Historians past and present disagree sharply over the major cause of the
Civil War.
Some writers have viewed the struggle of the 1860's as a "war of
rebellion" brought on by a "slavepower conspiracy." To them it was a
conflict between Northern "humanity" and Southern "barbarism." James
Ford Rhodes, who dealt more generously with the South than did many
other Northern writers of his time, stated in 1913: "Of the American
Civil War it may safely be asserted that there was a single cause,
slavery."
Other historians, such as Charles A. Beard and Harold U. Faulkner, have
argued that slavery was only the surface issue. The real cause, these
men state, was "the economic forces let loose by the Industrial
Revolution" then taking place in the North. These economic forces were
strong, powerful, and "beating irresistibly upon a one-sided and rather
static" Southern way of life. Therefore, the 1860's produced a "second
American Revolution," fought between the "capitalists, laborers, and
farmers of the North and West" on the one hand, and the "planting
aristocracy of the South" on the other.
A third theory advanced by historians is that the threat to states'
rights led to war. The conflict of the 1860's was thus a "War between
the States." Many in this group believe that the U. S. Constitution of
1787 was but a compact, or agreement, between the independent states.
Therefore, when a state did not like the policies of the central
government, it had the right to withdraw--or secede--from this compact.
Still other writers believe "Southern nationalism" to have been the
basic cause of the war. Southerners, they assert, had so strong a desire
to preserve their particular way of life that they were willing to
fight. This then became a struggle between rival sections whose
differences could not be settled peacefully. The result was a "War for
Southern Independence."
[Illustration: Slaves working in a field across the river from
Montgomery, Ala., first capital of the Confederacy.]
A recent group of historians, known as "revisionists," rejects these
earlier theories. Leader of the revisionist school was the late James G.
Randall, who once stated: "If one word or phrase were selected to
account for the war, that word would not be slavery, or economic
grievances, or states rights, or diverse civilizations. It would have to
be such a word as fanaticism." Another revisionist, Avery O. Craven,
agrees. The Civil War, he wrote, resulted because the great mass of
American people "permitted their short-sighted politicians, their
overzealous editors, and their pious reformers" to control public
opinion and action. Primarily through the slavery issue, these radicals
created more and more hatred between North and South. In the end, and as
a result of these radicals, the differences between the sections,
swelled by "a blundering generation," burst into a war.
[Illustration: Fort Sumter in 1865, as viewed from a sandbar. The
fort's battered walls are clearly visible.]