was the american civil war inevitable free essays

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Was the American Civil War Inevitable?

Introduction, economic causes of the conflict, the imbalance of power, escalation of the conflict, works cited.

The Civil War is among the most widely studied events in American history. It had an essential role in shaping American society and securing the national identity of the United States. The Civil War began in 1861, shortly after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, and lasted for over four years, leading to thousands of deaths. Although the primary cause of the war is believed to be the controversy over slavery, the events that led to the war are rather complex. Based on the analysis of these events, the Civil War could have been postponed, but the conflict between the Southern and the Northern States would have resulted in war eventually. This is evident from the discussion of the economic and political problems that contributed to the Civil War.

One of the primary causes for the conflict was the differences in the economic development of the North and the South. According to Davidson et al., the economic changes that came with the fast development of a railroad network had left the Southern states in a dependable position (270). As a result, Southern states capitalized on cotton production, which required cheap labor. Additionally, the decreased rate of immigration to the Southern States increased their reliance on slavery (Davidson et al. 273). Although the prices for slaves grew during this period, there was no other option for farmers to continue developing the cotton trade and other agricultural industries without slavery. The abolition of slavery would have contributed to their unfavorable position compared to the Northern states. Hence, when the debates over slavery sparked before the Civil War, it was inevitable for the Southerners to object to the abolition of slavery in their states.

From the political viewpoint, what made the Civil War inevitable was the imbalance of power, which caused the Southern States to feel threatened. According to Calhoun, the people of the Southern States believed that they could not remain in the Union “consistently with honor and safety” (1). Indeed, Davidson et al. note that the Southerners feared that the North was using its power in banking and commerce to turn the South into a colony (273). The pattern of industrialization and the trade relations between the North and the South, with the fees and commissions that benefitted Northerners, largely shaped these beliefs. Although the idea of the colonization of the South was inaccurate, the perceptions of the Southerners contributed to their reactions to the political imbalance, thus causing increased tensions.

The power conflict was further escalated by the instability of regulations, which prevented achieving a lasting compromise. This instability was particularly evident in the case of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise. The bill was presented by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois in 1954 and led to an increase in tensions on the basis of the slavery controversy (United States Senate). The bill was based on the demands to organize the territories of Nebraska in an attempt to develop railroads there (Unites States Senate). In order to pass a policy that would organize the territory, Douglas needed the support of Southern Senators, which required addressing the issue of slavery explicitly by repealing the Missouri Compromise (Davidson et al. 273). Therefore, Douglas moved to draft a bill that would satisfy their demands.

Although the idea of repealing the Missouri Compromise was risky due to the growing tensions between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups, supporting the development of railroads from east to west was the Senator’s priority. As explained by Davidson et al., “the bill created two territories: Kansas, directly west of Missouri, and a much larger Nebraska Territory, located west of Iowa and the Minnesota Territory. […] Douglas’s doctrine of popular sovereignty was to determine the status of slavery in both territories” (274). This caused pro-slavery and anti-slavery activists to flood both areas in an attempt to influence the decision. Davidson et al. explain that the tensions in Kansas escalated exponentially, leading to violent episodes that would come to be known as Bleeding Kansas (276).

These events caused a further increase in the opposition between the South and the North, which would culminate with the election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of 11 Southern States (Liu 68). As evident from Lincoln’s speech “A House Divided,” he believed that it was not possible to reach a middle ground and then one side of the conflict would ultimately prevail in the end, thus fostering unity in the nation (Lincoln). This idea opposed the arguments of Calhoun and other supporters of middle ground measures. The election of Lincoln as the President of the United States thus meant supporting the idea of bringing resolution through a crisis, not compromise.

Based on the analysis above, it is possible to conclude that the Civil War could have been postponed through means of compromise. Indeed, upholding the Missouri Compromise and achieving a balance of power and economic development between the North and the South could have eliminated the most urgent causes of the war. However, the division between states on such a fundamental issue as people’s constitutional rights would have led to a violent conflict eventually. Had the war started later in American history, it could have led to more significant consequences, such as the permanent secession of certain states. Hence, Lincoln’s position to resolve the conflict once and for all helped to preserve the unity of the nation and secure American national identity.

Calhoun, John C . John C. Calhoun, senator from South Carolina, Speaking before the Senate, March 4, 1850 . 1850, Web.

Davidson, James West, et al . U.S.: A Narrative History . 8th ed., vol. 1, McGraw-Hill Education, 2018.

Lincoln, Abraham. House Divided Speech . 1858, Web.

Liu, Han. “Three Arguments of Right to Secession in the Civil War: International Perspectives.” Hastings International & Comparative Law Review , vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, pp. 53-97.

United States Senate. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act.” Senate.gov , n.d., Web.

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Was the Civil War Inevitable?

A historian of the conflict traces the path to disunion in the 1850s — and the lessons it holds for our own era of deep division.

Credit... U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: Jon Cherry/Getty Images. “Hancock at Gettysburg,” by Thure de Thulstrup: Alamy.

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• Published Dec. 21, 2022 Updated Dec. 22, 2022

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In the late morning of March 6, 1857, two days after the inauguration of James Buchanan as the 15th president of the United States, the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Roger B. Taney, stood among a crowd of reporters and spectators on the ground floor of the United States Capitol and formally read the 55-page majority opinion in Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford. Born during the American Revolution and now just shy of 80, Taney could still take over a room with his sense of conviction, and as he began to address the crowd, the old Supreme Court chamber brimmed with anticipation.

Dred Scott’s name was by that point well known to many Americans. The four days of debate on the case, conducted in December of the previous year, had been covered extensively by newspapers. Scott, an enslaved man, and his wife, Harriet, had sued for their freedom based on Dred’s claim that their late owner had taken them for several years into Illinois, a free state, and to Fort Snelling, in a Northern territory where slavery was banned by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. That federal legislation effectively outlawed slavery in the territories above the 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude. It was considered a “sacred pledge” by many antislavery Northerners determined to protect the West as “free soil” for “free labor,” but pro-slavery Southerners became equally determined to incorporate new territories as slaveholding states. In deciding whether enslaved people could gain their freedom by residing on free soil, the Supreme Court might answer a question critical to the growing nation: What would the status of slavery be in the Western territories?

Now Taney was ready to deliver the decision. A Marylander and former slaveholder, he was six feet tall and had a drooping, worn facial expression and tobacco-stained teeth. His voice was a bit weak and his body enfeebled, but he remained possessed of what a critic called an “infernal apostolic manner.” Black people, he said, could never be “citizens,” nor considered “as a part of the people.” The room stirred as listeners recognized that Taney was reaching for a much bigger impact than simply the fate of Dred and Harriet Scott and their daughters, or even the question of whether slavery would be permitted in the territories. “Every citizen has a right to take with him into the Territory any article of property,” the chief justice declared. “The Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property and pledges the Federal Government to protect it.”

The great crisis over the existence and expansion of slavery had just made a decisive turn. In the aftermath of Taney’s reading, the decision was greeted with a torrent of editorial commentary. Newspapers that sided with the Democrats, like The Daily Picayune of New Orleans, celebrated the court for “so adjudge[ing] the vexed question of the times as to rebuke faction … and consolidate the Union … for all time.” Republican papers, like the New-York Tribune, called the decision “atrocious,” “wicked” and “abominable.” The Chicago Daily Tribune declared that Illinois could no longer prevent someone from “opening a slave pen and an auction block for the sale of black men, women and children, right here in Chicago.” The New-York Daily Times saw the ruling as a revolution against the federal government. “Slavery,” it maintained, “is no longer local; it is national.”

Taney’s decision sought to resolve a powerfully divisive issue that, it turned out, he could not control. Over the next three years, the country descended into disunion, followed by civil war. Recently, it has become disturbingly common to hear Americans wonder aloud whether we are headed for another breakup of some kind. Especially on the far right, talk of overthrowing the government has been increasing, reaching a peak when a mob stormed the Capitol, inspired by President Donald Trump’s persistent claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him. According to the Chicago Project on Security & Threats, use of the term “civil war” surged by 3,000 percent among Twitter users in the hours after the F.B.I. search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in August. A similar surge occurred in September when President Biden gave a prime-time speech in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, denouncing “MAGA Republicans” as anti-democratic threats to America. In the recent trial of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia who was charged with seditious conspiracy, a jury heard many hours of testimony and saw a mountain of evidence implicating the defendant in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Rhodes warned that if Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the electoral count in Congress, he and his people would take violent action and trigger a “bloody civil war.” ( Rhodes was convicted in late November. )

We might dismiss all this as paranoid ravings, except that a recent University of Virginia Center for Politics poll found that 52 percent of Trump voters and 41 percent of Biden voters at least somewhat agreed that America is so fractured that they would favor some kind of “secession” of blue from red states. Some of this sentiment is no doubt a result of irresponsible rhetoric practiced by people who seek to sow chaos or increase media ratings (and reflects a rather romanticized conception of our Civil War in the 1860s). But the anxiety animating these concerns is real.

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Why There Was a Civil War

Some issues aren’t amenable to deal making; some principles don’t lend themselves to compromise.

President Trump has peppered his first months in office with periodic announcements about the history of the nation he now leads, which he shares in the apparent presumption that others will be similarly amazed and astonished. In February, he marked Black History Month with a rambling speech, name-checking a variety of historical figures. “I am very proud now that we have a museum, National Mall, where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things,” he said. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

“Great president,” he told the congressional campaign committee of the Party of Lincoln back in March. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican, right? Does anyone know?”

But more striking than these episodes in the education of Donald Trump are the lessons he chooses to draw from these snippets of the past. On Monday, he was speaking to SiriusXM’s Salena Zito about his admiration for Andrew Jackson, a favorite theme of Steve Bannon’s, and veered dramatically off course:

I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

There is, as my colleague David Graham has noted , a tremendous amount to unpack in those short few lines. Most charitably, Trump may have been contrasting Jackson’s successful resolution of the Nullification Crisis in 1832 with President Buchanan’s fecklessness a few decades later, making the case that a strong leader could have imposed a deal that would have averted the war.

Jackson was prepared to use force, militia drilled in South Carolina, but a compromise averted the crisis. “We want no war, above all, no civil war, no family strife,” Henry Clay said in 1832, defending that compromise on the Senate floor. “We want to see no sacked cities, no desolated fields, no smoking ruins, no streams of American blood shed by American arms!”

But if Clay and Jackson averted war, their continuance was purchased in the blood and pain of others. There were 2 million slaves in 1830; by the time the Civil War came, there were more than 4 million held in bondage.

The question Trump says that “people don’t ask” may be the most debated historical question in America. Union veterans of the war tended to stress the moral imperative of their cause. But by the 1890s, historians like James Ford Rhodes were starting to understand the conflict as the inevitable clash of a slave system with an industrializing economy, with slavery less a moral cause than a tectonic force impelling the conflict forward. Charles and Mary Beard, in the 1920s, deemphasized slavery in favor of class conflict between the agrarian South and industrializing North, but saw the war as no less inevitable.

In the wake of the First World War, though, revisionists like James Randall and Avery Craven argued that the Civil War was a terrible, avoidable blunder. Slavery was inefficient, and left alone, would have extinguished itself, they insisted—it was weak politicians and crumbling institutions that produced unnecessary bloodshed.

This was the reigning interpretation when Trump was in school; if he studied the causes of the Civil War, it’s likely what he would have learned. And asking the question does Trump no discredit; when I taught the history of the Civil War to lecture halls of college students, we spent weeks discussing it. What’s alarming is the answer he proposes; that the conflict might have been averted by a strong leader. And the omission of a critical word: slavery.

By the civil-rights era, historical interpretations of the war were shifting. Historians looked more closely at slavery, and saw a rapidly expanding, even thriving, system. They looked at the words of those who pushed the nation into war. And they concluded that there was a remarkably straightforward answer to the question posed by the president: “Why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

Because the Civil War was fought over slavery . “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi declared as it seceded. “The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery,” said Louisiana. “The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations,” insisted Texas.

And Lincoln understood it, too. “All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war,” he said. “To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

The entirely uncontroversial consensus among professional historians is that slavery caused the war, although this conclusion has not reached much of the general public. Leaders like Jackson, then, only postponed the inevitable reckoning. It’s still tempting, though, to believe that the Civil War might have been avoided, the loss of three-quarters-of-a-million lives averted, the bloodiest conflict in our history forestalled. And for a century, many of America’s political leaders did everything in their power to turn a blind eye to the carnage of slavery, staving off sectional crises.

The first century of American history, in fact, can be told through the long litany of deals struck by strong leaders working to suppress, or at least delay, open conflict over slavery. The delegates in Philadelphia were deal makers; the Constitution they produced strengthened the federal government, but at the price of shielding slavery . The three-fifths compromise ensured the South would wield disproportionate power in the House and in presidential elections; the document protected the international slave trade for 20 years.

If some at the convention had hoped that compromise might buy enough time for slavery to pass out of existence on its own, they were disappointed. Instead, slavery—in all its horrifying brutality—became a cornerstone of American economic development. An ever-increasing number of human beings were held in bondage, their labor forcibly extracted, and their financial worth heavily leveraged.

The deals piled up, the list like a history-textbook index. The Missouri Compromise, in 1820. The Nullification Crisis in 1832. The Compromise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in 1854. Even on the eve of war, there was the failed Crittenden Compromise.

One hundred and sixty years ago, the founders of this magazine promised that, in politics, “It will deal frankly with persons and with parties, endeavoring always to keep in view that moral element which transcends all persons and parties, and which alone makes the basis of a true and lasting national prosperity.” Their point was that some issues aren’t personal, aren’t partisan, and aren’t amenable to compromise—that sometimes it is striking a deal which weakens a nation, and taking a principled stand which strengthens it.

There are some conflicts that a leader cannot suppress, no matter how strong he may be; some deals that should not be struck, no matter how alluring they may seem.

This was the great moral truth on which the Republican Party was founded.

Perhaps most people don’t know that.

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Article Contents

Space, time, and sectionalism, the historian's use of sectionalism and vice versa, … with liberty and justice for whom.

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What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature

I would like to thank David Dangerfield, Allen Driggers, Tiffany Florvil, Margaret Gillikin, Ramon Jackson, Evan Kutzler, Tyler Parry, David Prior, Tara Strauch, Beth Toyofuku, and Ann Tucker for their comments on an early version of this essay, and to extend special thanks to Mark M. Smith for perceptive criticism of multiple drafts. I would also like to thank Edward Linenthal for his expert criticism and guidance through the publication process and to express my gratitude to the four JAH readers, Ann Fabian, James M. McPherson, Randall Miller, and one anonymous reviewer, for their exceptionally thoughtful and helpful comments on the piece.

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Michael E. Woods, What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature, Journal of American History , Volume 99, Issue 2, September 2012, Pages 415–439, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas272

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Professional historians can be an argumentative lot, but by the dawn of the twenty-first century, a broad consensus regarding Civil War causation clearly reigned. Few mainstream scholars would deny that Abraham Lincoln got it right in his second inaugural address—that slavery was “somehow” the cause of the war. Public statements by preeminent historians reaffirmed that slavery's centrality had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Writing for the popular Civil War magazine North and South in November 2000, James M. McPherson pointed out that during the war, “few people in either North or South would have dissented” from Lincoln's slavery-oriented account of the war's origins. In ten remarkably efficient pages, McPherson dismantled arguments that the war was fought over tariffs, states' rights, or the abstract principle of secession. That same year, Charles Joyner penned a report on Civil War causation for release at a Columbia, South Carolina, press conference at the peak of the Palmetto State's Confederate flag debate. Endorsed by dozens of scholars and later published in Callaloo, it concluded that the “historical record … clearly shows that the cause for which the South seceded and fought a devastating war was slavery.” 1

Despite the impulse to close ranks amid the culture wars, however, professional historians have not abandoned the debate over Civil War causation. Rather, they have rightly concluded that there is not much of a consensus on the topic after all. Elizabeth Varon remarks that although “scholars can agree that slavery, more than any other issue, divided North and South, there is still much to be said about why slavery proved so divisive and why sectional compromise ultimately proved elusive.” And as Edward Ayers observes: “slavery and freedom remain the keys to understanding the war, but they are the place to begin our questions, not to end them.” 2 The continuing flood of scholarship on the sectional conflict suggests that many other historians agree. Recent work on the topic reveals two widely acknowledged truths: that slavery was at the heart of the sectional conflict and that there is more to learn about precisely what this means, not least because slavery was always a multifaceted issue.

This essay analyzes the extensive literature on Civil War causation published since 2000, a body of work that has not been analyzed at length. This survey cannot be comprehensive but seeks instead to clarify current debates in a field long defined by distinct interpretive schools—such as those of the progressives, revisionists, and modernization theorists—whose boundaries are now blurrier. To be sure, echoes still reverberate of the venerable arguments between historians who emphasize abstract economic, social, or political forces and those who stress human agency. The classic interpretive schools still command allegiance, with fundamentalists who accentuate concrete sectional differences dueling against revisionists, for whom contingency, chance, and irrationality are paramount. But recent students of Civil War causation have not merely plowed familiar furrows. They have broken fresh ground, challenged long-standing assumptions, and provided new perspectives on old debates. This essay explores three key issues that vein the recent scholarship: the geographic and temporal parameters of the sectional conflict, the relationship between sectionalism and nationalism, and the relative significance of race and class in sectional politics. All three problems stimulated important research long before 2000, but recent work has taken them in new directions. These themes are particularly helpful for navigating the recent scholarship, and by using them to organize and evaluate the latest literature, this essay underscores fruitful avenues for future study of a subject that remains central in American historiography. 3

Historians of the sectional conflict, like their colleagues in other fields, have consciously expanded the geographic and chronological confines of their research. Crossing the borders of the nation-state and reaching back toward the American Revolution, many recent studies of the war's origins situate the clash over slavery within a broad spatial and temporal context. The ramifications of this work will not be entirely clear until an enterprising scholar incorporates those studies into a new synthesis, but this essay will offer a preliminary evaluation.

Scholarship following the transnational turn in American history has silenced lingering doubts that nineteenth-century Americans of all regions, classes, and colors were deeply influenced by people, ideas, and events from abroad. Historians have long known that the causes of the Civil War cannot be understood outside the context of international affairs, particularly the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Three of the most influential narrative histories of the Civil War era open either on Mexican soil (those written by Allan Nevins and James McPherson) or with the transnational journey from Mexico City to Washington of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis ). The domestic political influence of the annexation of Texas, Caribbean filibustering, and the Ostend Manifesto, a widely publicized message written to President Franklin Pierce in 1854 that called for the acquisition of Cuba, are similarly well established. 4

Recent studies by Edward Bartlett Rugemer and Matthew J. Clavin, among others, build on that foundation to show that the international dimensions of the sectional conflict transcended the bitterly contested question of territorial expansion. Rugemer, for instance, demonstrates that Caribbean emancipation informed U.S. debates over slavery from the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) through Reconstruction. Situating sectional politics within the Atlantic history of slavery and abolition, he illustrates how arguments for and against U.S. slavery drew from competing interpretations of emancipation in the British West Indies. Britain's “mighty experiment” thus provided “useable history for an increasingly divided nation.” Proslavery ideologues learned that abolitionism sparked insurrection, that Africans and their descendants would become idlers or murderers or both if released from bondage, and that British radicals sought to undermine the peculiar institution wherever it persisted. To slavery's foes, the same history revealed that antislavery activism worked, that emancipation could be peaceful and profitable, and that servitude, not skin tone, degraded enslaved laborers. Clavin's study of American memory of Toussaint L'Ouverture indicates that the Haitian Revolution cast an equally long shadow over antebellum history. Construed as a catastrophic race war, the revolution haunted slaveholders with the prospect of an alliance between ostensibly savage slaves and fanatical whites. Understood as a hopeful story of the downtrodden overthrowing their oppressors, however, Haitian history furnished abolitionists, white and black, with an inspiring example of heroic self-liberation by the enslaved. By the 1850s it also furnished abolitionists, many of whom were frustrated by the abysmally slow progress of emancipation in the United States, with a precedent for swift, violent revolution and the vindication of black masculinity. The Haitian Revolution thus provided “resonant, polarizing, and ultimately subversive symbols” for antislavery and proslavery partisans alike and helped “provoke a violent confrontation and determine the fate of slavery in the United States.” 5

These findings will surprise few students of Civil War causation, but they demonstrate that the international aspects of the sectional conflict did not begin and end with Manifest Destiny. They also encourage Atlantic historians to pay more attention to the nineteenth century, particularly to the period after British emancipation. Rugemer and Clavin point out that deep connections among Atlantic rim societies persisted far into the nineteenth century and that, like other struggles over New World slavery, the American Civil War is an Atlantic story. One of their most stimulating contributions may therefore be to encourage Atlantic historians to widen their temporal perspectives to include the middle third of the nineteenth century. By foregrounding the hotly contested public memory of the Haitian Revolution, Rugemer and Clavin push the story of American sectionalism back into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, suggesting that crossing geographic boundaries can go hand in hand with stretching the temporal limits of sectionalism. 6

