Understanding the background of the Civil War

God chose to free a bunch of slaves, the Jews, in order to lay the groundwork for his ultimate covenant of freeing humanity from the bondage of sin--is how Christians see it.  God hates slavery, said the Abolitionists, a movement against slavery that originated in churches in the generation before the Civil War.  Lincoln took this failing attempt of Christians to defeat slavery and translated it into easy moral reasoning fit for his election in 1860. “If a man raises a crop, why doesn’t he deserve the fruits of his labor?” “”You think slavery has to do with intelligence? The smart man rules the dumb? Well, someday you will meet someone smarter than you. Does that mean you must be his slave?”  Slavery is still political. Some ways of looking at the Civil War disagree with the established historic facts.

            It would be good to remember a few hard facts.  Cotton was so valuable and desired worldwide that it amounted to half the exports of USA. It was a non-crop until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, then became virtually the single crop of the South after 1820.  It still took hand-picking. Slaves were so valued they sold for the price of a good house ($100,000 in today’s money). Plantation owners grew fabulously rich but represented only 5% of the population of the agrarian South.  Many more southerners were hillbillies, micro-farmers, and shop owners. The plantations became a huge lobbying group, bought newspapers, and swayed public opinion.  Nonetheless, 13 anti-slavery churches existed in Charleston in 1861. In 1860, the North had 21 million people; the South, 9 M with 4M being slaves. The North had almost all the manufacturing, naval power, and finances.  But the secret weapon of the Confederacy’s Democrats were the Northern Democrats.  N. Democrats had been organized by Martin Van Buren of NY with the goal of an Urban Plantation.  Immigrants (Irish and Germans) in ghettos were held in subjugation, denied many rights until they spoke English and became educated.  Manufacturers were the ‘plantation owners’. The goal of the South in seceding was to divide the country into two until the N. Democrats could win and bring down the hated Lincoln. This explains why the South seemingly had a tantrum and attacked Ft. Sumpter, when they could have simply stood fast.  Slavery could only have been abolished by constitutional amendment—‘fat chance’ politically, requiring 2/3 of both houses and ¾ of the states. In 1860 there was not one slave owned in USA by a Republican, the anti-slavery party, but many N. Democrats tacitly approved of the institution.

Revisionist historians dislike this traditional view.  They dethrone Lincoln as a closet racist and claim the war was about states rights, neglecting the role of Northern Democrats as allies of the South. They quote Lincoln writing to Horace Greely about how he didn’t care about slavery, just saving the union.  But this came at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, when Lincoln was coy, trying to hold onto border slave states and “War” Democrats, those who supported the union but let Lincoln know that they would switch sides if the war became about slavery. Lincoln was walking a tightrope politically, pretending The Union was the cause.  Jefferson Davis, meanwhile was giving fiery speeches about how it was all about slavery and how they had to simply hang on until the N. Democrats defeated Lincoln and demanded a truce, whereupon the South could become a separate, slave country, or a special section of USA.  

There was an earlier attempt at historic revisionism at the end of the 19^th century.  The “concealment version” of the war held that the Southern instigation of war was not due to partisan disagreement over slavery but to states rights and defense of their homeland.  This was the narrative of the 1915 movie, Birth of a Nation and the resurgence of the KKK after WW I. It was thinly disguised racism arguing for a natural privilege in the old Southern order. After the Civil War the partisan bickering didn’t stop.  Democrats opposed the 13^th 14^th and 15^th Amendments. The use of racial terrorism brought down the Reconstruction, running off Yankees and replacing the slavery with a version of bond serfdom in share-cropping and Jim Crow laws.

John Wilkes Booth was a typical War Democrat from Maryland (a slave state) that found himself switching sides after Atlanta fell to Sherman in the summer of 1864.  But Booth was no lone wolf.  In 1864 Democrat newspapers all over the North, even as far as The LaCrosse Wisconsin Democrat demanded assassination of Lincoln and Grant.  Booth echoed this, “Our cause is almost lost and something decisive and great must be done.”

That bitter partisanship  led to USA’s worst war is embarrassing for modern Americans still embroiled in partisanship. The history of racism is embarrassing for Democrats.  Northern casual ethnicism employed by the very manufacturers who made America grow is embarrassing to Northerners. Racial segregation just about everywhere embarrasses modern Americans and Republicans. Still the historic lesson remains.