactory to all groups and sections. He had the support of
Lincoln as well as of the southern Whigs. Soon after Taylor became
President, Henry Clay proposed the famous Compromise of 1850, the
important features of which were: admit California as a free state,
organize the remainder of the territory taken from Mexico without
regard to slavery, abolish the slave trade in the District of
Columbia, and pass a fugitive slave law to be enforced by the federal
government. This compromise, although a Whig measure, was
instrumental in killing the Whig party. No party or section was
satisfied with it. President Taylor opposed it but his death before
its passage brought to the presidency the Vice-President, Fillmore,
who allowed it to become a law without his signature. The provision
that broke up the Whig party was the strict fugitive slave law, and
anti-slavery Whigs repudiated their party. The idea of returning
fugitive slaves was shocking to the best moral judgment of the time.
The leaders of moral sentiment--ministers, poets, and reformers of
every type--advised disobedience. It was a dead letter because the
moral sentiment of the age was against it. On the other hand, the
pro-slavery people did not like it because it was not enforced. Thus
the law was treated with contempt by both parties.
The Whig party which was moderate, national, opposed to expansion,
and the extension of slavery was disrupted. The Democrats carried
all except four states in 1852, and remained in power until 1860,
dominated by powerful pro-slavery sentiment throughout this period.
After the fall of the Whig party the Republican party was organized
in 1856. It took the name "Republican" from the followers of Thomas
Jefferson and claimed it was a revival of the party of Jefferson. It
was the liberal party, opposed to slavery. It was organized and
until after the Civil War dominated by the liberal element in the
United States. The Democratic party also claimed themselves to be
followers of Jefferson, which they were not, at that time, except in
a very narrow legal sense. Jefferson was opposed to slavery and
special privilege in every form. In 1800 he advocated state rights
or a decentralized government because he believed the states were and
would always be more popularly controlled than the federal
government. But by 1860 that situation was reversed. The
states--especially the southern states--had begun to be dominated by
the privileged group, who talked in terms of state rights to
perpetuate this privilege, while Jefferson talked in terms of state
rights because he feared the domination of the federal government by
the reactionary element. Both Lincoln and Jefferson held the same
views socially. The Democratic party of the pre-Civil War period had
repudiated Jefferson. But the Republican party did not become
reactionary until after the Civil War.
When the Republican party was organized in 1856, it was regarded as
"red," chiefly in the eyes of the south, for it was organized
principally with the idea of keeping slavery out of the west. Its
campaign literature in 1856 was composed largely of the anti-slavery
utterances of Jefferson. To the south "Republican," "anarchy,"
"abolitionist," "Lincoln," "John Brown," and "Garrison" were soon to
become synonymous terms. Because of this the Republican party had no
following in the south even among a great many people who wished to
abolish slavery. It became a sectional party, which was its fatal
weakness in dealing with slavery, as compared with the former Whig
party, which had had a national following. The Republican party was
sectional before 1860.
Lincoln had been a Whig, and had accepted the Compromise of 1850.
Although he was one of the great men of all times, he was a victim of
many of the common errors of his age. Reflecting the belief of his
time, he considered slavery a stable institution. His great
democratic spirit lay in the fact that he expressed the ideas of the
common man, and had complete faith in him. He tried to recognize and
give expression to the purposes and aspirations of the masses, which
made him one of the world's greatest democrats, with democracy's
strengths and weaknesses. Lincoln was not a creative thinker and had
few pretensions in that direction. He had no intention of abolishing
slavery in the states--he simply wished to prevent it from spreading.
He also held the common attitude of his age that the Negro belonged
to an inferior race.
In the election of 1860 Lincoln polled only 26,430 votes in the
entire south and those were from the upper section. Douglas, the
moderate Democrat, received 163,525 votes in the south; Bell, of the
Unionist party, received 515,973 votes in the same section, while
Breckenridge, the extreme pro-slavery candidate, received 570,871
votes in the entire south. Breckenridge carried the lower south by a
plurality while Lincoln carried the west and north by a plurality,
and was elected president. The Douglas and Bell voters of the south
were opposed to secession, but all the secession vote went to
Breckenridge although not all the Breckenridge vote was for
secession. A majority in the south opposed secession but the
southern states fell into the hands of the secessionists by a
plurality.
Why did the south secede? Lincoln was elected on a platform defying
the Dred Scott decision of 1857. According to this decision the
Constitution recognized slavery and therefore Congress could not
prohibit it in the western territories. This could be done only by
the states through their constitutions or by the federal government
through a constitutional amendment. This was a great legal victory
for slavery, but Lincoln defied the decision, and expected the next
move on the part of pro-slavery advocates to be an attempt to
legalize slavery in the northern states through a Supreme Court
decision. Lincoln, when asked what he meant by saying the union
could not exist half free and half slave, said that slavery would
eventually have to go but it would probably last one hundred years.