The internationalizing impulse has also nurtured economic interpretations of the sectional struggle. Brian Schoen, Peter Onuf, and Nicholas Onuf situate antebellum politics within the context of global trade, reinvigorating economic analysis of sectionalism without summoning the ghosts of Charles Beard and Mary Beard. Readers may balk at their emphasis on tariff debates, but these histories are plainly not Confederate apologia. As Schoen points out, chattel slavery expanded in the American South, even as it withered throughout most of the Atlantic world, because southern masters embraced the nineteenth century's most important crop: cotton. Like the oil titans of a later age, southern cotton planters reveled in the economic indispensability of their product. Schoen adopts a cotton-centered perspective from which to examine southern political economy, from the earliest cotton boom to the secession crisis. “Broad regional faith in cotton's global power,” he argues, “both informed secessionists' actions and provided them an indispensable tool for mobilizing otherwise reluctant confederates.” Planters' commitment to the production and overseas sale of cotton shaped southern politics and business practices. It impelled westward expansion, informed planters' jealous defense of slavery, and wedded them to free trade. An arrogant faith in their commanding economic position gave planters the impetus and the confidence to secede when northern Republicans threatened to block the expansion of slavery and increase the tariff. The Onufs reveal a similar dynamic at work in their complementary study, Nations, Markets, and War. Like Schoen, they portray slaveholders as forward-looking businessmen who espoused free-trade liberalism in defense of their economic interests. Entangled in political competition with Yankee protectionists throughout the early national and antebellum years, slaveholders seceded when it became clear that their vision for the nation's political economy—most importantly its trade policy—could no longer prevail. 7

These authors examine Civil War causation within a global context, though in a way more reminiscent of traditional economic history than similar to other recent transnational scholarship. But perhaps the most significant contribution made by these authors lies beyond internationalizing American history. After all, most historians of the Old South have recognized that the region's economic and political power depended on the Atlantic cotton trade, and scholars of the Confederacy demonstrated long ago that overconfidence in cotton's international leverage led southern elites to pursue a disastrous foreign policy. What these recent studies reveal is that cotton-centered diplomatic and domestic politics long predated southern independence and had roots in the late eighteenth century, when slaveholders' decision to enlarge King Cotton's domain set them on a turbulent political course that led to Appomattox. The Onufs and Schoen, then, like Rugemer and Clavin, expand not only the geographic parameters of the sectional conflict but also its temporal boundaries. 8

These four important histories reinforce recent work that emphasizes the eruption of the sectional conflict at least a generation before the 1820 Missouri Compromise. If the conflict over Missouri was a “firebell in the night,” as Thomas Jefferson called it, it was a rather tardy alarm. This scholarship mirrors a propensity among political historians—most notably scholars of the civil rights movement—to write “long histories.” Like their colleagues who dispute the Montgomery-to-Memphis narrative of the civil rights era, political historians of the early republic have questioned conventional periodization by showing that sectionalism did not spring fully grown from the head of James Tallmadge, the New York congressman whose February 1819 proposal to bar the further extension of slavery into Missouri unleashed the political storm that was calmed, for the moment, by the Missouri Compromise. Matthew Mason, for instance, maintains that “there never was a time between the Revolution and the Civil War in which slavery went unchallenged.” Mason shows that political partisans battered their rivals with the club of slavery, with New England Federalists proving especially adept at denouncing their Jeffersonian opponents as minions of southern slaveholders. In a series of encounters, from the closure of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 to the opening (fire)bell of the Missouri crisis, slavery remained a central question in American politics. Even the outbreak of war in 1812 failed to suppress the issue. 9

A complementary study by John Craig Hammond confirms that slavery roiled American politics from the late eighteenth century on and that its westward expansion proved especially divisive years before the Missouri fracas. As America's weak national government continued to bring more western acreage under its nominal control, it had to accede to local preferences regarding slavery. Much of the fierce conflict over slavery therefore occurred at the territorial and state levels. Hammond astutely juxtaposes the histories of slave states such as Louisiana and Missouri alongside those of Ohio and Indiana, where proslavery policies were defeated. In every case, local politics proved decisive. Neither the rise nor the extent of the cotton kingdom was a foregone conclusion, and the quarrel over its expansion profoundly influenced territorial and state politics north and south of the Ohio River. Bringing the growing scholarship on both early republic slavery and proslavery ideology into conversation with political history, Hammond demonstrates that the bitterness of the Missouri debate stemmed from that dispute's contentious prehistory, not from its novelty. Just as social, economic, and intellectual historians have traced the “long history” of the antebellum South back to its once relatively neglected early national origins, political historians have uncovered the deep roots of political discord over slavery's expansion. 10

Scholars have applied the “long history” principle to other aspects of Civil War causation as well. In his study of the slave power thesis, Leonard L. Richards finds that northern anxieties about slaveholders' inordinate political influence germinated during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Jan Lewis's argument that the concessions made to southern delegates at the convention emboldened them to demand special protection for slavery suggests that those apprehensions were sensible. David L. Lightner demonstrates that northern demands for a congressional ban on the domestic slave trade, designed to strike a powerful and, thanks to the interstate commerce clause, constitutional blow against slavery extension emerged during the first decade of the nineteenth century and informed antislavery strategy for the next fifty years. Richard S. Newman emphasizes that abolitionist politics long predated William Lloyd Garrison's founding of the Liberator in 1831. Like William W. Freehling, who followed the “road to disunion” back to the American Revolution, Newman commences his study of American abolitionism with the establishment of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775. Most recently, Christopher Childers has invited historians to explore the early history of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. 11

Skeptics might ask where the logic of these studies will lead. Why not push the origins of sectional strife even further back into colonial history? Why not begin, as did a recent overview of Civil War causation, with the initial arrival of African slaves in Virginia in 1619? This critique has a point—hopefully we will never read an article called “Christopher Columbus and the Coming of the American Civil War”—but two virtues of recent work on the long sectional conflict merit emphasis. First, its extended view mirrors the very long, if chronically selective, memories of late antebellum partisans. By the 1850s few sectional provocateurs failed to trace northern belligerence toward the South, and vice versa, back to the eighteenth century. Massachusetts Republican John B. Alley reminded Congress in April 1860 that slavery had been “a disturbing element in our national politics ever since the organization of the Government.” “In fact,” Alley recalled, “political differences were occasioned by it, and sectional prejudices grew out of it, at a period long anterior to the formation of the Federal compact.” Eight tumultuous months later, U.S. senator Robert Toombs recounted to the Georgia legislature a litany of northern aggressions and insisted that protectionism and abolitionism had tainted Yankee politics from “ the very first Congress .” Tellingly, the study of historical memory, most famously used to analyze remembrance of the Civil War, has moved the study of Civil War causation more firmly into the decades between the nation's founding and the Missouri Compromise. Memories of the Haitian Revolution shaped antebellum expectations for emancipation. Similarly, recollections of southern economic sacrifice during Jefferson's 1807 embargo and the War of 1812 heightened white southerners' outrage over their “exclusion” from conquered Mexican territory more than three decades later. And as Margot Minardi has shown, Massachusetts abolitionists used public memory of the American Revolution to champion emancipation and racial equality. The Missouri-to-Sumter narrative conceals that these distant events haunted the memories of late antebellum Americans. Early national battles over slavery did not make the Civil War inevitable, but in the hands of propagandists they could make the war seem inevitable to many contemporaries. 12

Second, proponents of the long view of Civil War causation have not made a simplistic argument for continuity. Elizabeth Varon's study of the evolution of disunion as a political concept and rhetorical device from 1789 to 1859 demonstrates that long histories need not obscure change over time. Arguing that “sectional tensions deriving from the diverging interests of the free labor North and the slaveholding South” were “as old as the republic itself,” Varon adopts a long perspective on sectional tension. But her nuanced analysis of the diverse and shifting political uses of disunion rhetoric suggests that what historians conveniently call the sectional conflict was in fact a series of overlapping clashes, each with its own dynamics and idiom. Quite literally, the terms of sectional debate remained in flux. The language of disunion came in five varieties—“a prophecy of national ruin, a threat of withdrawal from the federal compact, an accusation of treasonous plotting, a process of sectional alienation, and a program for regional independence”—and the specific meanings of each cannot be interpreted accurately without regard to historical context, for “their uses changed and shifted over time.” To cite just one example, the concept of disunion as a process of increasing alienation between North and South gained credibility during the 1850s as proslavery and antislavery elements clashed, often violently, over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the extension of slavery into Kansas. Republican senator William Henry Seward's famous “irrepressible conflict” speech of 1858 took this interpretation of disunion, one that had long languished on the radical margins of sectional politics, and thrust it into mainstream discourse. Shifting political circumstances reshaped the terms of political debate from the 1830s, when the view of disunion as an irreversible process flourished only among abolitionists and southern extremists, to the late 1850s, when a leading contender for the presidential nomination of a major party could express it openly. 13

Consistent with Varon's emphasis on the instability of political rhetoric, other recent studies of Civil War causation have spotlighted two well-known and important forks in the road to disunion. Thanks to their fresh perspective on the crisis of 1819–1821, scholars of early national sectionalism have identified the Missouri struggle as the first of these turning points. The battle over slavery in Missouri, Robert Pierce Forbes argues, was “a crack in the master narrative” of American history that fundamentally altered how Americans thought about slavery and the Union. In the South, it nurtured a less crassly self-interested defense of servitude. Simultaneously, it tempted northerners to conceptually separate “the South” from “America,” thereby sectionalizing the moral problem of slavery and conflating northern values and interests with those of the nation. The intensity of the crisis demonstrated that the slavery debate threatened the Union, prompting Jacksonian-era politicians to suppress the topic and stymie sectionalists for a generation. But even as the Missouri controversy impressed moderates with the need for compromise, it fostered “a new clarity in the sectional politics of the United States and moved each section toward greater coherence on the slavery issue” by refining arguments for and against the peculiar institution. The competing ideologies that defined antebellum sectional politics coalesced during the contest over Missouri, now portrayed as a milestone rather than a starter's pistol. 14

A diverse body of scholarship identifies a second period of discontinuity stretching from 1845 to 1850. This literature confirms rather than challenges traditional periodization, for those years have long marked the beginning of the “Civil War era.” This time span has attracted considerable attention because the slavery expansion debate intensified markedly between the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Compromise of 1850. Not surprisingly, recent work on slavery's contested westward extension continues to present the late 1840s as a key turning point—perhaps a point of no return—in the sectional conflict. As Michael S. Green puts it, by 1848, “something in American political life clearly had snapped. … [T]he genies that [James K.] Polk, [David] Wilmot, and their allies had let out of the bottle would not be put back in.” 15

Scholars not specifically interested in slavery expansion have also identified the late 1840s as a decisive period. In his history of southern race mythology—the notion that white southerners' “Norman” ancestry elevated them over Saxon-descended northerners—Ritchie Devon Watson Jr. identifies these years as a transition period between two theories of sectional difference. White southerners' U.S. nationalism persisted into the 1840s, he argues, and although they recognized cultural differences between the Yankees and themselves, the dissimilarities were not imagined in racial terms. After 1850, however, white southerners increasingly argued for innate differences between the white southern “race” and its ostensibly inferior northern rival. This mythology was a “key element” in the “flowering of southern nationalism before and during the Civil War.” Susan-Mary Grant has shown that northern opinion of the South underwent a simultaneous shift, with the slave power thesis gaining widespread credibility by the late 1840s. The year 1850 marked an economic turning point as well. Marc Egnal posits that around that year, a generation of economic integration between North and South gave way to an emerging “Lake Economy,” which knit the Northwest and Northeast into an economic and political alliance at odds with the South. Taken together, this scholarship reaffirms what historians have long suspected about the sectional conflict: despite sectionalism's oft-recalled roots in the early national period, the late 1840s represents an important period of discontinuity. It is unsurprising that these years climaxed with a secession scare and a makeshift compromise reached not through bona fide give-and-take but rather through the political dexterity of Senator Stephen A. Douglas. 16

That Douglas succeeded where the eminent Henry Clay had failed suggests another late 1840s discontinuity that deserves more scholarly attention. Thirty-six years older than the Little Giant, Clay was already Speaker of the House when Douglas was born in 1813. Douglas's shepherding of Clay's smashed omnibus bill through the Senate in 1850 “marked a changing of the guard from an older generation, whose time already might have passed, to a new generation whose time had yet to come.” This passing of the torch symbolized a broader shift in political personnel. The Thirty-First Congress, which passed the compromise measures of 1850, was a youthful assembly. The average age for representatives was forty-three, only two were older than sixty-two, and more than half were freshmen. The Senate was similarly youthful, particularly its Democratic members, fewer than half of whom had reached age fifty. Moreover, the deaths of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster between March 1850 and October 1852 signaled to many observers the end of an era. In 1851 members of the University of Virginia's Southern Rights Association reminded their southern peers that “soon the destinies of the South must be entrusted to our keeping. The present occupants of the arena of action must soon pass away, and we be called upon to fill their places. … It becomes therefore our sacred duty to prepare for the contest.” 17

Students of Civil War causation would do well to probe this intergenerational transfer of power. This analysis need not revive the argument, most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, that the “blundering generation” of hot-headed and self-serving politicos who grasped the reins of power around 1850 brought on an unnecessary war. Caricaturing the rising generation as exceptionally inept is not required to profitably contrast the socioeconomic environments, political contexts, and intellectual milieus in which Clay's and Douglas's respective generations matured. These differences, and the generational conflict that they engendered, may have an important bearing on both the origins and the timing of the Civil War. Peter Carmichael's study of Virginia's last antebellum generation explores this subject in detail. Historians have long recognized that disproportionately high numbers of young white southerners supported secession. Carmichael offers a compelling explanation for why this was so, without portraying his subjects as mediocre statesmen or citing the eternal impetuousness of youth. Deftly blending cultural, social, economic, and political history, Carmichael rejects the notion that young Virginia gentlemen who came of age in the late 1850s were immature, impassioned, and reckless. They were, he argues, idealistic and ambitious men who believed deeply in progress but worried that their elders had squandered Virginia's traditional economic and political preeminence. Confronted with their state's apparent degeneration and their own lack of opportunity for advancement, Carmichael's young Virginians endorsed a pair of solutions that put them at odds with their conservative elders: economic diversification and, after John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, southern independence. Whether this generational dynamic extended beyond Virginia remains to be seen. But other recent works, including Stephen Berry's study of young white men in the Old South and Jon Grinspan's essay on youthful Republicans during the 1860 presidential campaign, indicate that similar concerns about progress, decline, and sectional destiny haunted many young minds on the eve of the Civil War. More work in this area is necessary, especially on how members of the new generation remembered the sectional conflict that had been raging since before they were born. Clearly, though, the generation that ascended to national leadership during the 1850s came of age in a very different world than had its predecessor. Further analysis of this shift promises to link the insights of the long sectional conflict approach (particularly regarding public memory) with the emphasis on late 1840s discontinuity that veins recent scholarship on sectionalism. 18

Recent historians have challenged conventional periodization by expanding the chronological scope of the sectional conflict, even as they confirm two key moments of historical discontinuity. This work revises older interpretations of Civil War causation without overturning them. A second trend in the literature, however, is potentially more provocative. A number of powerfully argued studies building on David Potter's classic essay, “The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa,” have answered his call for closer scrutiny of the “seemingly manifest difference between the loyalties of a nationalistic North and a sectionalistic South.” Impatient with historians who read separatism into all aspects of prewar southern politics or Unionism into all things northern, Potter admonished scholars not to project Civil War loyalties back into the antebellum period. A more nuanced approach would reveal “that in the North as well as in the South there were deep sectional impulses, and support or nonsupport of the Union was sometimes a matter of sectional tactics rather than of national loyalty.” Recent scholars have accepted Potter's challenge, and their findings contribute to an emerging reinterpretation of the sectional conflict and the timing of secession. 19

Disentangling northern from national interests and values has been difficult thanks in part to the Civil War itself (in which “the North” and “the Union” overlapped, albeit imperfectly) and because of the northern victory and the temptation to classify the Old South as an un-American aberration. But several recent studies have risen to the task. Challenging the notion that the antebellum North must have been nationalistic because of its opposition to slavery and its role in the Civil War, Susan-Mary Grant argues that by the 1850s a stereotyped view of the South and a sense of moral and economic superiority had created a powerful northern sectional identity. Championed by the Republican party, this identity flowered into an exclusionary nationalism in which the South served as a negative reference point for the articulation of ostensibly national values, goals, and identities based on the North's flattering self-image. This sectionalism-cum-nationalism eventually corroded national ties by convincing northerners that the South represented an internal threat to the nation. Although this vision became genuinely national after the war, in the antebellum period it was sectionally specific and bitterly divisive. “It was not the case,” Grant concludes, “that the northern ideology of the antebellum period was American, truly national, and supportive of the Union and the southern ideology was wholly sectional and destructive of the Union.” Matthew Mason makes a related point about early national politics, noting that the original sectionalists were antislavery New England Federalists whose flirtation with secession in 1815 crippled their party. Never simply the repository of authentic American values, the nineteenth-century North developed a sectional identity in opposition to an imagined (though not fictitious) South. Only victory in the Civil War allowed for the reconstruction of the rest of the nation in this image. 20

If victory in the war obscured northern sectionalism, it was the defense of slavery, coupled with defeat, that has distorted our view of American nationalism in the Old South. The United States was founded as a slaveholding nation, and there was unfortunately nothing necessarily un-American about slavery in the early nineteenth century. Slavery existed in tension with, not purely in opposition to, the nation's perennially imperfect political institutions, and its place in the young republic was a hotly contested question with a highly contingent resolution. Moreover, despite their pretensions to being an embattled minority, southern elites long succeeded in harnessing national ideals and federal power to their own interests. Thus, defense of slavery was neither inevitably nor invariably secessionist. This is a key theme of Robert Bonner's expertly crafted history of the rise and fall of proslavery American nationalism. Adopting a long-sectional-conflict perspective, Bonner challenges historians who have “conflate[d] an understandable revulsion at proslavery ideology with a willful disassociation of bondage from prevailing American norms.” He details the efforts of proslavery southerners to integrate slavery into national identity and policy and to harmonize slaveholding with American expansionism, republicanism, constitutionalism, and evangelicalism. Appropriating the quintessentially American sense of national purpose, proslavery nationalists “invited outsiders to consider [slavery's] compatibility with broadly shared notions of American values and visions of a globally redeeming national mission.” This effort ended in defeat, but not because proslavery southerners chronically privileged separatism over nationalism. Rather, it was their failure to bind slavery to American nationalism—signaled by the Republican triumph in 1860—that finally drove slaveholders to secede. Lincoln's victory “effectively ended the prospects for achieving proslavery Americanism within the federal Union,” forcing slavery's champions to pin their hopes to a new nation-state. Confederate nationalism was more a response to the demise of proslavery American nationalism than the cause of its death. 21

Other recent studies of slaveholders' efforts to nationalize their goals and interests complement Bonner's skilled analysis. Matthew J. Karp casts proslavery politicians not as jumpy sectionalists but as confident imperialists who sponsored an ambitious and costly expansion of American naval power to protect slavery against foreign encroachment and to exert national influence overseas. For these slaveholding nationalists, “federal power was not a danger to be feared, but a force to be utilized,” right up to the 1860 election. Similarly, Brian Schoen has explored cotton planters' efforts to ensure that national policy on tariff rates and slavery's territorial status remained favorable to their interests. As cotton prices boomed during the 1850s, planters grew richer and the stakes grew higher, especially as their national political power waned with the ascension of the overtly sectional Republican party. The simultaneous increase in planters' economic might and decline in their political dominance made for an explosive mixture that shattered the bonds of the Union. Still, one must not focus solely on cases in which proslavery nationalism was thwarted, for its successes convinced many northerners of the veracity of the slave power thesis, helping further corrode the Union. James L. Huston shows that both southern efforts to nationalize property rights in slaves and the prospect of slavery becoming a national institution—in the sense that a fully integrated national market could bring slave and free labor into competition—fueled northern sectionalism and promoted the rise of the Republican party. Proslavery nationalism and its policy implications thus emboldened the political party whose victory in 1860 convinced proslavery southerners that their goals could not be realized within the Union. 22

As the standard-bearers of northern and southern interests battled for national power, both sides emphasized that their respective ideologies were consistent with the nation's most cherished principles. Shearer Davis Bowman has argued that “northern and southern partisans of white sectionalism tended to see their respective sections as engaged in the high-minded defense of vested interests, outraged rights and liberties, and imperiled honor, all embedded in a society and way of life they deemed authentically American.” In a sense, both sides were right. Recent scholarship in such varied fields as intellectual, religious, political, and literary history suggests that although often incompatible, the values and ideals of the contending sections flowed from a common source. Work by Margaret Abruzzo on proslavery and antislavery humanitarianism, John Patrick Daly and Mark A. Noll on evangelical Protestantism, Sean Wilentz on political democracy, and Diane N. Capitani on domestic sentimental fiction suggests that the highly politicized differences between northern and southern ideologies masked those ideologies' common intellectual roots. Some scholars have argued for more fundamental difference, maintaining that southern thinkers roundly rejected democracy and liberal capitalism, while others have gone too far in the other direction in presenting northern and southern whites as equally committed to liberalism. But the dominant thrust of recent work on sectional ideologies suggests that they represented two hostile sides of a single coin minted at the nation's founding. Since a coin flip cannot end in a tie, both sides struggled for control of the national government to put their incompatible ideals into practice. The nationalization of northern ideals was a hotly contested outcome, made possible only by armed conflict. Conversely, the sectionalization of white southern ideals was not inevitable. Proponents of both sections drew on nationalism and sectionalism alike, embracing the former when they felt powerful and the latter when they felt weak. “As long as the Government is on our side,” proslavery Democrat and future South Carolina governor Francis W. Pickens wrote in 1857, “I am for sustaining it and using its power for our benefit. … [if] our opponents reverse the present state of things then I am for war .” 23

Together, recent studies of northern sectionalism and southern nationalism make a compelling case for why the Civil War broke out when it did. If the South was always a separatist minority and if the North always defended the American way, secession might well have come long before 1861. It is more helpful to view the sectional conflict as one between equally authentic (not morally equivalent) strands of American nationalism grappling for the power to govern the entire country according to sectionally specific values. Southern slaveholders ruled what was in many ways the weaker section, but constitutional privileges such as the infamous three-fifths clause, along with other advantageous provisions such as the rule requiring a two-thirds majority in the nominations of Democratic presidential candidates, allowed them to remain dominant prior to 1860, until their successes aroused a sense of northern sectionalism robust enough to lift the Republican party into power. Almost overnight, the proslavery nationalist project collapsed. Only then did decisive numbers of southern whites countenance disunion, a drastic measure whose use had long been resisted within the South. The Civil War erupted when northern sectionalism grew powerful enough to undermine southern nationalism. 24

In the model of Civil War causation sketched above, northern voters who joined the Republicans fretted over the fate of liberty in a slaveholding republic. But whose liberty was at stake? Recent scholarship powerfully demonstrates that for moderate opponents of slavery the most damnable aspect of the institution was not what it did to slaves but what it allowed slaveholders to do to northern whites. Popular antislavery grew from trepidation about the power of the slaveholding class and its threat to republican liberty, not from uproar against proslavery racism and racial oppression. And since this concern fueled the Republican party's rapid growth and 1860 presidential triumph, white northerners' indignant response to slaveholders' clout contributed significantly to the coming of the war by providing secessionists with a pretext for disunion. According to this interpretation of northern politics, slavery remains at the root of the sectional conflict even though racial egalitarianism did not inspire the most popular brands of antislavery politics and even though many of the debates over slavery, as Eric Foner has pointed out, “were only marginally related to race.” At the same time, recent scholarship on southern politics foregrounds slave agency and persuasively demonstrates that conflict between masters and slaves directly affected national affairs. If the fate of the enslaved did not preoccupy most northern whites, the same cannot be said of their southern counterparts, whose politics are intelligible only in the context of slave resistance. In sum, recent work confirms the centrality of slavery in the coming of the war in a very specific and nuanced way, showing that the actions and contested status of enslaved people influenced southern politics directly and northern politics more obliquely. This work reveals an asymmetry in the politics of slavery: in the South it revolved around maintaining control over slaves in the name of white supremacy and planters' interests, while in the North it centered on the problem of the slaveholding class. 25

Moral indignation at racial prejudice in the twentieth century does not necessarily provide the key to an understanding of the dispute between the sections in the nineteenth century. While some abolitionists were indignant at the slave system and what it did to black men, many more northerners became antisouthern and antislavery because of what the slave system did or threatened to do to them. A failure to recognize this can easily lead us into a blind alley of oversimplification, and to view the events of a hundred years ago as a morality play with heroes and villains rather than a plausible presentation of a human dilemma.

