Originally aired on February 24, 1995 - In part 26 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the underlying tragedy of the Civil War.
#26 – Northern Attitudes in 1861
Much is traditionally made of why the Southern states in 1861 left the Union. Some attention as well should be given to why the Northern states wanted to maintain the Union. After all, citizens north of the Potomac River obviously had to have high incentives to fight and die in the Civil War.
For starters, thirty years of national debate over slavery had produced an abscess that no longer could be ignored. Instead of seeking solutions, the North just as much as the South showed an unwillingness to consider compromise. The Union so dear to millions of Northerners (including thousands of immigrants who had journeyed halfway around the world to enjoy its blessings) held little glitter in a South that had become increasingly a section unto itself.
It was slavery more than anything else that made it so; and Northerners saw a blatant contradiction in the Southern states waging a revolution in defense of human bondage. The New York Tribune put it this way: “Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was made in the interest of natural rights against the Established Institutions. Mr. Jefferson Davis’ caricature therefore is made in the interest of an unjust, outgrown, decaying Institution against the apprehended encroachments of Natural Human Rights.” In short, the newspaper added, what the South was doing constituted a “rebellion in the interest of darkness, of despotism and oppression”.
Further, a Southern agriculture based on slavery, and a Northern industrialism based on cheap labor, seemed incapable of complementing each other. The two systems were engaged in an economic duel for survival. A succession of weak presidents, and an ever-arguing Congress, were a hindrance, not a help, throughout this national storm.
State rights, long a Southern bulwark, was a transparent argument in those turbulent years. Men like South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun argued that the states existed first – that state sovereignty was supreme and the national government only a subservient instrument of the states. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster argued otherwise, and convincingly. States did not create the United States, Webster declared; former English colonies did. The states and the United States were formed by the same constitution, and that document gave the federal government overriding power within the American scheme of things.
James Buchanan was but on Northerner who considered secession illegal. The Union, Buchanan observed in 1860, was more than “a mere voluntary association of states”. It was a sovereign nation, “not to be annulled at the pleasure of any one of the contracting parties”. Buchanan added that the founding fathers were surely not “guilty of the absurdity of providing for (the nation’s) own dissolution”. Other Northern spokesmen voiced the opinion that to allow the Southern states to destroy the Union would be “conclusive proof that man is unfit for self-government”.
The South must not be allowed to go peacefully, a New England editor asserted, for “a successful rebellion by a few states now will be followed by a new rebellion or secession a few years hence”.
For thirty years men argued…and that led to shouting…and shouting led to shooting…and two sections of America that knew pathetically little about each other turned helplessly to war for a solution. Democracy and the power of a minority were at odds. Freedom and slavery were at odds. Industry and agriculture were at odds. No one seemed able to stop the runaway nation from self-destruction.
Southerners were fighting for a way of life – but so were Northerners. That is the underlying tragedy of the Civil War. Both sides were fighting for the same thing: America, as each side perceived what the nation should be. One often hears the casualties of that conflict listed as 400,000 Northerners and 300,000 Southerners. It would be more accurate to put the losses of the Civil War at 700,000 Americans.