He did not realize that slavery was dying. This election of Lincoln
on a platform defying a decision of the Supreme Court caused the
lower south to secede, as a gesture to uphold the courts and the
Constitution. Lincoln coerced them in order to uphold the
Constitution, for he had been legally elected president and his
office required his execution of federal laws. Thus, both the north
and the south fought to defend the Constitution. Both felt
themselves defensive--neither section understood the other--and
emotionalism in the matter was so kindled that reason could not
function on either side. The Civil War was a war about an
abstraction--the status of slavery in the western territory--which
was the real cause of the war. There were other differences between
the north and the south but none of them would have resulted in war
had not the slave question entered into the conflict.
By 1860 slavery in the greater part of the civilized world was a dead
or a dying institution. Great Britain in 1833 abolished slavery in
all her possessions. Mexico provided for the gradual abolition of
slavery as early as 1827. Brazil followed in 1888 and Spain
abolished slavery in Cuba in 1878. In all these cases it was done
without conflict. All the northern states of the union had become
free and the western states and territories were repudiating slavery
as well. When California drew up her constitution and asked for
admission in 1850, the clause prohibiting slavery was adopted by a
unanimous vote of her constitutional convention. In the referendum
held in Kansas in 1858, 11,300 out of a total vote of 13,088 were
opposed to slavery. Only a few slaves had been carried there and
they could never have been permanently held as slaves. New Mexico
was organized as a territory in 1850 without regard to slavery and at
one time as many as twenty-two slaves had been carried there.
Nevada, Colorado, and Dakota were organized as territories before
1860 but had no slaves. In Missouri slavery was on the decrease, if
judged by its percentage of the entire population--in 1830, 17.8% of
the Missouri population were slaves; in 1840, 15.5%; in 1850, 12.8%;
and in 1860, only 9.8%. Slavery would have existed in Missouri only
for a few more years, for the anti-slavery population was increasing
rapidly by settlers from the free states and great numbers of people
from Germany who settled in the neighborhood of St. Louis, and were
especially opposed to slavery.
Before 1860, slavery was non-existent in all sections of the union
except the tobacco, cotton and sugar cane belts. In upholding the
institution of slavery, the south was opposed to the spirit of the
age. Slavery was doomed by moral and economic pressure. It was a
useless procedure for the south to demand the right to carry slavery
into the western territory because it was unprofitable economically
and was not wanted. For the same reason it was futile for the
opponents of slavery to try to prohibit by law its extension
westward--the westerners had no desire or use for it. It was this
contention over slavery in western territory which was the
abstraction over which the Civil War was fought.
Many people before 1860, saw the folly of this controversy. Governor
Robert J. Walker of Mississippi recognized that the west would never
be open to slavery, as did Stanton of Tennessee and Senator Toombs of
Georgia. The status of slavery in the west had been automatically
settled by the laws of nature. The two sections, however, cherished
perverted ideas of each other. It was reported, and actually
believed, in the north, that Senator Robert Toombs, of Georgia, had
boastfully declared that he would call the roll of his slaves in
Massachusetts.
The following incidents given in Macy's "Political Parties in The
United States," pages 209 to 211, are illustrative of the state of
public excitement preceding the Civil War. In an effort to dictate
the slave policy of the west, Charlie B. Lines, a deacon of a New
Haven congregation, had enlisted a company of seventy-nine emigrants
for the war. A meeting was held in the church shortly before their
departure, for the purpose of raising funds, at which many clergymen
and members of the Yale College faculty were present. The leaders of
the party announced that Sharpe's rifles were lacking and that they
were needed for self-defense. After an earnest address from Henry
Ward Beecher, the subscription began. Professor Silliman started the
subscription with one Sharpe's rifle; the pastor of the church gave
the second. Fifty was the number wanted. Then Beecher announced
that if twenty-five were pledged on the spot, Plymouth Church would
furnish the rest. Churches in both sections had by that time become
agencies for propagating hatred. Another incident is a southern one.
Colonel Bufort of Alabama sold a number of his slaves valued at
$20,000, and invested the money to equip a troop of three hundred
soldiers to fight for southern rights in Kansas. "The day that
Bufort's battalion started from Montgomery they marched to the
Baptist Church. The Methodist minister solemnly invoked the divine
blessing on the enterprise; the Baptist pastor gave Bufort a finely
bound Bible, and said that a subscription had been raised to present
each emigrant with a copy of the Holy Scripture." This battalion
left for the west armed with Bibles and Sharpe's rifles. The
existence of such a condition of excitement made it an easy matter to
precipitate war.