Many twenty-first century scholars have taken this point to heart while implicitly challenging Gara's stark contrast between moral and self-interested antislavery. They stress the primary importance of white liberty in popular antislavery critiques but show that slavery's “moderate” opponents were no less morally outraged than their “radical” counterparts. Slavery could be condemned on moral grounds for a wide variety of reasons, some of which had much to do with enslaved people and some of which—whether they stressed the degeneracy of southern society, the undemocratic influence of slaveholders' political clout, or the threat that proslavery zealots posed to civil liberties—did not. Thus, recent scholars have made Gara's “crucial distinction” while underlining the moral dimensions of ostensibly moderate, conservative, or racist antislavery arguments. Popular antislavery strove to protect democratic politics from the machinations of a legally privileged and economically potent ruling class. Slaveholders' inordinate political power was itself a moral problem. These findings may prompt historians to reconsider the relative emphasis placed on class and race in the origins and meanings of the Civil War, particularly regarding the political behavior of the nonabolitionist northern majority. 27

Numerous recent studies emphasize that perceived threats to white freedom pushed northerners to oppose the slave power, support the Republican party, and prosecute the Civil War on behalf of liberty and the Union. Nicole Etcheson's study of the violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery forces over Kansas during the mid-1850s contends that the key issue at stake was freedom for white settlers. During the Civil War many Kansans who had fought for the admission of their state under an antislavery constitution applauded emancipation, but Etcheson persuasively argues that “Bleeding Kansas began as a struggle to secure the political liberties of whites.” Racist pioneers from both sections battled to ensure that the plains would remain a haven for white freedom, disagreeing primarily over slavery's compatibility with that goal. Similarly, Matthew Mason shows that antislavery politics in the early national period, spearheaded by Federalists, thrived only when northern voters recognized “how slavery impinged on their rights and interests.” Russell McClintock's analysis of the 1860 election and northerners' reaction to secession and the bombardment of Fort Sumter indicates that anxiety over slaveholders' power encouraged a decisive, violent northern response. As the antislavery position edged closer to the mainstream of northern politics, critiques of slavery grounded in sympathy for enslaved people faded as less philanthropic assaults on the institution proliferated. Carol Lasser's study of the shifting emphasis of antislavery rhetoric demonstrates that between the 1830s and the 1850s, “self-interest replaced sin as a basis for antislavery organizing,” as antislavery appeals increasingly “stressed the self-interest of northern farmers and workers—mainly white and mainly male.” Ultimately, popular antislavery cast “free white men, rather than enslaved African American women,” as “the victims of ‘the peculiar institution.’” 28

Even histories of fugitive slave cases underscore the preeminence of white liberty as the activating concern for many northerners. As the historian Earl M. Maltz has pointed out, the fugitive slave issue was never isolated from other political controversies. Thanks to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which seemed to prove the existence of a southern plot to spread slavery onto previously free western soil, fugitive slave cases during and after 1854 aroused increased hostility among white northerners who suspected that slaveholders threatened the liberties of all Americans. Those fears intensified throughout the 1850s in response to cases in which free northerners stood trial for violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. In two of the three cases explored by Steven Lubet the defendants were not runaway slaves but predominantly white northerners accused of abetting fugitives from slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act's criminalization of noncompliance with slave catchers proved especially odious. “For all of its blatant unfairness,” Lubet argues, “the Act might have been considered tolerable in the North—at least among non-abolitionists—if it had been directed only at blacks.” It was not, of course, and some of the act's most celebrated cases placed white northerners in legal jeopardy for crossing swords with the slave power. Two recent studies of the Joshua Glover case reinforce this point. Formerly a slave in St. Louis, Glover escaped to Wisconsin and, with the help of sympathetic white residents, from there to Canada in 1854. But the dramatic confrontation between free-state citizens and the slaveholder-dominated federal government only began with Glover's successful flight, since the political reverberations of the case echoed for many years after Glover reached Canadian soil. Debates over the rights and duties of citizens, over the boundaries of state and federal sovereignty, and over the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act hinged on the prosecution of the primarily white Wisconsinites who aided Glover's escape. None gained more notoriety than Sherman Booth, the Milwaukee newspaper editor whose case bounced between state and federal courts from 1854 to 1859, and whose attorney, Byron Paine, capitalized on his own resulting popularity to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Long after attention left Glover, who was undoubtedly relieved to be out of the public eye, conflicts over northern state rights and individual rights highlighted the threat to white liberty posed by the slave power and its federal agents. 29

Of course, the white northerners prosecuted under proslavery law would have remained in obscurity if not for the daring escapes made by enslaved people. As Stanley Harrold has shown, runaway slaves sparked dozens of bloody skirmishes in the antebellum borderland between slavery and freedom. To stress the importance of conflicts over white liberty in the coming of the Civil War is not to ignore the political impact of slave resistance. Quite the reverse: recent studies of Civil War causation have deftly explored the relationship between slave agency and sectional antagonism, revealing that slave resistance provoked conflict between whites, even in situations where racial justice was not the main point of contention. Northern sectionalism was a reaction against proslavery belligerence, which was fueled by internal conflicts in the South. Narratives of Civil War causation that focus on white northerners' fears for their liberties depend on slave agency, for the aggressiveness of the slave power was, essentially, a response to the power of slaves. 30

Revealingly, recent works by John Ashworth and William W. Freehling both stress this theme. Both scholars published long-awaited second volumes of their accounts of Civil War causation in 2007. Beyond this coincidence, however, it would be difficult to find two historians more dissimilar than Ashworth, a Marxist who privileges labor systems and class relations, and Freehling, a master storyteller who stresses contingency and individual consciousness. For all their methodological and ideological differences, however, Ashworth and Freehling concur on an essential point: the struggle between masters and slaves accelerated the sectional conflict by forcing masters to support undemocratic policies that threatened northern liberties. The resulting hostility of northerners toward slaveholders provoked a fierce response, and the cycle continued. By weaving the day-to-day contest between masters and slaves into their political analyses, both authors fashion a “reintegrated” American history that blends the insights of social and political history. 31

According to Ashworth, class conflict forced ruling elites in both sections to pursue clashing political and economic policies. Thus, structural divergence in social and economic systems between North and South inflamed the political and ideological strife that resulted in disunion. Class conflict was especially problematic in the South, whose enslaved population did not accept proslavery principles in the same way that, by the 1850s, some northern workers embraced free-labor ideology. Instead, interminable slave resistance compelled southern masters to gag congressional debate over slavery, to demand stringent fugitive slave laws, and to agitate for a territorial slave code—in short, to act the part of an authoritarian slave power. “Behind every event in the history of the sectional controversy,” Ashworth argues in his first volume, “lurked the consequences of black resistance to slavery.” A dozen years of additional work confirmed this thesis. In his second volume, Ashworth contends that “the opposition of the slaves to their own enslavement is the fundamental, irreplaceable cause of the War.” The Civil War did not begin as a massive slave rebellion because southern masters managed to contain the unrest that threatened their rule, but the price of this success was a deteriorating relationship with northerners. By contending for their freedom, slaves obliged their masters to behave in ways that convinced even the most bigoted northern whites that slavery menaced their own liberties. 32

colliding democratic and despotic governing systems. The Old South combined dictatorship over blacks with republicanism for whites, supposedly cleanly severed by an All-Mighty Color Line. But to preserve dictatorial dominion over blacks, the slaveholding minority sometimes trenched on majoritarian government for whites, in the nation as well as in their section. … Northerners called the militant slavocracy the Slave Power, meaning that those with autocratic power over blacks also deployed undemocratic power over whites. Most Yankees hardly embraced blacks or abolitionists. Yet racist Northerners would fight the Slave Power to the death to preserve their white men's majoritarian rights.

Scholars who foreground northern concern for white liberty in a slaveholding republic underline the importance of class conflict between northern voters and southern elites in the coming of the Civil War. Moderate antislavery northerners condemned slaveholders for aristocratic pretensions and tyrannical policies, not for racial bigotry. But for many scholars, race remains the key to understanding antebellum sectional politics. The tendency remains strong to frame the sectional conflict and the Civil War as one campaign in a longer struggle for racial justice. Not surprisingly, studies of radical abolitionism are the most likely works to employ this framework. Radical abolitionists nurtured a strikingly egalitarian conception of race and fought for a social vision that most scholars share but one that the modern world has not yet realized, and therein lies their appeal. Moreover, those who foreground race in the coming of the war do not naïvely suggest that all northern whites were racial egalitarians. Since the 1960s, commitment to an admirable antiracist ideal, not wishful thinking, has given a powerful boost to a primarily racial interpretation of the sectional conflict. But the recent scholarly emphasis on issues of class and the slave power suggests that framing the sectional conflict as a clash over racial injustice is not the most useful approach to understanding Civil War causation. 34

The slave power was defined not by racism but by slaveholders' capacity to use federal law and muscle to advance their class interests. Proslavery racism was, like all racism, reprehensible, but it is easily, even when subtly, overstated in accounts of Civil War causation. It is, for example, hardly incorrect to refer to the proslavery ideologue James Henry Hammond as “a fiercely racist South Carolina politician,” but that characterization emphasizes a trait he shared with most northern voters rather than what alienated Hammond from them and thus hastened the rise of the Republican party and the outbreak of war. What distinguished Hammond from his northern antagonists was his “mudsill” theory of society (which he outlined in an 1858 Senate speech) and its implications for American class relations. Proceeding from the presumption that every functioning society must rest upon the labors of a degraded “mudsill” class, Hammond argued that the southern laboring class, because it was enslaved, was materially better off and politically less threatening than its northern counterpart. Hammond's highly public articulation of this theory outraged proponents of free labor and made him a particularly notorious proslavery propagandist. Illinois Republicans who rallied under a banner declaring “Small-Fisted Farmers, Mud Sills of Society, Greasy Mechanics, for A. Lincoln” recognized the deep-seated class dimensions of their party's conflict with Hammond and his ilk. Moreover, Hammond's comparison of the northern and southern working classes suggests a curious ambiguity in the relative importance of class and race in proslavery ideology. This subject demands further scholarly attention, but important advances have recently been made. On the one hand, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese have indicated that the irascible George Fitzhugh, who proclaimed that working people of all colors would be better off as slaves, was not alone in developing a defense of slavery compatible with racism but ultimately based on class relations. On the other hand, slaveholders, at least as much as any other antebellum Americans, benefited from portraying slavery as a fundamentally racial issue. As Frank Towers has shown, planters feared the day when nonslaveholding southern whites might begin to think in terms of class and shuddered at the prospect of working-class politics in southern cities. That one of the most strident articulations of the race-based proslavery argument—which promised that the subjugation of blacks made equals of all white men—appeared in 1860 was no coincidence, as southern elites sought to ensure regional white unity on the eve of a possible revolution. In pursuit of their interests, southern ideologues drew on both class- and race-based arguments, and if the latter stand out to modern readers, the former did more to alienate individuals in the free states. Slaveholders' conflict with northern voters, the collision that triggered secession and war, grew not out of clashing racial views but out of competition for political power. 35

The most broadly appealing brands of antislavery defined this competition as one between classes. Proponents of popular antislavery presented sectional issues in terms of class more often than race, and with tremendous effect. Their interpretation of sectional friction generated mass sympathy for a cause that otherwise would have remained a fringe movement. This moderate antislavery ideology is easily discounted if we attribute genuine antislavery sentiments only to those few northerners uncontaminated by racism. It grew from many sources: Jacksonian antipathy to concentrated economic and political power; an often-radical producerism that would guarantee to the worker the fruits of his labor; a demand for land reform that would reserve western soil for white farmers; and a morally charged concern about the fate of democracy in a nation dominated by slaveholders. Class-based Jacksonian radicalism thus informed the ideology of the Free Soil party and, crucially, the Republicans. Antislavery politicians such as New Hampshire's John P. Hale, a Democrat who drifted into the Republican ranks via the Free Soil party, “defined the controversy over slavery and its continuation as an issue between aristocratic slave owners and ‘sturdy republicans’ rather than between innocent slaves and sinful masters,” points out Jonathan H. Earle. It was this contest that aroused a northern majority to vote Lincoln into office and to enlist in the Union army. The issues of money, power, class, and democracy that concerned Jacksonian and other moderate antislavery northerners were not less morally charged because they focused on white liberty and equality in a republic. Nor should we forget that this class-based antislavery critique contained the seeds of a racial egalitarianism that sprouted, however feebly, during the Civil War. The experience of war often turned whites-only egalitarianism into a far more sweeping notion of human equality. To ignore this transformation is to discount the radicalizing influence that the Civil War had on many northern soldiers and civilians. 36

When coupled with an analysis of southern politics that emphasizes slave agency, this revival of scholarly interest in popular antislavery ideology offers not only a convincing interpretation of Civil War causation but also a politically and pedagogically important narrative about class and politics in American history. Adam Rothman's 2005 essay on the slave power is a model of this fresh and constructive approach. On one level, he presents an accessible introduction to the history and historiography of nineteenth-century slaveholders. But the chief contribution of the work lies in the context in which the essay was published: an anthology on American elite classes, from early national merchant capitalists to postwar anti–New Dealers, and their relationship with American democracy. Casting the slave power in this light gives the sectional conflict a bold new meaning, one that reveals the Civil War to have been both much more than and much less than a precursor to the civil rights movement. It appears as a struggle between (an imperfect) popular democracy and one of the most powerful and deeply rooted interests in antebellum politics. One might argue that Americans simply replaced one set of masters—southern planters—with another, the rising robber barons. Nevertheless, the Civil War offers one of precious few instances in American history in which a potent, entrenched, incredibly wealthy, and constitutionally privileged elite class was thoroughly ousted from national power. This makes the class-based issues that helped spark the war too important to forget. 37

That narrative may also aid in the quest for that holy grail of academic history: a receptive public audience. The neo-Confederate outcry against the alleged anti-southern bias of McPherson's 2000 “What Caused the Civil War?” essay and the ongoing controversy over the Confederate flag indicate that much of the public does not share in the scholarly consensus on slavery's central place in Civil War causation. Unfortunately, no quick fix exists for popular misconceptions about the war, but scholarship that frames the conflict over slavery as a struggle in which the liberties of all Americans were at stake may influence minds closed to depictions of the war as an antiracist crusade. This is not to argue that historians should pander to popular prejudice or that race is not a central theme in the history of the Civil War era. Rather, historians can and should capitalize on the political and pedagogical advantages of an important body of scholarship that sharpens our understanding of Civil War causation by explaining why even incorrigible northern racists voted and fought against southern slaveholders, and that reminds us that slavery impacted all antebellum Americans, North and South, black and white. When northerners urged the “necessity” of defending their liberty against the encroaching “tyranny” of a government “under the absolute control of an oligarchy of southern slave holders,” as Judge F. C. White of Utica, New York, wrote in 1858, they meant precisely what they said. To gainsay the salience of race in the causes, course, and outcome of the Civil War would be a terrible mistake, but it would be equally misleading to neglect the matters of class, power, and democracy at the heart of the slavery debate; these issues contributed mightily to the origins of the nation's bloodiest conflict and to its modern-day significance. 38

Whatever its ultimate fate in the classroom and public discourse, recent scholarship on the coming of the Civil War reveals an impatience with old interpretive categories, an eagerness to challenge the basic parameters that have long guided scholarly thinking on the topic, and a healthy skepticism of narratives that explain the war with comforting, simplistic formulae. The broad consensus on slavery's centrality has not stifled rapid growth and diversification in the field. Indeed, the proliferation of works on Civil War causation presents a serious challenge to anyone seeking to synthesize the recent literature into a single tidy interpretation. Rather than suggest an all-encompassing model, this essay has outlined three broad themes that could provide fertile ground for future debate. A reaction against the expanding geographic and temporal breadth of Civil War causation studies, for example, might prompt scholars to return to tightly focused, state-level analyses of antebellum politics. Recent political histories of antebellum Mississippi and Louisiana suggest that this approach has much to contribute to our understanding of how national debates filtered down to state and local levels. Other scholars might take an explicitly comparative approach and analyze the causes, course, and results of the American Civil War alongside those of roughly contemporaneous intrastate conflicts, including the Reform War (1857–1861) in Mexico and China's Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). Comparative history's vast potential has been amply demonstrated by Enrico Dal Lago's study of agrarian elites and regionalism in the Old South and Italy, and by Don H. Doyle's edited collection on secession movements around the globe. Similarly, scholars undoubtedly will challenge the interpretive emphases on proslavery American nationalism, antislavery northern sectionalism, and the class dimensions of the sectional conflict that pervade much of the recent scholarship and receive close attention in this essay. But others might carry on this work by studying phenomena such as the disunionist thrust of radical abolitionism. The campaign for free-state secession never sank deep roots in northern soil. But by the late 1850s it was a frequent topic of editorials in abolitionist publications such as the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and it captured mainstream headlines through events such as the 1857 Worcester Disunion Convention. And even if race, southern sectionalism, and northern Unionism dominate future narratives of Civil War causation, further debate will sharpen our analysis of an easily mythologized period of American history. 39

These debates will be no less meaningful because of scholars' near-universal acknowledgement of the centrality of slavery in the coming of the Civil War. Instead, they illustrate C. Vann Woodward's observation that “most of the important debates over history … have not been about absolute but about relative matters, not about the existence but about the degree or extent of the phenomenon in question.” Beneath a veneer of consensus lies interpretive nuance and healthy disagreement, which we can hope will inform both academic and popular commemoration of the Civil War sesquicentennial. 40

The title of this article borrows from Howard K. Beale, “What Historians Have Said about the Causes of the Civil War,” Social Science Research Bulletin, 54 (1946), 53–102. Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (9 vols., New Brunswick, 1953–1955), VIII, 332–33; James M. McPherson, “What Caused the Civil War?,” North and South, 4 (Nov. 2000), 12–22, esp. 13. This consensus extends into college textbooks, many written by James McPherson, which “contain little debate over war causation since they recognize that slavery was the root cause of the war.” See William B. Rogers and Terese Martyn, “A Consensus at Last: American Civil War Texts and the Topics That Dominate the College Classroom,” History Teacher, 41 (Aug. 2008), 519–30, esp. 530. See also Aaron Charles Sheehan-Dean, “A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks,” Civil War History, 51 (Sept. 2005), 317–24. Charles W. Joyner, “The Flag Controversy and the Causes of the Civil War: A Statement by Historians,” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, 24 (Winter 2001), 196–98, esp. 197. For lengthier exposés of slavery, secession, and postbellum mythmaking from recent years, see Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville, 2001); and James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta, eds., The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause” (Jackson, 2010).

Elizabeth R. Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill, 2008), 4. Edward L. Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History (New York, 2005), 128. For Edward Ayers's call for reinvigorated debate on the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Civil War, see ibid. , 131–44.

For analyses of earlier literature, see Beale, “What Historians Have Said about the Causes of the Civil War”; Thomas J. Pressly, Americans Interpret Their Civil War (New York, 1962); David M. Potter, “The Literature on the Background of the Civil War,” in The South and the Sectional Conflict, by David M. Potter (Baton Rouge, 1968), 87–150; and Eric Foner, “The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions,” Civil War History, 20 (Sept. 1974), 197–214. For more recent historiographical assessments of specific topics related to the sectional crisis, see Lacy K. Ford, ed., A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction (Malden, 2005), 25–200. For a reinterpretation of the full century and a half of scholarship on Civil War causation that briefly samples recent literature, see Frank Towers, “Partisans, New History, and Modernization: The Historiography of the Civil War's Causes, 1861–2011,” Journal of the Civil War Era, 1 (June 2011), 237–64. Several important bodies of literature are underrepresented in my historiography. One is work on the five months between Abraham Lincoln's election and the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which addresses the question of why and how secession sparked a shooting war. This outcome was not inevitable, because the causes of disunion were not identical to the causes of the Civil War itself. This essay focuses on the former topic. For recent interpretations of the latter, see Dew, Apostles of Disunion; David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War (New York, 2001); Larry D. Mansch, Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect: The Four Critical Months from Election to Inauguration (Jefferson, 2005); Nelson D. Lankford, Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 (New York, 2007); Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession (Chapel Hill, 2008); Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861 (New York, 2008); Lawrence M. Denton, William Henry Seward and the Secession Crisis: The Effort to Prevent Civil War (Jefferson, 2009); William J. Cooper Jr., “The Critical Signpost on the Journey toward Secession,” Journal of Southern History, 77 (Feb. 2011), 3–16; Emory M. Thomas, The Dogs of War, 1861 (New York, 2011); and Adam Goodheart, 1861: The Civil War Awakening (New York, 2011). Biographies are also not explored systematically here. Recent biographies related to the coming of the Civil War include William C. Davis, Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Columbia, S.C., 2001); John L. Myers, Henry Wilson and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, 2005); John M. Belohlavek, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union (Kent, 2005); Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2006); and Denton, William Henry Seward and the Secession Crisis . Thanks in part to the close proximity of Lincoln's bicentennial birthday and the Civil War sesquicentennial, scholarship on the sixteenth president continues to burgeon. For analyses of this vast literature, see James Oakes, “Lincoln and His Commas,” Civil War History, 54 (June 2008), 176–93; Sean Wilentz, “Who Lincoln Was,” New Republic, July 15, 2009, pp. 24–47; and Nicole Etcheson, “Abraham Lincoln and the Nation's Greatest Quarrel: A Review Essay,” Journal of Southern History, 76 (May 2010), 401–16. For an account of Lincoln historiography in the Journal of American History, see Allen C. Guelzo, “The Not-So-Grand Review: Abraham Lincoln in the Journal of American History, ” Journal of American History, 96 (Sept. 2009), 400–416. That biography and studies of the secession winter are thriving suggests a possible waning of the long-dominant “irrepressible conflict” interpretation, as both approaches emphasize contingency and individual agency. Collective biography, particularly on Lincoln's relationships with other key figures, has also flourished. On Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, see James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York, 2007); Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union (New York, 2008); and John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York, 2008). On Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, see Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (New York, 2008); and Roy Morris, The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America (New York, 2008). A third body of literature that needs further historiographical analysis relates to gender and the coming of the Civil War. See, for example, Michael D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill, 2003); Nina Silber, Gender and the Sectional Conflict (Chapel Hill, 2008); Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender, and Violence in Pre–Civil War Kansas (Baton Rouge, 2009); and Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, Mass., 2010). For discussions of the classic schools of scholarship, see Kenneth M. Stampp, “The Irrepressible Conflict,” in The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War, by Kenneth M. Stampp (New York, 1980), 191–245; Ayers, What Caused the Civil War?, 132–33; and Gary J. Kornblith, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Journal of American History, 90 (June 2003), 78–79. For a call for a synthesis of the fundamentalist and revisionist interpretations, see Ayers, What Caused the Civil War? On the continued relevance of these camps, see James Huston, “Interpreting the Causation Sequence: The Meaning of the Events Leading to the Civil War,” Reviews in American History, 34 (Sept. 2006), 329. The coming of the Civil War has long shaped discussions of historical causation, including Lee Benson and Cushing Strout, “Causation and the American Civil War: Two Appraisals,” History and Theory, 1 (no. 2, 1961), 163–85; and William Dray and Newton Garver, “Some Causal Accounts of the American Civil War,” Daedalus, 91 (Summer 1962), 578–98.

Key works on the transnational turn include “Toward the Internationalization of American History: A Round Table,” Journal of American History, 79 (Sept. 1992), 432–542; Carl J. Guarneri, “Internationalizing the United States Survey Course: American History for a Global Age,” History Teacher, 36 (Nov. 2002), 37–64; Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002); Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations: America's Place in World History (New York, 2006); and Ian Tyrrell, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective since 1789 (Basingstoke, 2007). Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (2 vols., New York, 1947), I, 3–5; James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), 3–5; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, completed and ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York, 1976), 1–6. On continental expansion and sectional conflict, see Michael A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1997). On the divisive influence of sectionalized fantasies of tropical conquest, see Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge, 1973). For an early work on Haiti's transnational significance, see Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton Rouge, 1988). On the relationship between the Ostend Manifesto and domestic politics, see Robert E. May, “A ‘Southern Strategy’ for the 1850s: Northern Democrats, the Tropics, and Expansion of the National Domain,” Louisiana Studies, 14 (Winter 1975), 333–59, esp. 337–42; and John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, vol. II: The Coming of the Civil War, 1850–1861 (New York, 2007), 395–98.

Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2008), 7; Matthew J. Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution (Philadelphia, 2010), 5. Other recent transnational studies of Civil War causation include Timothy Roberts, “The European Revolutions of 1848 and Antebellum Violence in Kansas,” Journal of the West, 44 (Fall 2005), 58–68; Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (New York, 2007); McCurry, Confederate Reckoning; and Mischa Honeck, We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists after 1848 (Athens, Ga., 2011). Several recent dissertations explore the equally permeable boundary between North and South. See Joseph T. Rainer, “The Honorable Fraternity of Moving Merchants: Yankee Peddlers in the Old South, 1800–1860” (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 2000); Wesley Brian Borucki, “Yankees in King Cotton's Court: Northerners in Antebellum and Wartime Alabama” (Ph.D. diss., University of Alabama, 2002); Eric William Plaag, “Strangers in a Strange Land: Northern Travelers and the Coming of the American Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2006); and Alana K. Bevan, “‘We Are the Same People’: The Leverich Family of New York and Their Antebellum American Inter-regional Network of Elites” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2009). On the “mighty experiment,” see Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York, 2002). The compelling scholarship on global antislavery undoubtedly encouraged the internationalization of Civil War causation studies. David Brion Davis's contributions remain indispensable. See David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966); David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770 –1823 (Ithaca, 1975); and David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York, 2006). For a work that places antebellum southern thought, including proslavery ideology, into an international context, see Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life in the American South, 1810–1860 (2 vols., Chapel Hill, 2004).

Rugemer, Problem of Emancipation, 6–7; Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War, 9–10.

Brian Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore, 2009), 10; Nicholas Onuf and Peter Onuf, Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War (Charlottesville, 2006). John Majewski offers a different perspective on slavery and free trade, acknowledging that slaveholders were hardly united in favor of protection and arguing that the moderate Confederate tariff represented a compromise between protectionists and free traders. See John Majewski, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation (Chapel Hill, 2009).

On the centrality of cotton exports in the economic history of the South—and the United States—see Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, 1961). On the Old South's place in world economic history and its dependency on the global cotton market, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, “The Slave Economies in Political Perspective,” in Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism, by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese (New York, 1983), 34–60. On the cotton trade and Confederate diplomacy, see Frank Lawrence Owsley Sr., King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago, 1931). On the early history of the cotton kingdom, see Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).

Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Library of Congress: Thomas Jefferson, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html . The foundational text for “long movement” scholarship is Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 91 (March 2005), 1233–63. An influential application of this paradigm is Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (New York, 2008). For a sharp critique of the long movement concept, see Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of African American History, 92 (Spring 2007), 265–88. Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2006), 5.

John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville, 2007). For an accessible introduction to the early struggles over slavery, see Gary J. Kornblith, Slavery and Sectional Strife in the Early American Republic, 1776–1821 (Lanham, 2010). On slavery's post-Revolution expansion, see Rothman, Slave Country . For the social and intellectual history of early proslavery thought, see Jeffrey Robert Young, ed., Proslavery and Sectional Thought in the Early South, 1740–1829: An Anthology (Columbia, S.C., 2006); Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 2008); and Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York, 2009).

Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (Baton Rouge, 2000), 28–51; Jan Lewis, “The Three-Fifths Clause and the Origins of Sectionalism,” in Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson, ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Athens, Ohio, 2008), 19–46; David L. Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War (New Haven, 2006); Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, 2002); Christopher Childers, “Interpreting Popular Sovereignty: A Historiographical Essay,” Civil War History, 57 (March 2011), 48–70. For a discussion of the temporal parameters of his own work, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York, 1990), vii.

Paul Calore, The Causes of the Civil War: The Political, Cultural, Economic, and Territorial Disputes between North and South (Jefferson, 2008). John B. Alley, Speech of Hon. John B. Alley, of Mass., on the Principles and Purposes of the Republican Party: Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, Monday, April 30, 1860 (Washington, 1860), 2; Robert Toombs, Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs, on the Crisis. Delivered before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, 1860 (Washington, 1860), 5. Emphasis in original. Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War; Schoen, Fragile Fabric of Union, 99; Margot Minardi, Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts (New York, 2010). On the memory of the American Revolution in William Lloyd Garrison's proudly anachronistic rhetoric, see Robert Fanuzzi, Abolition's Public Sphere (Minneapolis, 2003). On abolitionists' use of public commemorations of British emancipation to recruit new activists, see Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘No Occurrence in Human History Is More Deserving of Commemoration Than This’: Abolitionist Celebrations of Freedom,” in Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, ed. Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer (New York, 2006), 200–219. On the link between collective memory of the Texas Revolution and the growth of Confederate nationalism in Texas, see Andrew F. Lang, “Memory, the Texas Revolution, and Secession: The Birth of Confederate Nationalism in the Lone Star State,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 114 (July 2010), 21–36. On the memory of the Civil War, see, for example, David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); William Alan Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865–1914 (Chapel Hill, 2004); Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, eds., The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture (Chapel Hill, 2004); and Gary W. Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2008).

Varon, Disunion!, 5, 17, 317–22, esp. 17, 5. Emphasis in original.

Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill, 2007), 3. Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, 211.

Michael S. Green, Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War (Santa Barbara, 2010), 17–18. For recent studies of the slavery expansion issue in the late 1840s and early 1850s, see Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (New York, 2005); Leonard L. Richards, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 2007); John C. Waugh, On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History (Wilmington, 2003); Robert V. Remini, At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise That Saved the Union (New York, 2010); and Steven E. Woodworth, Manifest Destinies: America's Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War (New York, 2010). Also in the late 1840s, antislavery activists shifted away from efforts to abolish the interstate slave trade and toward the restriction of slavery's expansion. See Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power, 113–39. General histories that begin in the 1845–1850 period include Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850–1865 (New York, 1934); Nevins, Ordeal of the Union; Potter, Impending Crisis; Ludwell H. Johnson, Division and Reunion: America, 1848–1877 (New York, 1978); McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom; Richard H. Sewell, A House Divided: Sectionalism and Civil War, 1848–1865 (Baltimore, 1988); Robert Cook, Civil War America: Making a Nation, 1848–1877 (London, 2003); and Green, Politics and America in Crisis .

Ritchie Devon Watson Jr., Normans and Saxons: Southern Race Mythology and the Intellectual History of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2008), 28. Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (Lawrence, 2000), 61–80; Marc Egnal, Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (New York, 2009), 21–122. For accessible accounts of the Compromise of 1850, see Waugh, On the Brink of Civil War; and Remini, At the Edge of the Precipice.

Green, Politics and America in Crisis, 41. On the ages of representatives and senators in 1850, see Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (New York, 1964), 32, 40. On the deaths of John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, see Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), 494. “Address, 1851, of the Southern Rights Association of the University of Virginia to the Young Men of the South” [Dec. 19, 1850?], folder 1, box 1, William Henry Gist Papers (South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia).

The classic statement of this “revisionist” interpretation is J. G. Randall, “The Blundering Generation,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 27 (June 1940), 3–28. For a different psychological interpretation of generational influences on politics, see George B. Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age (New York, 1979). For a generational analysis of the rise of immediate abolitionism around 1830, see James L. Huston, “The Experiential Basis of the Northern Antislavery Impulse,” Journal of Southern History, 56 (Nov. 1990), 633–35. Peter S. Carmichael, The Last Generation: Young Virginians in Peace, War, and Reunion (Chapel Hill, 2005). Earlier works that emphasize secession's popularity among youthful southern whites include William L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860 (Princeton, 1974); and Henry James Walker, “Henry Clayton and the Secession Movement in Alabama,” Southern Studies, 4 (Winter 1993), 341–60. Stephen W. Berry II, All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (New York, 2003); Jon Grinspan, “‘Young Men for War’: The Wide Awakes and Lincoln's 1860 Presidential Campaign,” Journal of American History, 96 (Sept. 2009), 357–78.

David M. Potter, “The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa,” in South and the Sectional Conflict, by Potter, 34–83, esp. 75, 65.

Grant, North over South, 6; Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, 42–74. See also Kevin M. Gannon, “Calculating the Value of Union: States' Rights, Nullification, and Secession in the North, 1800–1848” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2002).

Robert E. Bonner, Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood (New York, 2009), xv, 84, 217. On slaveholders' influence over national policy and their use of federal power to advance proslavery interests, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery, completed and ed. Ward M. McAfee (New York, 2001); Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006); and George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early Republic (Chicago, 2010). For a work that argues that the slave power thesis was not mere paranoia and disputes the dismissive interpretation of earlier historians, see Richards, Slave Power . Works that Leonard Richards disputes include Chauncey S. Boucher, “ In re That Aggressive Slavocracy,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 8 (June–Sept. 1921), 13–79; and David Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, 1970). The painful shift from proslavery American nationalism to proslavery southern nationalism can be traced in the career of the Alabama Whig Henry Washington Hilliard. See David I. Durham, A Southern Moderate in Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808–1892 (Baton Rouge, 2008).

Matthew J. Karp, “Slavery and American Sea Power: The Navalist Impulse in the Antebellum South,” Journal of Southern History, 77 (May 2011), 283–324, esp. 290; Schoen, Fragile Fabric of Union, 197–259; James L. Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2003).

Shearer Davis Bowman, At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill, 2010), 12. Margaret Abruzzo, Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism (Baltimore, 2011); John Patrick Daly, When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War (Lexington, Ky., 2002); Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, 2006); Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), esp. xxii, 576, 791; Diane N. Capitani, Truthful Pictures: Slavery Ordained by God in the Domestic Sentimental Novel of the Nineteenth-Century South (Lanham, 2009). On the antidemocratic impulse behind secession in South Carolina and, ostensibly, the rest of the Confederacy, see Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill, 2000). See also Patricia Roberts-Miller, Fanatical Schemes: Proslavery Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus (Tuscaloosa, 2009). On the southern rejection of bourgeois liberalism and capitalism, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview (New York, 2005); and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order (New York, 2008). For the argument that both sections were equally dedicated to liberalism, see David F. Ericson, The Debate over Slavery: Antislavery and Proslavery Liberalism in Antebellum America (New York, 2000). For a compelling argument that secession stemmed from a fierce reaction against nineteenth-century liberal trends and from fealty to the true American republic, see McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 12–13. Francis W. Pickens to Benjamin F. Perry, June 27, 1857, folder 3, box 1, B. F. Perry Papers (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Emphasis in original.

On the fragility of an antebellum nationalism built on ideals that developed clashing sectional characteristics, see Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence, 2002), 8–9.

This work expands on a theme advanced in Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830–1860 (1949; East Lansing, 1964). Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York, 2010), 120.

Larry Gara, “Slavery and the Slave Power: A Crucial Distinction,” Civil War History, 15 (March 1969), 5–18, esp. 9, 6.

On the difficulty of placing antislavery activists on a spectrum of political opinion, see Frederick J. Blue, No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics (Baton Rouge, 2005), 265.

Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence, 2004), 8; Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, 5; McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War, 26–28. On the importance of “the Union”—antebellum shorthand for an experiment in democratic self-government freighted with world-historical significance—in arousing the northern war effort, see Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, Mass., 2011). Carol Lasser, “Voyeuristic Abolitionism: Sex, Gender, and the Transformation of Antislavery Rhetoric,” Journal of the Early Republic, 28 (Spring 2008), 113, 112.

Earl M. Maltz, Fugitive Slave on Trial: The Anthony Burns Case and Abolitionist Outrage (Lawrence, 2010), 54. Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 44. The white defendants Steven Lubet examines are Castner Hanway, charged with treason for his involvement in an 1851 Christiana, Pennsylvania, clash, and Simeon Bushnell, a participant in an 1858 Oberlin, Ohio, slave rescue. The third case Lubet looks at is that of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns. H. Robert Baker, The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War (Athens, Ohio, 2006); Ruby West Jackson and Walter T. McDonald, Finding Freedom: The Untold Story of Joshua Glover, Runaway Slave (Madison, 2007).

Stanley Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2010). On fugitive slaves and national politics, see R. J. M. Blackett, “Dispossessing Massa: Fugitive Slaves and the Politics of Slavery after 1850,” American Nineteenth Century History, 10 (June 2009), 119–36.

John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, vol. I: Commerce and Compromise, 1820–1850 (New York, 1995); Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, II; William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1961 (New York, 2007). For an exploration of their differences, see John Ashworth, “William W. Freehling and the Politics of the Old South,” American Nineteenth Century History, 5 (Spring 2004), 1–29. On the “reintegration” of political and social history, see William W. Freehling, The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War (New York, 1994).

Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, I, 6, II, 1.

Freehling, Road to Disunion, II, xii, xiii. On the relationship between slave resistance and politics in antebellum Virginia, see William A. Link, Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 2003). On the political consequences of mass panic over suspected slave revolts in 1860, see Donald E. Reynolds, Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South (Baton Rouge, 2007).

John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York, 2005); Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2006); James Brewer Stewart, Abolitionist Politics and the Coming of the Civil War (Amherst, 2008); Ford Risley, Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle against Slavery (Evanston, 2008).

Varon, Disunion!, 103. Elizabeth Varon mentions the speech but not its impact on northern workers. See ibid ., 308–10. For the class implications of James Henry Hammond's theory, see Samantha Maziarz, “Mudsill Theory,” in Class in America: An Encyclopedia, ed. Robert E. Weir (3 vols., Westport, 2007), II, 549–50. On northerners' response to the speech, see Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge, 1982), 347. On the Republican banner, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 196–98. Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Slavery in White and Black . Frank Towers, The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (Charlottesville, 2004). J. D. B. DeBow, The Interest in Slavery of the Southern Non-slaveholder: The Right of Peaceful Secession; Slavery in the Bible (Charleston, 1860). On elite secessionists' heavy-handed efforts to mobilize nonslaveholding whites behind secession and the only partial success of racist demagoguery, see McCurry, Confederate Reckoning, 38–84.

In his vindication of Jacksonian antislavery, Daniel Feller criticizes the “fixation with race” that leads too many scholars “to question the sincerity or good intentions of any but the most outspoken racial egalitarians among the opponents of slavery.” Daniel Feller, “A Brother in Arms: Benjamin Tappan and the Antislavery Democracy,” Journal of American History, 88 (June 2001), 50. Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill, 2004), 92; Feller, “Brother in Arms”; Suzanne Cooper Guasco, “‘The Deadly Influence of Negro Capitalists’: Southern Yeomen and Resistance to the Expansion of Slavery in Illinois,” Civil War History, 47 (March 2001), 7–29; Sean Wilentz, “Jeffersonian Democracy and the Origins of Political Antislavery in the United States: The Missouri Crisis Revisited,” Journal of the Historical Society, 4 (Sept. 2004), 375–401. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 190–253; Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York, 2007), 12, 221; Mark E. Neely Jr., “Politics Purified: Religion and the Growth of Antislavery Idealism in Republican Ideology during the Civil War,” in The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation, ed. Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller (Philadelphia, 2002), 103–27.

Adam Rothman, “The ‘Slave Power’ in the United States, 1783–1865,” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 64–91. On the collapse of planters' national power, despite their continued regional dominance, see Steven Hahn, “Class and State in Postemancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective,” American Historical Review, 95 (Feb. 1990), 75–98.