In political contests the natural tendency is for persons of extreme
views to gain leadership--decided and partisan convictions are easily
described and understood, whereas people of moderate and discreet
judgment often lack conviction themselves and so cannot very well
impress their views upon the masses. Garrison's extreme abuse of the
south was met there with similar other extremes. The abolitionists
had great sympathy for the oppressed but great hatred for the
oppressor, and regarded the slave owner as personally responsible for
slavery rather than as an agent of circumstances. Perhaps if the
abolitionists had directed their appeal to the moral conscience of
the south, avoiding sectional and personal abuse, secession would
never have taken place. The south met this abuse by demanding that
all anti-slavery publications be excluded from the mails. Books,
papers, and all publications suspected of containing anti-slavery
propaganda were taken from the mails and publicly burned at
Charleston, S. C. There were many manifestations of disregard for
the sanctity of the mails. The north judged the south by these
extreme actions, and the efforts of the south to suppress
anti-slavery agitation resulted only in greater propaganda for the
abolitionists.
The public is quick to demand war, but is not so willing to accept
its hardships. During the conflict it was necessary for both the
north and the south to suspend civil liberties, including freedom of
the press and speech. Expressions that might weaken war morale were
punished--both sections suspended the writ of habeas corpus and
arbitrarily imprisoned their citizens. About 38,000 people were
imprisoned in the north while the number in the south is unknown.
Both sections, as in all major wars, resorted to the draft to recruit
soldiers. Yet, with all these weapons at their disposal, the
northern army succeeded in enlisting only about 1,325,000 of its
native white population out of a total of 23,000,000. Besides
approximately 1,325,000 native whites, the northern army consisted of
300,000 whites from the south, 186,000 negroes, and 500,000
foreigners. Left to the voluntary support of its citizens neither
section could have carried on the war, as no major war of modern
times could have been fought with that voluntary support alone. The
draft acts of both sections allowed for the employment of
substitutes, which, of course, was hard on the poorer classes who
could not employ substitutes, but the richer classes often avoided
army service by this method. It is impossible to obtain an exact
figure for the number of substitutes employed, but the Secretary of
War under Davis considered 50,000 a low estimate for the Confederate
army in 1864. Desertion was frequent on both sides. Rhodes
estimates the number of deserters in the south at 100,000 in 1864.
Much has been heard of the heroism and sacrifice displayed during the
conflict, but little of the crimes committed by both sections. Only
the pleasant phases of the war have survived. When Joseph Holt and
Robert Dale Owen were appointed by Secretary of War Stanton to adjust
claims for materials supplied to the War Department, they found fraud
at every turn, and before making their final report in July, 1862,
secured deductions of nearly $17,000,000 from claims amounting to
$50,000,000. One claim alone was reduced $1,000,000 and another was
reduced $580,000. One senator had received $10,000 for securing an
order from the War Department for a client. Colonel Henry S. Olcott,
who was appointed special commissioner to investigate frauds, after a
thorough examination of the facts announced that from 20% to 25% of
the expenditures of the Federal treasury during the Civil War was
tainted with fraud, and, according to his estimate, approximately
$700,000,000 was paid through fraud. (See Rhodes, Vol. V, page 220.)
In commenting upon moral conditions during the conflict, the
_Springfield Republican_ said editorially: "It is a sad, a shocking
picture of life in Washington, which our correspondents are giving
us;--a Bureau of the Treasury Department made a home of seduction and
prostitution; the necessities of poor and pretty women made the means
of their debauchery by high government officials; members of Congress
putting their mistresses into clerkships in the departments; whiskey
drinking ad libitum." (See Rhodes, Vol. V, page 212.) These are
some of the typical incidents of conditions in both sections, but
text books in treating of this war, as of all others, present only
those phases which glorify the conflict.
The cost of the Civil War, including the expenditures of both
sections, pensions, destruction of property, and other indirect
expenses, was $12,000,000,000. Its damage to the moral and spiritual
development of the United States cannot be estimated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dodd, W. E.--_The Cotton Kingdom_.
Lonn--_Desertion During the Civil War_.
Macy, Jesse--_The Anti-Slavery Crusade_.
Macy, Jesse--_Political Parties in the United States_. Chapters 7-22.
Rhodes, James Ford--_History of the United States_. Vols. I-V.
Stephenson, N. W.--_The Day of the Confederacy_.
Stephenson, N. W.--_Abraham Lincoln and the Union_.
Wood, William--_Captain of the Civil War_.