F. C. White to John P. Hale, Feb. 16, 1858, folder 8, box 12, John P. Hale Papers (New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord). On the response to McPherson's essay, see John M. Coski, “Historians under Fire: The Public and the Memory of the Civil War,” Cultural Resource Management, 25 (no. 4, 2002), 13–15. On the Confederate flag controversy, see J. Michael Martinez, William D. Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su, eds., Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South (Gainesville, 2000); K. Michael Prince, Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! South Carolina and the Confederate Flag (Columbia, S.C., 2004); and John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).

Christopher J. Olsen, Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860 (New York, 2000); John M. Sacher, A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824–1861 (Baton Rouge, 2003). Enrico Dal Lago, Agrarian Elites: American Slaveholders and Southern Italian Landowners, 1815–1861 (Baton Rouge, 2005); Don H. Doyle, ed., Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America's Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements (Athens, Ga., 2010). On the Worcester Disunion Convention, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1995), 140–41; and Ericson, Debate over Slavery, 74–79.

C. Vann Woodward, Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History (Baton Rouge, 1986), 79.

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Causes of the Civil War

By michael e. woods.

Without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery's presence make that outcome inevitable?

What caused the Civil War? To ask the question is to invite intense debate. History’s present-day relevance is on full display in the countless discussions—online and offline—that this topic continues to generate. Americans remain deeply and personally invested in the Civil War, making it an exciting but challenging field for anyone committed to rigorous scholarship. When South Carolina diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut explained secession in 1861, she focused on visceral rage: "We are divorced, North from South, because we hated each other so." [1] Today, traces of these feelings linger, making careful study essential to a thorough understanding of the war that Chesnut’s contemporaries fought.

Students of Civil War causation should clearly state the historical problem they wish to solve and carefully decide where in time to begin and end their narratives. Good history begins with precise questions. Asking what caused the war is not the same, for example, as asking why soldiers enlisted, or whether the North and South were more alike or different by 1861. Our questions must also inspire nuanced answers. “ What caused the war?” invites us simply to list sectional differences or major events. We might quarrel over how to rank the enumerated items. We might (more profitably) explore the connections between them. But the “what” question risks implying that history is a series of isolated episodes rather than an intricate process of change over time. Historians do their best work when they ask “why” or “how” questions. These questions reflect and respect the complexity of the past and invite more satisfying answers. We might ask: “ Why did the Civil War happen?” Or: “ How did disunion and war become possible?”

The narratives we write in response must start and stop at specific points in time. Most studies of Civil War causation conclude in April 1861 with the outbreak of war in Charleston, South Carolina. But when should the narrative start? This decision dramatically influences accounts of the war's origins. If we start with the Constitutional Convention, sectional conflict might appear as an unavoidable result of compromises made, and decisions postponed, by the Founding Fathers, with the war serving as a bloody climax to philosophical debates commenced at Independence Hall. But if we begin in 1819 with the clash over slavery in Missouri, or in 1845, with the annexation of the slaveholding Texas Republic, our narrative might spotlight a series of crises over westward expansion. The war would grow from sectional wrangling over the spoils of continental empire. To choose a third starting point, if we commence in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the war will be a battle over the legitimacy of secession.

Each of these narratives offers considerable insight. But each one inevitably obscures important points as well. The first account, for example, situates the war within a longer struggle between southern defenders of states’ rights against primarily northern champions of federal power. But what about the ways in which southern statesmen used the federal government to defend their interests, particularly in the recovery of runaway slaves? This narrative would make little sense to northerners like Gideon Welles (later Secretary of the Navy under Abraham Lincoln), who denounced the Fugitive Slave Act as a "consolidating measure," an “abandonment” of the “doctrines and teachings of Jefferson,” and an "invasion of the states." [2] Similarly, despite the significance of the territorial issue, the final secession crisis commenced with a presidential election, not the conquest of fresh acreage. And while the war’s immediate trigger was secession, thorough accounts of its origins must explain why an election that followed the letter of constitutional law provoked disunion.

This essay offers a basic framework for thinking about Civil War causation. It proceeds from two foundational questions and adopts a unique approach to the chronology. The questions open up layers of puzzles to solve: Why did eleven states secede after the 1860 presidential election? Why did secession trigger war? I will address them in reverse order, working backward from 1861. Each episode on the road to war grew out of earlier conditions and events, and this essay reverses the timeline to explore what made each one possible. This does not mean that the outcome was inevitable. But it shows that every historical explanation leads to more questions, which can only be answered by moving further back in time. Each layer of historical excavation uncovers a few answers and many more challenges.

Why did secession lead to war? Many accounts focus on President Abraham Lincoln's handling of the secession crisis. But the Confederates fired first; President Jefferson Davis's perspective is, therefore, equally important. Obviously, the U.S. garrison at Fort Sumter, an island installation in Charleston, South Carolina’s expansive harbor, defied the Confederacy's claim to independence. Most other federal property in the seceded states had been seized peacefully, but Fort Sumter capitulated only after enduring the opening salvos of the war. There were, however, deeper motivations for the bombardment. By April 1861, Davis faced two challenges: one was to vindicate the independence of the seven Deep South states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) which then comprised the Confederacy. The second was to convince the other eight slave states, home to most of the South's industry and white manpower, to join them. Many upper south states, including Virginia and Arkansas, had rejected secession so far, and even in the Deep South it had been controversial. War offered a solution to both problems. In the seceded states, armed conflict would transform dissent and apathy into martial zeal. "[U]nless you sprinkle a little blood in the face of the people of Alabama," warned one correspondent, "they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days!" [3] War would also force upper south whites to choose sides, and Davis expected they would fall in with the Deep South once the shooting started. Davis chose war, and at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, southern artillery commenced a bombardment of Fort Sumter that lasted more than thirty hours. Ironically, the cannonade killed no one. But it inspired citizens on both sides to rally to the colors. Northerners responded to Lincoln's April 15 call for 75,000 volunteers with patriotic fervor. Four slave states—Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—responded by seceding. Davis did not win over the border region, but the Confederacy swelled to eleven states and nine million inhabitants. The war had begun.

But why did Lincoln cling so tenaciously to Fort Sumter? The unfinished and undermanned citadel was ill-prepared to withstand a determined barrage. Some of Lincoln's closest advisors, including Secretary of State William Seward, urged him to abandon it in order to preserve an uneasy peace and prevent strategic upper south states like Virginia from seceding. But Lincoln's resolve grew from his understanding of the Union and his duties as president. He believed that the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” was perpetual and that Confederates had rebelled against lawful authority. Like Andrew Jackson in the Nullification Crisis (1832-33), he would execute the laws peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary.

Lincoln outlined his intentions in his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1861. No other American president inherited such a volatile situation: seven states had seceded, eight more seemed poised to follow, and most federal property in the Deep South, including forts, arsenals, and dockyards, had fallen to Confederates. Lincoln pledged neither to seek war, nor to buy peace at any price. He repudiated secession and deemed the Union "unbroken." He promised that the laws would be "faithfully executed in all the States" and that the government would "defend and maintain itself." This need not cause bloodshed, but if force was required to maintain normal government operations, he would use it. Lincoln concluded that his opponents would decide the outcome. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine , is the momentous issue of civil war....You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.'" [4] This meant holding federal property, including Charleston’s Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida. Lincoln resolved to replenish both garrisons' dwindling provisions and keep the Stars and Stripes flying. Fort Pickens never surrendered, but Confederates blasted Fort Sumter into submission before supplies arrived.

War exploded at the Charleston flashpoint because neither side could back down without sacrificing principle or losing face. But the confrontation resulted from secession. Confederates necessarily defended its validity; to Unionists, secession amounted to anarchy and treason. But why had the first wave of secession, in which seven states departed the Union between December 1860 and February 1861, not been halted? Threats of disunion had permeated American political rhetoric and a secession scare had been averted in 1850. Why was there no Compromise of 1861?

It was not for a lack of effort. Throughout the winter of 1860-61, members of the 36 th Congress scrambled to enact compromise legislation. Moderates nationwide begged them to preserve the Union and keep the peace. "For God's sake," urged a Kentuckian, "and for the sake of humanity, persevere in the noble efforts at conciliation." [5] Both houses of Congress formed special committees to tailor a compromise. The content of their proposals reflected slavery’s central importance. No one doubted that a viable compromise must address slavery’s expansion and the return of fugitive slaves to their masters; these were the rocks on which the Union was foundering. Dozens of ideas circulated in Washington, but the leading plan came from Senator John Jordan Crittenden of Kentucky. The "Crittenden Compromise" consisted of six proposed constitutional amendments. Crittenden sought to avert secession by redefining the relationship between the federal government and slavery. His amendments would do the following:

Together, Crittenden's amendments would have weakened the federal government's ability to restrict slavery and required it to protect the institution. They were controversial not because they limited or expanded federal power generally, but because pro- and antislavery politicians disagreed about how that power should be used.

Despite provoking intense discussion, neither Crittenden’s proposal, nor anyone else’s, forestalled secession. To state the challenge Crittenden faced is to indicate why he failed: he and other would-be compromisers had to satisfy the most ardent proslavery extremists and the most unwavering antislavery zealots. To secessionist fire-eaters, the amendments offered only paper guarantees, not the ironclad security that they associated with southern independence. To antislavery Republicans, Crittenden's plan seemed destined to make the federal government an openly proslavery agency. Lincoln threw his influence as president-elect against any compromise that would allow slavery to expand. He offered concessions on other points, including the recovery of fugitives and a constitutional amendment prohibiting Congress from abolishing slavery. But against slavery expansion he urged congressional Republicans to stand firm, lest they forsake a core tenet of their party's platform. Lincoln clarified the issue in a letter to his friend, future Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens: “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” [6] But it was a world of difference. In this formulation, the conflict was both a matter of policy—should slavery be extended (by active federal protection) or restricted (by active federal prohibition)?—and of morality. Neither facet of the problem was easily compromised. The prospects for compromise faded away as Congress adjourned in early March.

But why was compromise necessary? Lincoln received only a plurality (just under 40%) of the popular vote, but his share of the electoral votes (180 out of 303, with 152 needed to win) far exceeded the constitutionally-required majority. He would likely face a hostile Congress, as well as the Supreme Court that had rendered the stridently proslavery Dred Scott decision. How much damage could Lincoln do? Why did his by-the-book election push seven Deep South states to secede?

Lincoln's letter to Stephens and his party's rejection of Crittenden’s amendments help explain why the Republican victory so deeply disturbed proslavery southerners. Historians have labored to show that most Republicans were not “radical abolitionists,” that they did not immediately threaten slavery in the fifteen states where it was legal. Lincoln wearily reiterated this point in his Inaugural, disavowing any intention to “interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” [7] But Republicans did endorse an antislavery agenda calculated to contain slavery and facilitate its eventual collapse. The fact that this would be entirely constitutional was of little comfort to those with an economic, political, or social stake in slavery as a labor system and a means of racial domination, and in the billions of dollars invested in four million enslaved people.

Antebellum Republicans acknowledged that slavery was a state institution which Congress could not touch. Most abolitionists actually agreed, leading some of them to denounce the Constitution as a wickedly proslavery compact. But Republicans combined a variety of antislavery policy proposals to craft a strategy for bringing slavery to a gradual end. They advocated a two-pronged campaign: Congress would outlaw slavery in areas under its direct jurisdiction, including western territories and Washington, DC. This would hem in the slave states, surrounding them with free soil and depriving slaveholders of fresh land. Meanwhile, the federal government would stop supporting slavery, leaving it up to the states to return fugitive slaves and otherwise protect masters’ property claims. Thus, Republicans defied proslavery politicians by demanding that slavery truly be treated as a state institution – not one entitled to federal aid. Under these conditions, Republicans predicted that, like a scorpion encircled by fire, slavery would sting itself to death. Their pledge to respect slavery in the states, therefore was attached to predictions of slavery’s destruction. As New York Congressman Anson Burlingame put it, the “Republican party does not wish to interfere in the internal government or social institutions of the slave States, but merely to place around them a cordon of Free States. Then this horrible system will die of inanition; or, like the scorpion, seeing no means of escape, sting itself to death .” [8] Slavery would die by state-level abolition, as border and upper south states abandoned it, or by constitutional amendment, once the number of Free states reached three-quarters of the total. Republicans candidly discussed these goals. Their 1860 platform, for example, proclaimed that the “normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom” and condemned efforts to legislate for slavery’s expansion. [9]

The 1860 election was an unprecedented Republican triumph, and the prospect of a Lincoln administration alarmed many white southerners. Fresh memories of John Brown’s October 1859 raid made Lincoln’s victory seem even more dangerous. Lincoln’s predecessor had dispatched federal troops to crush the abolitionist conspirators—but could a Republican be trusted to do the same? Convinced that Republicans menaced slavery’s growth and stability, secessionists candidly justified their decisive response. South Carolina secessionists blamed antislavery “agitation” for the “election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” Upon Lincoln’s inauguration in March, they warned, the government would fall to a party that had “announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory…and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.” [10] Republican gradualism did not make slavery’s death easier to swallow, especially for white South Carolinians, who lived among an enslaved black majority in a state where nearly half of white families owned slaves. They had every reason to secede first, which they did on December 20, 1860. Georgians agreed, recognizing that “anti-slavery” was the Republican Party’s “mission and purpose.” To avoid the “evils” of Republicans’ encirclement strategy, Georgia secession convention delegates led their state out of the Union. [11] Other secession documents followed similar logic; Mississippi’s was the most forthright. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” proclaimed Magnolia State secessionists, and now they had to choose between “submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.” Confronted by a party dedicated to “extinguish[ing]” slavery “by confining it within its present limits,” Mississippi secessionists chose disunion. “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede.” [12]

Given secessionists’ reading of Republican aims, their response to Lincoln’s election appears drastic but not necessarily irrational. But why did the Republicans win in 1860? Their party was six years old. It is not overly dramatic to call the party’s rise “one of the most striking success stories in political annals.” [13] How did Republicans convince a majority of free-state voters, few of whom favored abolitionism or any semblance of racial egalitarianism, to support them at the polls?

Lincoln did not face united opposition in 1860. Rather, the election developed into a four-way race. Democrats split into rival northern and southern wings, nominating Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas and the current vice president, Kentucky’s John Cabell Breckinridge, respectively. Led by upper and border south moderates, a new Constitutional Union Party rallied behind John Bell of Tennessee. But the proliferation of competitors did not by itself bring Republican success. Lincoln would have won even if all his rivals’ votes had gone to a single opponent. [14] Moreover, the four-sided contest largely became a pair of two-way races, pitting Bell against Breckinridge in the South, and Lincoln against Douglas in the North. It was Lincoln’s near sweep of the Free states (he divided New Jersey’s electoral votes with Douglas), coupled with northern demographic might, that secured his victory. Why did a commanding 54% of free-state voters support the rail splitter?

The Republican Party’s origins provide clues about its appeal. In 1854, the United States reached a fateful milestone on the road to civil war: the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was in opposition to this law—condemned by Michigan Republicans as a “gigantic wrong” [15] —that the Republican Party coalesced. Ironically, the divisive law was not necessitated by the acquisition of new land. Rather, it was designed to organize governments for a region that, on paper, had belonged to the U.S. since 1803. Most of the Louisiana Purchase was already carved into states or territories, but a massive “Unorganized Territory”—covering part or all of modern-day North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska—remained in legal limbo.

White farmers who coveted these lands had an ally in Stephen A. Douglas. The pugnacious Democrat’s career was a product of westward migration; born in Vermont, Douglas thrived on the Illinois prairies and, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, he vigorously promoted western political and economic development. He yearned to establish governments in the Unorganized Territory, but earlier efforts had failed. Much of the opposition came from the South because the proposed territories lay north of the 36° 30’ line, which since 1820 had divided the Louisiana Purchase into slave and free zones. In 1854, Douglas offered a new plan: organize two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, not under the free soil restriction, but under the principle of popular sovereignty, which allowed territorial voters to decide for or against slavery. Southerners demanded that the bill explicitly repeal the Missouri Compromise. Douglas acquiesced, Congress approved, and in May President Franklin Pierce signed it into law.

Rather than stifle sectionalism, the Kansas-Nebraska Act unleashed a frightful debate that propelled the nation closer to war. To many northerners, the Act seemed like a conspiracy to transform land preserved for freedom into slave territory. Indeed, northern opposition began even before it became law. Shortly after Douglas introduced the bill, six northern legislators published an “Appeal of the Independent Democrats,” in which they castigated the proposal “as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region, immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary reign of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” [16] Many critics of the bill began to build a new party opposed to slavery expansion. Some hoped that non-slaveholding white southerners might join, but many imagined it as a sectional organization; one editorialist concluded that “the People of the North and West” must “unite in a Party of Freedom, with a fixed purpose to regain possession of the Federal Government” from the Democratic Party, which had become an agent of slaveholders. [17] From this this wave of indignation the Republican Party was born.

Still, the party’s presidential triumph was not inevitable. Republican success required fusing disparate factions into a single organization. What could unite former Whigs, who wanted protective tariffs and federal support for railroads, with former Democrats, who demanded free land for western settlers and strict economy in public expenditures? How could seasoned antislavery activists cooperate with racists who objected to slavery expansion because they wanted the west reserved for whites? The Republicans were not a single-issue party and championed a variety of causes, including Democrats’ long-cherished homestead legislation and a Whiggish program of public support for internal improvements. But opposition to slavery’s expansion, and to the political power of slaveholders and their allies, glued the Republican coalition together.

Two features of antebellum politics made this possible—and boosted the Republicans’ popular appeal. First, the line between “slavery” and “other issues” was blurry. Northerners noticed, for example, that southern votes repeatedly blocked Senate approval of a homestead bill. They resented this stranglehold on this and other measures, especially when, as a Pennsylvanian wrote in 1850, “Northern interests as usual must succumb to Southern.” [18] It was a short step from this broad dissatisfaction to a much sharper critique of the so-called “slave power.” The notion that southern politicians exerted disproportionate power in the federal government was not far-fetched. The Constitution’s 3/5 Clause inflated slave-state influence in Congress and the Electoral College and it was no accident that a slaveholder was president for 50 of the 62 years before 1850. National policy—from the Fugitive Slave Act to the removal of Native Americans from rich cotton-planting lands in the Deep South—seemed to confirm that slaveholders wielded the levers of national power. Republicans capitalized on the issue, warning that the “national Government…is as fully under the control of these few extreme men of the South, as are the slaves on their plantations.” [19] Northerners opposed the slave power for diverse reasons, but their shared grievance swelled Republican vote tallies and embedded the slavery controversy into apparently unrelated issues.

Second, the Kansas-Nebraska Act’s results validated Republican opposition to popular sovereignty and to slavery’s champions. Popular sovereignty invited opponents and proponents of slavery to race to Kansas to determine its fate. The result was widespread fraud and violence. During a March 1855 election to choose a territorial legislature, thousands of Missourians, led by Senator David Rice Atchison, crossed the border to vote illegally for proslavery candidates. Antislavery settlers refused to acknowledge the proslavery legislature and established a rival government. Heavily armed northern migrants arrived to resist Missouri Border Ruffians and over the next four years, between fifty and two hundred people died in the clashes between them. Republicans pointed to Bleeding Kansas as proof of popular sovereignty’s failure and of the brutality of proslavery zealots.

The hostilities spread eastward from the Great Plains. In May 1856, Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts Republican, condemned proslavery violence in Kansas, comparing slavery expansion to the “rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery” for the purpose of “adding to the power of slavery in the National Government.” [20] His deliberately provocative speech infuriated South Carolina Congressman Preston Smith Brooks, who beat Sumner into unconsciousness on the Senate floor two days later. For many northerners, Brooks personified the slave power, a menace to freedom in Kansas and free speech in Congress. The Bleeding Sumner incident increased support for the Republicans in the presidential election that November. Republican John C. Frémont finished second to Democrat James Buchanan, but came within two states of winning the contest and received a plurality of northern ballots.

Subsequent efforts to close the book on Kansas only reaffirmed, to Republicans at least, that slaveholders sought to use federal power to safeguard slavery’s expansion. In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its notorious decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford . Most famously, it held that Scott, a slave who had been taken from Missouri into free territory and sued for his liberty, could not sue because African Americans could not be U.S. citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” [21] But the decision was also calculated to foster slavery expansion by ruling that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could bar slavery from a territory. The fact that five of the nine justices hailed from slave states fueled conspiracy theories and supported claims that the slave power, as a New York editorialist wrote, had “converted” the Court “into a propagandist of human slavery.” [22] Similarly, President Buchanan’s subsequent efforts to push Congress to admit Kansas as a state under the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, which had not been fully submitted to Kansas voters for approval, provoked fierce resistance from Republicans and most northern Democrats, including Douglas, who believed that the “Lecompton swindle” violated popular sovereignty. [23] This political environment fertilized Republicans’ growth into the North’s leading party.

Of course, this account of the short- and medium-term roots of the Civil War leads to more questions. Why were many southerners so adamant about Kansas? The security of slavery’s northwestern flank had something to do with it, as did the desire to establish a precedent for territorial property rights that might be needed later in Mexico or Cuba. Why were many northerners primed to react so fiercely to the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) kept slavery in northerners’ minds and refreshed hostility toward the slave power that had flourished after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Why was westward expansion so divisive? One could trace the slavery expansion issue back in time, through the Compromise of 1850, the clash during and after the Mexican War (1846-48) over slavery’s status in the freshly-conquered southwest, Texas annexation, the admission of Missouri, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which barred slavery from the region between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River. Why did northerners fear southern domination? One could follow northern hostility to the slave power back through the Gag Rule debates (1836-44) over the reception of antislavery petitions in Congress, the lasting resentment of the 3/5 Compromise, to the Constitutional Convention – where, as James Madison put it, “the real difference of interests lay, not between the large and small but between the N. and Southn. States,” with the “institution of slavery and its consequences form[ing] the line of discrimination” between them. [24] To understand these sectional issues, we would then have to explore politics within regions and states. We could study how northern political candidates used the slave power theory to denounce local opponents who courted southern allies. We might examine how differences between the upper and lower south exacerbated sectional conflict by convincing cotton-state planters that their counterparts along the South’s vulnerable northern border might not defend slavery to the last ditch.

A thorough account of Civil War causation, therefore, could easily grow into a history of the United States to 1861. It would show that without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery’s presence make that outcome inevitable? When Abraham Lincoln warned that the country could not endure half slave and half free, Stephen Douglas asked, why not? It had done so for generations. To understand why this precarious balance ultimately failed requires that we do much more than list the issues that divided Americans into hostile sections. Participants made it clear that war, secession, and slavery were inextricably interconnected. But there is always more to learn about why so many decent people were willing to kill for what they believed.

• [1] Diary entry for March [between 11 and 15], 1861, in C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War , (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 25.
• [2] Gideon Welles to My Dear Sir, October 16, 1861, Gideon Welles Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, CT.
• [3] Quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 273.
• [4] “First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp (accessed October 13, 2014).
• [5] Thomas H. Clay to John J. Crittenden, January 9, 1861, in Mrs. Chapman Coleman, ed., The Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches ,  2 vols. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1873), 2:253.
• [6] Quoted in Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 178.
• [7] “First Inaugural Address.”
• [8] Quoted in James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 26.
• [9] “Republican Party Platform of 1860,” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29620 (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [10] “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [11] “Georgia Secession,” Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [12] “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union,” Avalon Project,  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp (Accessed October 13, 2014).
• [13] William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 3.
• [14] For an excellent discussion of these important what-if questions about the election, see the Appendix entitled “1860 Election Scenarios and Possible Outcomes” in Douglas R. Egerton, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).
• [15] Quoted in Francis Curtis, The Republican Party: A History of its Fifty Years’ Existence and a Record of its Measures and Leaders, 1854-1904 , 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 1:189.
• [16] Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress, to the People of the United States ([Washington, DC]: Towers, Printers, [1854]), 1.
• [17] National Era , June 1, 1854.
• [18] Paul S. Preston to Jackson Woodward, January 2, 1850, Preston-Woodward Correspondence, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
• [19] Cong. Globe, 35 th Cong., 2d Sess., appendix, 190 (1858).
• [20] Charles Sumner, The Crime Against Kansas. The Apologies for the Crime. The True Remedy. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, in the Senate of the United States, 19 th and 20 th May, 1856 (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1856), 5.
• [21] Quoted in Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 347.
• [22] Quoted in Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Fanatics and Fire-eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 52.
• [23] Opponents of the Lecompton Constitution often used the “swindle” term to denounce it. For one example of its use in Congressional debate, see the remarks of Massachusetts Republican Henry Wilson in the Cong. Globe , 35 th Cong., 1 st Sess., 499 (1858). For Douglas’s opposition to Lecompton, see especially ibid., 15-18.
• [24] Quoted in Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 77.

If you can read only one book:

Levine, Bruce. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.

• Causes of the Civil War Essay
• Causes of the Civil War Resources
• Author's Biography Michael E. Woods

Ashworth, John. The Republic in Crisis, 1848-1861. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Bonner, Robert E. Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Bowman, Shearer Davis. At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Cooper, William J. We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860 – April 1861. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2012.

Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.

Egerton, Douglas R. Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011.

Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press 1995.

Forbes, Robert Pierce. The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery & the Meaning of America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Freehling William W. The Road to Disunion, Volume 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

———. The Road to Disunion, Volume 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Huston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Mason, Matthew. Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Morrison, Michael A. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Oakes, James. The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Richards, Leonard L. The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

Rugemer, Edward Bartlett. The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Shelden, Rachel A. Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Woods, Michael E. Emotional and Sectional Conflict in the Antebellum United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Organizations:

Society of Civil War Historians

The SCWH is among the leading professional organizations for historians of the Civil War era of all types. The organization hosts a biennial conference and has adopted the Journal of the Civil War Era as its official journal.

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Web Resources:

This website provides links to numerous primary source documents related to the sectional conflict and the coming of the Civil War.

Run by the National Park Service, this site offers a brief overview of Civil War causation and links to pages on historical sites of interest related to the coming of the war.

Furman University’s Department of History has organized this helpful site, which provides scores of editorials related to Bleeding Kansas, the caning of Charles Sumner, the Dred Scott case, and John Brown’s raid.

Hosted by the Civil War Trust, this website features teacher resources, including lesson plans, related to the Civil War. “The Gathering Storm” offers an online exhibit and lesson plans for all grade levels related to the coming of the Civil War.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History offers a “Civil War 150 Multimedia” page that includes podcast videos related to the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War. Videos related to Civil War causation cover topics such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln’s inauguration, and African American abolitionists.

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• The war in 1861
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Who won the american civil war, who were the most important figures in the american civil war, why are confederate symbols controversial.

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American Civil War

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• New Georgia Encyclopedia - Guerrilla Warfare during the Civil War
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• Table Of Contents

The American Civil War was the culmination of the struggle between the advocates and opponents of slavery that dated from the founding of the United States. This sectional conflict between Northern states and slaveholding Southern states had been tempered by a series of political compromises, but by the late 1850s the issue of the extension of slavery to the western states had reached a boiling point. The election of Abraham Lincoln , a member of the antislavery Republican Party , as president in 1860 precipitated the secession of 11 Southern states, leading to a civil war.

The Union won the American Civil War. The war effectively ended in April 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The final surrender of Confederate troops on the western periphery came in Galveston, Texas, on June 2.

How many people died during the Civil War?

It is estimated that from 752,000 to 851,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War. This figure represents approximately 2 percent of the American population in 1860. The Battle of Gettysburg , one of the bloodiest engagements during the Civil War, resulted in about 7,000 deaths and 51,000 total casualties.

Important people during the American Civil War included Abraham Lincoln , the 16th president of the United States, whose election prompted the secession of Southern states; Jefferson Davis , the president of the Confederacy ; Ulysses S. Grant , the most successful and prominent general of the Union; and Robert E. Lee , Grant’s counterpart in the Confederacy.

The modern usage of Confederate symbols, especially the Confederate Battle Flag and statues of Confederate leaders, is considered controversial because many associate such symbols with racism , slavery , and white supremacy . The flag was revived as a popular symbol in the 1940s and ’50s by the Dixiecrat Democratic splinter group and others who opposed the American civil rights movement .

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American Civil War , four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America .

The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina , Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , Texas , Virginia , Arkansas , Tennessee , and North Carolina ) in 1860–61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over slavery . Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture—mostly smaller farms that relied on free labour—remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, along with the telegraph.

By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and that relied on slaves as the main labour force . Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners invested their money in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.

The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the “peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labour, came to believe, in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated . White Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through compromise. When Abraham Lincoln , the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party , won the 1860 presidential election , seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America .

In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the harbour of Charleston , South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under P.G.T. Beauregard . Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy.

With war upon the land, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states, although he insisted that they did not legally constitute a sovereign country but were instead states in rebellion. He also directed the secretary of the treasury to advance $2 million to assist in the raising of troops, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus , first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country. The Confederate government had previously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months’ service, and this figure was soon increased to 400,000.

Trigger Events of the Civil War

The Civil War was the culmination of a series of confrontations concerning the institution of slavery. The following is a timeline of the events that led to the Civil War.​

1619-1865 | The Peculiar Institution

Slavery arrived in North America along side the Spanish and English colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries, with an estimated 645,000 Africans imported during the more than 250 years the institution was legal.  But slavery never existed without controversy. The British colony of Georgia actually banned slavery from 1735 to 1750, although it remained legal in the other 12 colonies. After the American Revolution, northern states one by one passed emancipation laws, and the sectional divide began to open as the South became increasingly committed to slavery. Once called a “necessary evil” by Thomas Jefferson, proponents of slavery increasingly switched their rhetoric to one that described slavery as a benevolent Christian institution that benefited all parties involved: slaves, slave owners, and non-slave holding whites. The number of slaves compared to number of free blacks varied greatly from state to state in the southern states. In 1860, for example, both Virginia and Mississippi had in excess of 400,000 slaves, but the Virginia population also included more than 58,000 free blacks, as opposed to only 773 in Mississippi. In 1860, South Carolina was the only state to have a majority slave population, yet in all southern states slavery served as the foundation for their socioeconomic and political order.

1820 | The Missouri Compromise

In the growth years following the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Congress was compelled to establish a policy to guide the expansion of slavery into the new western territory.  Missouri’s application for statehood as a slave state sparked a bitter national debate.  In addition to the deeper moral issue posed by the growth of slavery, the addition of pro-slavery Missouri legislators would give the pro-slavery faction a Congressional majority.  

Ultimately, Congress reached a series of agreements that became known as the Missouri Compromise .  Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine was admitted as a free state, preserving the Congressional balance.  A line was also drawn through the unincorporated western territories along the 36°30' parallel, dividing north and south as free and slave.  

Thomas Jefferson, upon hearing of this deal, “considered it at once as the knell of the Union.  It is hushed indeed for the moment.  But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

1831 | Nat Turner’s Rebellion

In August of 1831, a slave named Nat Turner incited an uprising that spread through several plantations in southern Virginia.  Turner and approximately seventy cohorts killed around sixty white people.  The deployment of militia infantry and artillery suppressed the rebellion after two days of terror.  

Fifty-five slaves, including Turner, were tried and executed for their role in the insurrection.  Nearly two hundred more were lynched by frenzied mobs.  Although small-scale slave uprisings were fairly common in the American South, Nat Turner’s rebellion was the bloodiest.

Virginia lawmakers reacted to the crisis by rolling back what few civil rights slaves and free black people possessed at the time.  Education was prohibited and the right to assemble was severely limited.  

1846 - 1850 | The Wilmot Proviso

The Wilmot Proviso was a piece of legislation proposed by David Wilmot (D-FS-R PA) at the close of the Mexican-American War.  If passed, the Proviso would have outlawed slavery in territory acquired by the United States as a result of the war, which included most of the Southwest and extended all the way to California.  

Wilmot spent two years fighting for his plan.  He offered it as a rider on existing bills, introduced it to Congress on its own, and even tried to attach it to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo .  All attempts failed.  Nevertheless, the intensity of the debate surrounding the Proviso prompted the first serious discussions of secession.

1850 | The Compromise of 1850

With national relations soured by the debate over the Wilmot Proviso, senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas managed to broker a shaky accord with the Compromise of 1850 .  The compromise admitted California as a free state and did not regulate slavery in the remainder of the Mexican cession all while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act , a law which compelled Northerners to seize and return escaped slaves to the South.

While the agreement succeeded in postponing outright hostilities between the North and South, it did little to address, and in some ways even reinforced, the structural disparity that divided the United States.  The new Fugitive Slave Act, by forcing non-slaveholders to participate in the institution, also led to increased polarization among centrist citizens.  

1852 | Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe ’s fictional exploration of slave life was a cultural sensation.  Northerners felt as if their eyes had been opened to the horrors of slavery, while Southerners protested that Stowe’s work was slanderous.  

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second-best-selling book in America in the 19th century, second only to the Bible.  Its popularity brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of legislative conflict and widened the division between North and South.

1854 - 1859 | Bleeding Kansas

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 established Kansas and Nebraska as territories and set the stage for “Bleeding Kansas” by its adoption of popular sovereignty. Under popular sovereignty, it is the residents of the territories who decide by popular referendum if the state is to be a free or enslaved. Settlers from the North and the South poured into Kansas, hoping to swell the numbers on their side of the debate.  Passions were enflamed and violence raged. In the fall of 1855, abolitionist John Brown came to Kansas to fight the forces of slavery. In response to the sacking of Lawrence by border ruffians from Missouri whose sole victim was an abolitionist printing press, Brown and his supporters killed five pro-slavery settlers in the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre in Kansas in May, 1856. Violence existed in the territory as early as 1855 but the Sack of Lawrence and the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre launched a guerilla war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Although the violence was often sporadic and unorganized, mass feelings of terror existed in the territory. Although President Buchanan tried to calm the violence by supporting the Lecompton Constition, his relentless support for this consitution created a political crisis among the Democratic Party and only further aggravated sectional tensions. The violence subsided in 1859, the warring parties forged a fragile peace, but not before more than 50 settlers had been killed.

1857 | Dred Scott v. Sanford

Dred Scott was a Virginia slave who tried to sue for his freedom in court.  The case eventually rose to the level of the Supreme Court, where the justices found that, as a slave, Dred Scott was a piece of property that had none of the legal rights or recognitions afforded to a human being.  

The Dred Scott Decision threatened to entirely recast the political landscape that had thus far managed to prevent civil war.  The classification of slaves as mere property made the federal government’s authority to regulate the institution much more ambiguous.

Southerners renewed their challenges to the agreed-upon territorial limitations on slavery and polarization intensified.  

1858 | Lincoln-Douglas Debates

In 1858, Democratic Senator Stephen Dougla s faced a challenge for his seat from a relatively unknown one term former congressmen and “prairie lawyer” Abraham Lincoln. In the campaign that followed Lincoln and Douglas engaged in seven public debates across the state of Illinois where they debated the most controversial issue of the antebellum era: slavery. Although Douglas won the senate race, these debates propelled Lincoln to the national spotlight and enabled his nomination for president in 1860. In contrast, these debates further alienated Douglas from the southern wing of the Democratic Party and the arguments Douglas made in these debates come back to haunt him in 1860 destroying his presidential chances.  

1859 | John Brown’s Raid

Abolitionist John Brown supported violent action against the South to end slavery and played a major role in starting the Civil War. After the Pottawatomie Massacre during Bleeding Kansas, Brown returned to the North and plotted a far more threatening act. In October 1859, he and 19 supporters, armed with “Beecher’s Bibles,” led a raid on the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an effort to capture and confiscate the arms located there, distribute them among local slaves and begin armed insurrection. A small force of U.S. Marines, led by Col. Robert E. Lee , put down the uprising. There were casualties on both sides; seven people were killed and at least 10 more were injured before Brown and seven of his remaining men were captured.  On October 27, Brown was tried for treason against the state of Virginia, convicted and hanged in Charles Town on December 2.

1860 | Abraham Lincoln’s Election

Abraham Lincoln was elected by a considerable margin in 1860 despite not being included on many Southern ballots.  As a Republican, his party’s anti-slavery outlook struck fear into many Southerners.  

On December 20, 1860, a little over a month after the polls closed, South Carolina seceded from the Union.  Six more states followed by the spring of 1861.  

1861 | The Battle of Fort Sumter

With secession, several federal forts, including Fort Sumter in South Carolina, suddenly became outposts in a foreign land.  Abraham Lincoln made the decision to send fresh supplies to the beleaguered garrisons.  

On April 12, 1861, Confederate warships turned back the supply convoy to Fort Sumter and opened a 34-hour bombardment on the stronghold.  The garrison surrendered on April 14.  

The Civil War was now underway.  On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to join the Northern army.  Unwilling to contribute troops, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee dissolved their ties to the federal government.

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9 Events That Led to the Civil War

By: Patrick J. Kiger

Published: January 17, 2023

After the American Revolution , a divide between the North and South began to widen. Industrialized northern states gradually passed laws freeing enslaved people, while southern states became increasingly committed to slavery. Many southerners came to view slavery as a linchpin of their agricultural economy , and as a justifiable social and political institution.

Throughout the first half of the 1800s, the nation struggled to manage the clash between these two incompatible viewpoints, working out deals such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 , which sought to balance the number of new free and slave states and drew a line through the nation’s western territories, with freedom to the north and slavery to the south. But in the last decade before war broke out, the conflict gained momentum and intensity. 

“Throughout the 1850s, a series of events increased sectionalism, emboldened southern secessionists, and deepened northern resolve to defend the Union and end slavery,” explains Jason Phillips , the Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University, and author of the 2018 book Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth Century Americans Imagined the Future. “Many of these crises revolved around politics, but economic, social and cultural factors also contributed to the war’s origins.”

Here are nine events from the 1850s to the early 1860s that historians view as critical in the march toward the American Civil War .

The Compromise of 1850

In the wake of the Mexican War , tensions developed between the North and South over whether the western land gained by the U.S. should become free or slave territory. Things came to a head when California sought approval to enter the Union as a free state in 1849, which would have upset the balance struck by the Missouri Compromise several decades before. Senator Henry Clay, a Whig from Kentucky, proposed a package of legislation to resolve the disputes, but the Senate—after seven months of discussions—rejected his proposal.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat from Illinois, came up with an alternative proposal that admitted California, established Utah and New Mexico as territories that could decide for themselves whether to permit slavery, defined boundaries for the state of Texas, abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and obligated the entire country to cooperate in the capture and return of escaped slaves. But the deal only postponed the conflict.

“They didn’t really compromise,” says Michael Green , an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of several books on the Civil War era, including Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War and Lincoln and the Election of 1860 . “They just agreed to disagree.”

The Fugitive Slave Act

An existing federal law, enacted by Congress in 1793, allowed local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners, and imposed penalties upon anyone who aided their flight. But the new version included in the Compromise of 1850 went much further, by compelling citizens to assist in capturing escapees, denying the captives the right to a jury trial, and increasing the penalty for anyone aiding their escape. It also put cases in the hands of federal commissioners who got $10 if a fugitive was returned, but only $5 if an alleged slave was determined to be a free Black.

Northern abolitionists rebelled against the law. After 50,000 anti-slavery protesters filled the streets of Boston to protest the arrest of a Black man named Anthony Burns in 1854, President Franklin Pierce sent federal troops to maintain order and provided a Navy ship to return Burns back to Virginia.

“Northerners who had questioned slavery said, ‘We told you so,’ and those who hadn’t thought to themselves, ‘This is going too far,’” says Green. “It’s a radicalizing moment.” As a result, Massachusetts and other free states began passing “personal liberty” laws, which made it difficult and costly for enslavers to prove their cases in court.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' Is Published

In 1851, author Harriet Beecher Stowe , who was still grieving the loss of her 18-month-old son Samuel to cholera two years earlier, wrote to the publisher of a Washington, D.C.-based abolitionist newspaper, National Era , and offered to write a fictional serial about the cruelty of slavery. Stowe later explained that losing her child helped her to understand “what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is ripped away from her,” according to Stowe biographer Katie Griffiths .

Stowe’s story, published in 41 installments, boosted the paper’s circulation, and a Boston publisher decided to release it as a two-volume novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly sold 300,000 copies in its first year, and the vociferous public debate about the book exacerbated the differences between the North and South. Northerners were shocked by the brutal depiction of slavery, which Stowe had synthesized from published autobiographies of slaves and stories she had heard from friends and fugitive Blacks. In turn, “Southerners react noisily to it,” Green explains. “They’re saying, ‘This is terrible. You’re attacking us. You’re all against us.’” When Stowe visited the White House in 1862, President Lincoln asked, “So this is the little lady who made this big war?”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1854, Senator Douglas, the author of the Compromise of 1850, introduced another piece of legislation “to organize the Territory of Nebraska,” an area that covered not just that present-day state but also Kansas, as well as Montana and the Dakotas, according to the U.S. Senate’s history of the law. Douglas was promoting a transcontinental railroad that would pass through Chicago in his home state. But the envisioned northern route had to pass through the Nebraska territory, a place where slavery was prohibited by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Rivals, including slave owners, wanted a southern route.

To get what he wanted, Douglas offered a compromise, which would allow settlers in those territories to decide whether to legalize slavery. Massachusetts Senator  Charles Sumner , an opponent of slavery, attacked the proposal for creating “a dreary region of despotism.” Nevertheless it was passed by Congress, with cataclysmic results.

“It re-opened that land to the expansion of slavery, and destroyed a long-established political compromise on the issue of slavery in the West,” Phillips says. Pro-slavery and antislavery activists surged into the territories in an effort to sway the vote, and clashed violently in a conflict that became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” which foreshadowed the Civil War.

The Pottawatomie Massacre

One of those who went to Kansas was a radical abolitionist and religious zealot named John Brown , who had worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad and founded an organization that helped slaves escape to Canada. Brown moved to Kansas Territory, where in May 1856, he was angered by the destruction of a newspaper office and other property in Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces. Brown decided retaliation was in order.

At a spot near a crossing on Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin, Kansas, Brown, four of his sons and several others lured five proslavery men out of their houses with a promise that they would not be harmed, and then slashed and stabbed them with a saber and shot them in the head, according to a contemporary account of the attack. Brown’s brutality was denounced by Southern newspapers and by some Northern ones as well, and it “aroused emotions and distrust on both sides,” as an article from the Kansas Historical Society notes. The fighting in Kansas continued for another two years.

The Dred Scott Decision

Dred Scott , an enslaved man, was born in Virginia and later lived in Alabama and Missouri. In 1831, his original enslaver died, and he was purchased by a U.S. Army surgeon named John Emerson. Emerson took him to the free state of Illinois and also Wisconsin, a territory where slavery was illegal due to the Missouri Compromise. During that time, Scott married and he and his wife had four children. In 1843, Emerson died, and several years after that, Scott and his wife sued Emerson’s widow in federal court for their freedom on the grounds that they had lived in free territory.

Scott, who was assisted financially by the family of his original owner, endured years of litigation until the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In an 1857 decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the court decided that Scott was not entitled to U.S. citizenship and the protection of law, no matter where he had lived. In the court’s view, the Constitution’s framers had not intended for Black people to be free, but instead viewed them as property, with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The ruling made further political compromise too difficult.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

Brown dreamed of carrying out an even bigger attack, one that would ignite a mass uprising of Southern enslaved people. On a night in October 1859, he and a band of 22 men launched a raid on Harpers Ferry , a town in what is now West Virginia, and captured some prominent local citizens and seized the federal arsenal there. His small force soon was counterattacked by local militia, forcing him to seek refuge. The following afternoon, U.S. Marines under the command of then-Col. Robert E. Lee arrived and stormed the arsenal, killing many of Brown’s men and capturing him. Brown was tried and charged with treason, murder and slave insurrection, and sentenced to death. He was hanged in December 1859. While the attack failed to trigger the widespread revolt he envisioned, it drove the North and South even further apart.

“Northern abolitionists who preferred pacificism praised Brown as a martyr to the cause of freedom and even helped to finance his attack,” Phillips explains. “Southerners expected more acts of terrorism and prepared by bolstering their militias.” In many respects, Brown’s raid could be viewed as the first battle of the Civil War, he says.

The Election of 1860

Abraham Lincoln , a self-taught lawyer who had served a single term in Congress, emerged in the mid-1850s as an articulate and persuasive critic of slavery, and achieved national prominence with a series of debates against Senator Stephen Douglas in an unsuccessful campaign for Douglas’s seat. When the Republican Party held a convention to nominate a presidential candidate, the chosen location of Chicago gave Lincoln a home-court advantage over more experienced politicians such as Senator William H. Seward of New York.

“When they set up the convention floor, they put Illinois in a spot where they could get to the other delegations that were less committed,” Green says. “The New York delegation, which was supporting Seward, was put in a corner where they couldn’t get out.” That made it difficult for them to negotiate and persuade others to support their candidate. In the general election, Lincoln caught more lucky breaks. After the Democrats were unable to decide upon a candidate, southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while northerners nominated Douglas. Breckenridge and Constitutional Party Candidate John Bell split the South, while Lincoln swept the northeastern and midwestern states except for Missouri (which went to Douglas), as well as Oregon and California to win the presidency despite getting just 40 percent of the vote. “For the first time, the Electoral College worked against the South,” Green explains.

The Formation of the Confederacy

The election of the first U.S. president who was a vocal opponent of slavery came as a shock to Southerners. “Now, there is going to be someone in the White House who is not going to do what the South says it wants done, reflexively,” Green explains. “Their feeling is, no matter what Lincoln says about protecting our rights, he’s not going to do that. We don’t trust him. He’s been elected by people who are out to get us.”

Less than six weeks after the election, the first secession convention met in Charleston South Carolina. About 60 percent of the 169 delegates were slave owners, and they voted unanimously to leave the Union . Local residents celebrated with bonfires, parades and the ringing of church bells. Five more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana—soon followed. Representatives from those six states met in February 1861 to establish a unified government, which they called the Confederate States of America . Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected as Confederate President. Texas joined in March. 

After Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April and Lincoln called for federal forces to retake it, four more states—Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—left the union and joined the Confederacy as well.

Though the Confederacy’s leaders didn’t realize it, they actually were hastening the end of what they sought to protect. “Had they stayed, slavery as an institution almost certainly would have survived much longer,” Green says.

Instead, a four-year, bloody war devastated much of the South, took the lives of more than 650,000 from both sides, and led to the emancipation of more than 3.9 million enslaved Black Americans, in addition to changing the nation in numerous other ways.

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• American Civil War

The American Civil War ( ACW ), also known as the War of the Rebellion , the Great Rebellion , and several other names , was a civil war that was fought in the United States of America from 1861 to 1865. Fearing that the future of slavery was in jeopardy after the election of an anti-slavery U.S. president, eleven slave-holding U.S. states located in the southern United States declared their secession from the country and formed the Confederate States , also known as "the Confederacy", sparking war. Led by Democrat Jefferson Davis , they fought against the United States , also known as "the Union ", led by Republican Abraham Lincoln , which consisted of every free U.S. state as well as five slave-holding states , known as " border states ". In 1865, after four years of warfare, the Confederacy surrendered, and slavery was abolished in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by three-fourths of the states.

• 1.1.1 Contemporaries
• 1.1.2 Historians
• 1.1.3.1 Contemporaries
• 1.1.3.2 Historians
• 1.1.4 The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (1858)
• 1.1.5.1 Contemporaries
• 1.1.5.2 Historians
• 1.1.6 State secession conventions and declarations (1860–1861)
• 1.2.1.1 Contemporaries
• 1.2.1.2 Historians
• 1.2.2 The Confederacy responds to their starting of the Civil War
• 1.3.1.1 Contemporaries
• 1.3.1.2 Historians
• 1.3.2.1 Contemporaries
• 1.3.2.2 Historians
• 1.4.1.1 Contemporaries
• 1.4.1.2 Historians
• 1.4.2.1 Contemporaries
• 1.4.2.2 Historians
• 1.4.3.1 Contemporaries
• 1.4.3.2 Historians
• 1.4.4.1 Contemporaries
• 1.4.4.2 Historians
• 1.5.1 Contemporaries
• 1.5.2 Historians
• 1.6 The Peninsula Campaign (April – July 1862)
• 1.7 The Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia (13 December 1862)
• 1.8.1 Contemporaries
• 1.8.2 Historians
• 1.9.1 Contemporaries
• 1.9.2 Historians
• 1.10.1 Contemporaries
• 1.10.2 Historians
• 1.11 The Siege of Vicksburg (June – July 1863)
• 1.12.1 Contemporaries
• 1.12.2 Historians
• 1.13.1 Contemporaries
• 1.13.2 Historians
• 1.14.1 Contemporaries
• 1.14.2 Historians
• 1.15 Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, (March 4, 1865)
• 1.16 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln visits Richmond (4 April 1865)
• 1.17.1 Aftermath
• 1.18.1 Contemporaries
• 1.18.2 Historians
• 2 Quotes about the American Civil War
• 4 External links

Conflict Brewing: The Secession Crisis (1860–1861)

Contemporaries.

• James Madison , letter to Alexander Hamilton (20 July 1788).
• George Washington , Farewell Address (17 September 1796).
• George Washington , George Washington's Farewell Address (17 September 1796).
• Attributed to George Washington , John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, p. 91 (1887). This is from Bernard's account of a conversation he had with Washington in 1798. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
• John Campell , writing to New England Federalist David Campell (12 July 1812).
• William Lloyd Garrison , Address to the Colonization Society (4 July 1829).
• Andrew Jackson , Proclamation against the Nullification Ordinance of South Carolina (11 December 1832).

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? — Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! — All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

• Abraham Lincoln , The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions : Lincoln's address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (27 January 1838).
• John C. Calhoun , regarding slavery (1838), as quoted by in Time-Life Books The Civil War , vol. 1 (Brother Against Brother), Time Inc, New York (1983).
• Democratic Party Platform of 1844 (18 June 1844).
• John C. Calhoun , speech in the U.S. Senate (19 February 1847).
• Democratic Party Platform of 1852 (18 June 1852).
• Charles Sumner , Freedom National, Slavery Sectional (27 July 1852), United States Senate.
• Abraham Lincoln , letter to George Robertson (15 August 1855).
• Abraham Lincoln , speech at Springfield, Illinois (26 June 1857).
• Abraham Lincoln , speech in Springfield, Illinois (17 July 1858).
• Stephen Arnold Douglas , Speech in Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858).
• Jefferson Davis , Speech in Boston (11 October 1858).
• James Redpath , as quoted in The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (1859).
• Laurence M. Keitt , as quoted in "Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House" (25 January 1860), The Congressional Globe .
• Jefferson Davis , reply in the Senate to William H. Seward (29 February 1860), Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol. As quoted in The Papers of Jefferson Davis , Volume 6, pp. 277–84. Transcribed from the Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 916–18.
• Abraham Lincoln , "Allow the humblest man an equal chance" speech (6 March 1860), New Haven, Connecticut .
• Abraham Lincoln , "Allow the humblest man an equal chance" (6 March 1860), New Haven, Connecticut. As quoted in Lincoln on Democracy , by Mario Matthew Cuomo and G.S. Boritt, pp. 176-177.
• Frederick Douglass , The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (26 March 1860), Glasgow, United Kingdom.
• Democratic Party Platform of 1860 (18 June 1860).
• James Petigru (1860), as quoted in Too large to be an asylum (13 February 2010) by Ken Burger, the Charleston Post and Courier .
• William Tecumseh Sherman , comments to David F. Boyd at the Louisiana State Seminary (24 December 1860), as quoted in The Civil War: A Book of Quotations (2004) by Robert Blaisdell.
• Robert E. Lee , letter to his son , G. W. Custis Lee (23 January 1861).
• Abraham Lincoln , speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (22 February 1861); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 204.
• Robert Hardy Smith , as quoted in An Address to the Citizens of Alabama on the Constitution and Laws of the Confederate States of America (1861), Mobile, p. 19. As quoted in The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism (1991), by Marshall L. DeRosa, Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, p. 66.
• Jefferson Davis , Last speech before the U.S. Senate (21 January 1861), Washington, D.C.
• Alexander H. Stephens , The Cornerstone Speech (21 March 1861).
• Clement A. Evans , as quoted in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2000), by Alan T. Nolan and Gary W. Gallagher, pp. 13-14.
• Declaration of the People of Virginia Represented in Convention at Wheeling (13 June 1861).
• Sterling Cockrill , as quoted in letter to Andrew Johnson (18 September 1865), Courtland, Alabama.
• Ladies of Greenbrier County, West Virginia , as quoted in letter to Andrew Johnson (22 September 1865).
• Judah P. Benjamin , Senator from Louisiana, on the secession movement in the South (1860). Reported in Allan Nevins , The Emergence of Lincoln (1950), p. 387.
• John Townsend , The Doom of Slavery in the Union: It's Safety Out of It (29 October 1860)
• Henry Clay , speech in the Senate (14 February 1850), in response to a speech by Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi , who had 'lectured' Clay on the allegiance which he owed to the southern U.S. as a senator from a southern U.S. state. From The Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Henry Clay (Vol. 3) ; ed. Calvin Colton: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1857.
• Sam Houston , as quoted in Sam Houston (2004), by James Haley, University of Oklahoma Press.
• Sam Houston , as quoted in Sam Houston (2004), by James Haley, University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 390–91.
• Sam Houston , as quoted in Sam Houston (2004), by James Haley, University of Oklahoma Press, p. 397.
• L.W. Spratt , The Philosophy of Secession: A Southern View (13 February 1861), "THE PHILOSOPHY OF SECESSION: A SOUTHERN VIEW" , Presented in a Letter addressed to the Hon. Mr. Perkins of Louisiana, in criticism on the Provisional Constitution adopted by the Southern Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, by L. W. Spratt, Editor of the Charleston Mercury, 13 February 1861.

If the confederacy is broken up, the government is dissolved, and it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

When disunion has become a fixed and certain act, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master... Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York , as a free city, may shed only light and hope of a future reconstruction of our once blessed confederacy.

• New York City Mayor Fernando Wood , address to the City Council, recommending that, with the Southern states seceding from the United States, New York City should become an independent city-state (1861).
• Senator Robert Toombs , remarks on the secessionists in the United States Senate (January 7, 1861); reported in the Congressional Globe , vol. 38, p. 267.
• Abraham Lincoln , anecdote registered by novelist Josiah Gilbert Holland , in his Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866), Chapter XVI, p. 287. University of Nebraska Press , as something that Lincoln said in a conversation with educator Newman Bateman, in the Autumn of 1860.
• Oliver P. Morton , speech (22 November 1860), as quoted in Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850–1880: History of Indiana III (1995), by Emma Lou Thornbrough. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, p. 102

The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was to form a more perfect Union...

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern states that, by the accession of a Republican administration, their property and peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension...

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these states is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law (constitution) for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever...

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by the constitutional checks and limitations... is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism...

No State upon its mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union... There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forded upon the national authority...

In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend' it.

• President Abraham Lincoln , First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861).
• Frances J. Crosby , Dixie For The Union .
• Abraham Lincoln , Second Inaugural Address (1865), Washington, D.C.
• Abraham Lincoln , speech at Hartford, Connecticut (5 March 1860), Evening Press .
• Abraham Lincoln , first inaugural address (4 March 1861).
• Frederick Douglass , Our Composite Nationality (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts.
• Frederick Douglass , as quoted in "The Unknown Loyal Dead" (30 May 1871), Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.
• Frederick Douglass , as quoted in Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (14 April 1876), Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.
• Frederick Douglass , as quoted in Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), p. 364
• Ward Hill Lamon , Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 (1895), p. 63
• Calvin Coolidge , "The Reign of Law" (30 May 1925), speech at the Memorial Exercises, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.
• Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , as quoted in The Causes of the Civil War: Revised Edition , by Kenneth Stampp, p. 68-69
• Cass Sunstein , Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do , p. 95
• Wharton's History of Texas, from Wilderness to Commonwealth , Vol. 4, pp. 336-38
• Edward Ayers , In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America 1859-1863 (2003), p. 141
• William Davis , as quoted in The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), Kansas: University Press of Kansas, p. 180
• Jeffrey Rogers Hummel , Thomas Woods and His Critics: A Review Essay" Part II
• William C. Davis , as quoted in The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), University Press of Kansas, p. 186
• Richard Shedenhelm , as quoted in "Some Doubts About The Confederate Case" (2001), by R. Shedenhelm, Open Thought
• John Coski , The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (2005), p. 23
• John Coski , The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (2005), p. 27
• James M. McPherson , This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-9
• Brooks D. Simpson , "Race and Slavery, North and South: Some Logical Fallacies" (18 June 2011), Crossroads
• Sven Beckert , as quoted in "Empire of Cotton" (12 December 2014), The Atlantic .
• J. Tracy Power , "On the Confederate Battle Flag, Slavery, Secession, and the Legacies of the Civil War" (June 2015), Academia
• David Navarro , "Race and Slavery, North and South: Some Logical Fallacies" (10 July 2015), Crossroads
• David Navarro , "More of the Same" (12 July 2015), Crossroads

Bleeding Kansas (1854–1861)

• John Brown , as quoted in "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances" (1858).
• John Brown , as quoted in a note that he had at his execution (2 December 1859), most sources say it was handed to the guard, but some dispute that and claim it was handed to a reporter accompanying him; as quoted in John Brown and his Men (1894), by Richard Josiah Hinton.
• Fragment of Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, 13 September 1858; quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; The Writings of Abraham Lincoln V05 ) p. 6-7.
• Abraham Lincoln , Cooper Union address (27 February 1860), New York City, New York.
• Joseph E. Brown , letter (7 December 1860), as quoted in Secession Debated , pp. 145-159.
• James W. Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2008), p. 193.

The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (1858)

• Abraham Lincoln , debate at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858).
• Abraham Lincoln , fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate (18 September 1858).
• Stephen Douglas , sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate , (13 October 1858), Quincy, Illinois.
• Abraham Lincoln , Debate at Alton, Illinois (15 October 1858).

Douglas vs. Lincoln: The U.S. presidential election of 1860 (November 1860)

• Abraham Lincoln , Speech at New Haven, Connecticut (6 March 1860).
• Republican Party Platform of 1860 (17 May 1860).
• James A. Garfield , speech (29 March 1879)
• Ulysses S. Grant , Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 16.
• James M. McPherson , Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), p. 214.
• James M. McPherson , This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (2007), p. 188
• Eric Foner , "Our Lincoln" (26 January 2009), The Nation .
• Frank Scaturro , "The Confederate flag debate is revising our revisionist history" (14 July 2015), Washington Examiner .

State secession conventions and declarations (1860–1861)

• Address of the people of South Carolina to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States (25 December 1860).
• Georgia Declaration of Causes of Secession (January 1861), State of Georgia .
• A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede (February 1861).
• Henry Massey Rector , Speech to the Arkansas Secession Convention, 2 March 1861), partly cited in: David Yancey Thomas (1926), Arkansas in War and Reconstruction 1861-1874, p. 65
• Declaration of the Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi (1861).
• A Declaration of the Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi (1861).
• James L. Petigru, Letter to Benjamin Franklin Perry (December 8, 1860), quoted in James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 37.

The War Begins: The Confederacy attacks Fort Sumter (12 April 1861)

• Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut , a resident of Charleston, South Carolina (1861).
• Major Abner Doubleday (1861). Doubleday was second-in-command at Fort Sumter and briefly commanded Union troops at Gettysburg in July 1863. He was later credited with establishing the rules of baseball.
• Thaddeus Stevens , ‎Beverly Wilson Palmer, ‎Holly Byers Ochoa (1997) The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1: April 1865-August 1868, p. 193
• James M. McPherson , "The War of Southern Aggression" (19 January 1989), The New York Review of Books
• Adam Goodheart , 1861: The Civil War Awakening (2011), Vintage Books. p. 22

The U.S. responds to Fort Sumter being attacked by the Confederates

• Stephen Douglas , last public speech before his death, Chicago, Illinois (1 May 1861).

Monday dawned, April 15. Who that saw that day will ever forget it! For now... there rang out the voice of Abraham Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months. They were for the protection of Washington and the property of the government... This proclamation was like the first peal of a surcharged thunder-cloud, clearing the murky air. The... whole North arose as one man.

Hastily formed companies marched to camps of rendezvous, the sunlight flashing from gun-barrel and bayonet.... Merchants and clerks rushed out from stores, bareheaded, saluting them as they passed. Windows were flung up; and women leaned out into the rain, waving flags and handkerchiefs. Horsde-cars and omnibuses halted for the passage of the soldiers, and cheer upon cheer leaped forth from thronged doors and windows....

I have never seen anything like this before. I had never dreamed that New England... could be fired with so warlike a spirit.

• Mary Ashton Livermore, observing the mustering of troops in Boston (1861).
• Local Scott County Farmer, commenting on the subsequent secession of the microstate called the State of Scott.
• Abraham Lincoln , July 4th message to Congress (4 July 1861).
• "Union Reply to The Bonnie Blue Flag" .
• Abraham Lincoln , in 1861, as quoted in The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources (1900), Volume 3, New York: Lincoln History Society, p. 124.
• Ulysses S. Grant , to Otto von Bismarck in June 1878, as quoted in Around the World with General Grant (1879), by John Russell Young, The American News Company, New York, vol. 7, p. 416.
• Demand of the New York Tribune that the Union attack the Confederacy (1861).
• Overeager Unionist supporter at the start of the Civil War (1861).
• George W. Julian , Speeches on Political Questions, 1872, p. 157; Speech to the House of Representatives, 14 January 1862
• Charles Sumner in: United States Congressional serial set Vol. 1116, 1861, p. 195; Resolution's on the Theory of Secession and Reconstruction
• Thaddeus Stevens , "Subduing the Rebellion" (22 January 1862), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens
• General Orders, No. 7 (10 June 1863), by command of w:Daniel Ullmann , Brigadier-General Commanding. Moses C. Brown, Assistant Adjutant-General.
• William Tecumseh Sherman , as quoted in letter to James Guthrie (14 August 1864), Georgia
• General William Tecumseh Sherman , letter to the members of the city council of the City of Atlanta (12 September 1864)
• Ulysses S. Grant , regarding the Mexican–American War , as quoted in Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Chapter 3
• Allan Nevins , The War for the Union: The Improvised War 1861-1862 (1959), pp. 74–75
• William Davis , Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), New York: The Free Press, p. 130

The Confederacy responds to their starting of the Civil War

• U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee , before Virginia joined the Confederacy (1861).
• Robert E. Lee of Virginia, Colonel, U.S. Army, on resigning his commission (1861). He was soon appointed to the Virginia Militia and later headed the Confederate Army.
• Anonymous overconfident Confederate supporter (1861).
• Sam Houston , as quoted in "Revering Sam Houston, anti-Confederate patriot" (18 March 2016), by Michael Zak, Grand Old Partisan

Union war aims

• Walter Stone Poor, a Union soldier from Maine , letter to George Fox (15 May 1861), Sandy Hook, as quoted in For Cause and Comrades (1997) by James M. McPherson, p. 117
• Chauncey Herbert Cooke, letter to mother
• Chauncey Herbert Cooke, Union private from Company G of the 25th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, letter to Doe Cooke (6 January 1863)
• Ulysses S. Grant , Around the World with General Grant (1879), p. 417.
• Ulysses S. Grant , Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Conclusion.
• Abraham Lincoln , Second Inaugural Address (March 1865), Washington, D.C.
• Abraham Lincoln , Second Inaugural Address (March 1865), Washington, D.C.; Lincoln was alluding to Jesus ' words in in Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (KJV)
• Abraham Lincoln , as quoted in letter to Alexander H. Stephens (22 December 1860), Springfield, Illinois.
• Abraham Lincoln , as quoted in interview with Alexander W. Randall and Joseph T. Mills (19 August 1864).
• "Union Dixie"
• Abraham Lincoln , Private conversation (January 1862)
• Abraham Lincoln , address to the New Jersey Senate (21 February 1861); in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 4, p. 236
• President Abraham Lincoln , address at sanitary fair, Baltimore, Maryland (18 April 1864)
• As quoted in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln , ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 7, p. 301–2 (1953)
• Abraham Lincoln , letter to Horace Greeley (22 August 1862)

We the colored citizens of Queens County, N.Y., having met in mass meeting... take the present opportunity to express our opinions most respectfully and freely....

Why not declare slavery abolished and favor our peaceful colonization in the Rebel states, or some portion of them?... We would cheerfully return there and give our most willing aid to deliver our loyal colored brethren and other Unionists from the tyranny of rebels to our government.

• Petition of the Colored Citizens of Queens County (1862)
• Abraham Lincoln , speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment (18 August 1864), delivered at Washington, D.C.
• Julia Ward Howe , "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (1861).
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , "The Star-Spangled Banner" in: Monthly Journal, Vol. 2, 1861, p. 463
• Union soldier from Michigan, letter to wife , as quoted in Cause and Comrades (1997), by James M. McPherson, New York City: Oxford University Press, Inc., pp. 124–130.
• Union soldier encountering slaves while marching into Virginia , as quoted in War at our Doors (1998), by Rebecca Campbell Light, United States: American History Company
• Fannie Lee , a Virginian slave, as quoted in Battleground Adventures in the Civil War (1915), by Clifton Johnson, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 150
• Oliver McAllaster , 35th New York soldier, letter .
• Wyman S. White , Union Army first sergeant, F. Company, diary entry .
• George Frederick Root , " Battle Cry of Freedom " (1862).
• Horace Greeley , Open Letter to Pres. Lincoln (1862).
• 20th New York State Militia soldier, letter (29 April 1862), as quoted in the Kingston Argus (7 May 1862).
• David G. Farragut , as quoted in A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War: The Diaries of David Hunter Strother , by David Hunter Strother, p. 161.
• "Give Us A Flag"
• Anonymous Unionist, as quoted in Richmond Daily Dispatch (13 November 1863).
• Horace Greeley , letter to Abraham Lincoln (19 August 1862).
• Henry Clay Work , " Marching Through Georgia " (1865)
• " For Lincoln and Liberty Too "
• Abraham Lincoln , First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861).
• Abraham Lincoln , Second State of the Union Address (1 December 1862).
• J.L. Geddes , "The Bonnie Flag With the Stripes and Stars" (1863)
• "Union Reply to The Bonnie Blue Flag"
• Frederick Douglass , "What the Black Man Wants" , speech in Boston, Massachusetts (1865)
• Frederick Douglass , "The Unknown Loyal Dead" (30 May 1871), Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia
• F.W. Emery , as quoted in General Orders, No. 3 (19 June 1865), by F.W. Emery, Galveston, Texas: Headquarters, District of Texas.
• Gideon Welles , as quoted in Diary of Gideon Wells (1861-1864), I, p. 152.

• William Tecumseh Sherman as quoted by B. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American , 232-34, (1929).
• James M. McPherson , North & South Magazine (January 2008), Vol. 10, No. 4, p. 59
• Adam Thomas , Grease and Slide Back Into the Union: Patriotic Essentialism, the Civil War, and Postbellum Reconstruction (2009), p. 3
• Dennis Prager , "Why the Left Hates America" (28 July 2015), National Review
• Joseph Morrison Skelly , "The Democratic Fallen: Let us honor those who have defended our right to self-government with their last breaths" (18 May 2007), National Review Online
• Robert Bonner, Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (2002), Princeton University Press, pp. 115–16.
• James M. McPherson , The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom (2003)
• John Hennessey , naturalization speech (June 2015).
• Kevin Levin , "Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham to Call for Removal of Confederate Flag" (22 June 2015), Civil War Memory .
• Bruce Levine , "The Confederate Flag Was Always Racist: Modern-day racists who brandish Confederate symbols are not distorting their meaning." (27 June 2015), Politico .
• T.N. Coates , "What this Cruel War was Over" (June 2015), The Atlantic .
• Barack H. Obama II , Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney at College of Charleston (26 June 2015), by B.H. Obama II, Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
• Dinesh D'Souza , America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)
• Theodore Roosevelt , The Strenuous Life (10 April 1899), Chicago, Illinois.

Confederate war aims

• David Hunter , letter to Jefferson Davis (1863)
• New York corporal, as quoted in For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), by James M. McPherson, New York City: Oxford University Press, Inc., p. 108
• William T. Thompson , Savannah Morning News (23 April 1863), as quoted in "The Birth of the Stainless Banner" (13 May 2013), by John M. Coski, The New York Times , New York: The New York Times Company
• Jubal Anderson Early , as quoted in A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States of America (2001), edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, pp. xxv–xxvi
• John S. Mosby , Letter to Samuel Chapman (4 June 1907)
• James Longstreet , regarding the American Civil War , as quoted in Letter to the Fauquier Times Democrat (2011), by Clark B. "Bud" Hall, Middleburg, Virginia
• Ed Baxter , at a reunion (1889), as quoted in The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (2005), by John M. Coski, p. 26.
• John S. Mosby , letter (1894), as quoted in The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (2005), by John M. Coski.
• "The New Heresy" (1864), Southern Punch (19 September 1864), Richmond. As quoted in The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (2005), by John M. Coski, United States of America: First Harvard University Press
• Howell Cobb , regarding suggestions that the Confederates turn their slaves into soldiers (January 1865). As quoted in Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), Hugh Chisholm, editor, 11th ed., Cambridge University Press. Also quoted as 'You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong'.
• Atlanta Southern Confederacy (20 January 1865), Macon, Georgia. As quoted in The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation (1875), by Robert F. Durden, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University, pp. 156-58.
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis , on the war aims of the Confederacy (1861).
• William T. Thompson , Savannah Morning News (23 April 1863), as quoted in "The Birth of the Stainless Banner" (13 May 2013), by John M. Coski, The New York Times , New York: The New York Times Company.
• Innes Randolph , "Oh, I'm A Good Old Rebel" .
• " God Save the South " (1861).
• Nathan Bedford Forrest , in: United States. Congress Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. Report of and Testimony, Vol. 13, 1872, p. 34
• George Bagby , "Editor's Table" (January 1862), Southern Literary Messenger (1862), p. 68.
• The Acts and Resolutions Adopted at the 1st Session of the 12th General Assembly of Florida: Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Tallahassee, on Monday, November 17, 1862, Volumes 1-2. Office of the Floridian & Journal, 1864, p. 106; Article IV, Section 1,
• Section 22, Article IV, Constitution of the State of Florida (10 January 1861).
• Section 27, Article IV, Constitution of the State of Florida (10 January 1861).
• Section 1, Article IX, Constitution of the State of Florida (10 January 1861).
• Section 1, Article XV, Constitution of the State of Florida (10 January 1861).
• Section 9, Constitution of the Confederate States of America (11 March 1861), p. 10.
• Article IV, Section 9, Constitution of the Confederate States of America (11 March 1861).
• Charleston Mercury (3 November 1860)
• Harry McCarthy , " The Bonnie Blue Flag " (1861), Louisiana: A.E. Blackmar
• National Tribune , Washington
• James M. McPherson , "James McPherson: What They Fought For, 1861-1865" (22 May 1994), Booknotes , United States of America: National Cable Satellite Corporation
• William Davis , The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996)
• William Davis , Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), New York: The Free Press, p. 3
• James W. Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2008), p. 193
• Paul D. Escott , After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (1992), p. 254
• James M. McPherson , Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), p. 241
• James M. McPherson , Cause and Comrades: Why Men of (1997), New York City: Oxford University Press, Inc., p. 106
• Tim Wise , " The Pathology of Privilege: Racism" (2008), Media Education Foundation .
• William Davis , Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), pp. 97–98.
• Tom Turnipseed , as quoted in Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong (1999), by James W. Loewen , pp. 239-240
• James M. McPherson , "No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865" (2003), American Historical Association
• John Coski , The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (2005)
• Jim McCullough , "The Constitution of the Confederate States of America: What was changed? And why?" (July 2006)
• Kevin Levin , "The White Man's Flag" (1 July 2015), Civil War Memory
• Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (2002), p. 34-35
• Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (2002), p. 35
• Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (2002), p. 36
• Frank Scaturro , "The Confederate flag debate is revising our revisionist history" (14 July 2015), Washington Examiner
• Ken Taylor , "150 Years Since Civil War And Democrats Still Party Of Slavery" (10 April 2011), Red State
• Brooks Simspon , "Down it Comes: Now What?" (22 June 2015), Crossroads

The war on the home front

The home front.

• Jefferson Davis , as quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), by James Loewen , New York: New Press, pp. 225–226.
• Congress of the Confederate States of America , Twenty Nigger Law .

The war has stimulated the genius of our people and directed it to the service of our country. Sixty-six new inventions relating to engines, implements, and articles of warfare have been illustrated in our columns....

Other departments of industry have also been well represented. Our inventors have not devoted themselves exclusively to the invention of destructive implements; they have also cultivated the arts of peace.

• Scientific American magazine, year-end summary for 1861.
• Charles Fessenden Morse , Fairfax Station (2 January 1863)
• Joseph E. Brown , Journal of the Senate at an Extra Session of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, Convened under the Proclamation of the Governor (25 March 1863), p. 6

We have reproached the South for arbitrary conduct in coercing their people; at last we find we must imitate their example. We have denounced their tyranny for filling their armies with conscripts, and now we must follow their example. We have denounced their tyranny in suppressing freedom of speech and the press, and here, too, in time, we must follow their example. The longer it is deferred the worse it becomes.

I say with the press unfettered as now we are defeated to the end of time. 'Tis folly to say the people must have news.

• Letter from Union Gen. William T. Sherman to his brother John Sherman (1863)
• Abraham Lincoln , remark to John Eaton of Toledo, Ohio (1863), reported in Carl Sandburg , Abraham Lincoln (1939), vol. 2, p. 535 (1939). Sandburg notes that Eaton had spoken to Lincoln of "hoisting the statue of Liberty over the Capitol dome, new marble pillars to be installed on the Senate wing, a massive and richly embellished bronze door being made for the main central portal. People were saying it was an extravagance during wartime".
• James Thomas Fields , "The Stars and Stripes"; reported in Florence Adams and Elizabeth McCarrick, Highdays & Holidays (1927), pp. 182–83.
• Charles Sumner , as quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me , by James W. Loewen.
• A. C. Gibbs (September 1862) " Governor A. C. Gibbs Inaugural Address, 1862 ", Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State, Source: Journals. Local Laws Oregon., 1862, Appendix, Special Message, Page 58.
• Guy R. Hasegawa, "Proposals for Chemical Weapons during the American Civil War" , Military Medicine , 173, 5:499, 2008, p. 499.
• Guy R. Hasegawa, "Proposals for Chemical Weapons during the American Civil War" , Military Medicine , 173, 5:499, 2008, pp. 503-504.
• Rachel Lance, ”As U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Top the Civil War’s Toll, We're Repeating Disease History” , Time , (August 14, 2021)

Prisoners of war

• War department, "Protection of coloured soldiers," July 31, 1863; in: The Political History of the United States of America, During the Great Rebellion, from November 6, 1860, to July 4, 1864 Philp & Solomons, 1865, p. 280
• Benjamin F. Butler , Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (1892), p. 604
• Benjamin F. Butler , Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler (1892), pp. 604–605
• Congress of the Confederate States of America , No. 5., Joint Resolution on the Subject of Retaliation (1 May 1863).
• C.S. War Secretary Seddon, as quoted in An Unerring Fire: The Massacre At Fort Pillow , by Richard Fuchs, (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2002), p. 144.
• Chester K. Leach , letter to his wife (15 July 1863), Company H, 2nd Vermont Infantry, as quoted in "A Regular Slave Hunt: The Army of Northern Virginia and Black Civilians in the Gettysburg Campaign" (September 2001), by Ted Alexander, North & South .
• Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe 's resignation from the Union Army Balloon Corps , (August 1, 1863) as quoted in Army , Volume 30 , (August 1980), p.41.
• Ulysses S. Grant , Letter to Richard Taylor (1863), Vicksburg. Regarding Confederate executions of captured Union prisoners of war at Milliken's Bend by hanging.
• Nathan Bedford Forrest , regarding the Fort Pillow massacre, as quoted in Personal Memoirs , by U.S. Grant, (Library of America, 1990), p. 483.
• Nathan Bedford Forrest , as quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
• William Ferguson , as quoted in report to Stephen A. Hurlbut (14 April 1864).
• Robert S. Critchell , letter to Henry T. Blow (22 April 1864).
• Republican Party Platform of 1864 (7 June 1864).
• John R. Eakin , The Slave Soldiers (8 June 1864).
• David Dixon Porter , as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 229.
• John Cimprich , as quoted in Fort Pillow: A Civil War Massacre and Public Memory (2005), Louisiana State University Press, pp. 123–124.
• Richard Fuchs , as quoted in An Unerring Fire: The Massacre At Fort Pillow (2002), Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, p. 14.
• James Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), New York: New Press, pp. 224–225.
• Brooks D. Simpson , as quoted in Intelligence Report (2000), SPLC.
• Andrew Ward , as quoted in River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (2005) New York: Viking Adult, p. 227.

Unionism in the Confederacy

• General William Tecumseh Sherman , letter to the members of the city council of the City of Atlanta (12 September 1864).
• Henry Clay Work , " Marching Through Georgia " (1865).
• Sam R. Watkins , Company Aytch , Chapter III: "Corinth".
• George William Curtis , as quoted in "The Good Fight" (1865).
• Eric Foner , "The South's Inner Civil War" (March 1989), American Heritage , Volume 40, Issue 2
• William C. Davis , as quoted in The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), Kansas: University Press of Kansas, p. 178.
• "Massacre on the Nueces" (11 August 1862), by Richard Parker and Emily Boyd, The New York Times (2012), New York: The New York Times Company.
• Richard McCaslin , as quoted in "After 150 years, a dark chapter of Gainesville's past still stirs passions" (7 October 2012), Star-Telegram .
• James Loewen , "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong. False history marginalizes African Americans and makes us all dumber." (1 July 2015), The Washington Post .
• Jeffrey Evan Brooks, "The South Could Have Won the Civil War" (27 December 2015), The Blog of Jeffrey Evan Brooks .

Anti-war movement in the Union

• "Nigger Doodle Dandy" (1864), an anti-war song sung by northern Democrats against the U.S. war effort and the Republicans.

How are you my Abe? Is the list nearly filled

Of the sick men and dying of wounded and killed

Of widows and tears, or orphans unfed

Of poor honest white men struggling for bread?

'Dear Devil,' quoth Abe, 'I'm doing my best

To promote the interest of you and the rest.

• "Abe's Visitor," a poem published in a Democrat newspaper in Pennsylvania.

I will not consent to put the entire purse of the country and the sword of the country into the hands of the executive, giving him despotic and dictatorial power to carry out an object which I avow before my countrymen is the destruction of their liberties and the overthrow of the Union of these states....

The charge has been made against us — all who are opposed to the policy of this administration and opposed to this war — that we are for 'peace on any terms.' It is false.... I am for peace, and would be, even if the Union could not be restored... because without peace, permitting this administration for two years to exercise its tremendous powers, the war still existing, you will not have one remnant of civil liberty left among yourselves. The exercise of these tremendous powers, the apology for which is the existence of this war, is utterly incompatible with the stability of the Constitution and of constitutional liberty.

• Rep. Clement L. Vallandingham (D-Ohio), leader of the “Copperhead" antiwar Democrats, in a speech to the Democrat Union Association of New York (1863)
• Oliver Hazard Perry Morton , 14th Governor of Indiana, in a speech to the Union Mass Meeting at Masonic Hall, Indianapolis (20 June 1866): as contained in Treason Exposed : Record of the Disloyal Democracy (1866), Republican Party (Ind.) State Central Committee, p. 3
• James M. McPherson , Drawn with the Sword : Reflections on the American Civil War , Princeton University, pp. 91-92
• James W. Loewen , as quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), New York: New Press.
• Frances Rice , "Black Republican Frequently Asked Questions" (15 May 2015), Black Republican Blog , National Black Republican Association.

The First Major Battle: Bull Run (21 July 1861)

• The "Rebel Yell" shouted by Confederate troops in the attack (1861).
• A Union soldier, on the Rebel Yell (1861).
• Confederate Gen. Bernard Elliott Bee at the First Battle of Bull Run, in a comment that gave Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson the nickname "Stonewall" (1861).
• Union Colonel Andrew Porter, on the rout of the initially-overconfident U.S. troops that ended the Battle of Bull Run (1861).
• Advice for President Lincoln from Horace Greeley, publisher of the New York Tribune, following the Union defeat at Bull Run (1861).
• Linda Hall Library , "The Use of Black Powder and Nitroglycerine on the Transcontinental Railroad" .
• Nell Grennfield Boyce , “The USS Alligator's Mysterious Designer” , NPR , (September 16, 2005).

The Peninsula Campaign (April – July 1862)

• U.S. President Abraham Lincoln , unsent letter to Union Army General George McClellan , the inactive commander of the Union Army of the Potomac (1862).
• Maj. Gen. James Longstreet 's letter to Thaddeus S. C. Lowe ; as quoted in Army , Volume 30 , (August 1980), p.41.
• Confederate Army Colonel John B. Gordon , after the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31, 1862).

The Battle of Fredericksburg , Virginia (13 December 1862)

• General E.P. Alexander, Lee's engineer and superintendent of artillery, before the Union attack on Fredericksburg (1862); reported in Bim Sherman, The Century (1886), p. 617.
• Union Army private William Lusk, letter home after the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, blaming Gen. Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. The U.S. attacks against high ground south of the Rappahannock River, strongly held by the Confederates, cost it 12,000 casualties (1862).
• Robert E. Lee , comment to James Longstreet , on seeing a Union charge repelled in the Battle of Fredericksburg (13 December 1862).

The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect (1 January 1863)

• Henry Clay Work , "Kingdom Coming" (1862), Chicago: Root and Cady .
• Frederick Douglass , "Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln" (14 April 1876), The Freedmen's Monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.
• Susie King , as quoted in Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops , p. 18
• Thomas G. West , Vindicating the Founders (2001), p. 35.

African Americans recruited for the U.S. Army (1863–1865)

• George F. Root , "The Battle Cry of Freedom" , Chicago: Root and Cady.
• "Give Us A Flag" .
• Frederick Douglass , "Men of Color, To Arms!" (21 March 1863).
• James A. Garfield , regarding slavery (1862), as quoted in Garfield: A Biography (1978), by Allan Peskin, p. 145.
• Ulysses S. Grant , order to corps, division, and post commanders , Milliken's Bend, Louisiana.
• Ulysses S. Grant , at Vicksburg (24 July 1863), as quoted in Words of our Hero: Ulysses S. Grant , edited by Jeremiah Chaplin, Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, pp. 13-14.
• Ulysses S. Grant , letter to Abraham Lincoln (23 August 1863).
• Abraham Lincoln , letter to James C. Conkling (26 August 1863).
• Charles Augustus Hill , letter to wife (13 October 1863).
• L. Grim , letter to aunt (27 June 1864).
• Frederick Douglass , whose sons Charles and Lewis served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1862).
• Ulysses S. Grant , at Vicksburg (11 July 1863), as quoted in Words of our Hero: Ulysses S. Grant , by Jeremiah Chaplin, Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, p. 13.
• Ulysses S. Grant , letter to Richard Taylor (24 July 1863), Vicksburg. Regarding the Confederate executions of captured Union prisoners of war at Milliken's Bend by hanging.
• Ulysses S. Grant , letter to Abraham Lincoln (23 August 1863)
• Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton , letter to Abraham Lincoln (5 December 1863), as quoted in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union (1899), by the United States Department of War, p. 1,132.

We congratulate the American people upon your reelection by a large majority. If resistance to the slave power was the reserved watchword of your first administration, the triumphant war cry of your reelection is 'Death to slavery.'

From the commencement of the titanic American strife, the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class....

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American antislavery war will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded so of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

• Letter of the Communist International to President Abraham Lincoln (1864).
• Charles Dana , as quoted in War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies , Series I. Vol. XXIV, pt. 1. War Dept. p. 106.
• William Tecumseh Sherman , "Special Field Order No. 15" (16 January 1865), Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field , Savannah, Georgia.
• Frederick Douglass , "What the Black Man Wants" , speech in Boston, Massachusetts (26 January 1865).
• Godfrey Weitzel , (20 February 1865), as quoted in ORR Series 1, Volume 51, Part I , p. 1202.
• Abraham Lincoln , as quoted in Freedom's Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry Into the Civil War , by William Friedheim and Ronald Jackson.
• James Garfield , as quoted in oration delivered at Ravenna, Ohio (4 July 1865)
• Godfrey Weitzel , (1866), as quoted in ORR Series 1, Volume 51, Part I , p. 1,202
• James A. Garfield , address at Madison Square Park (1880)
• Ulysses S. Grant , to the Committee on the Conduct of the War , as quoted in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1884-1888), edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence C. Buel, New York: Century Co., Volume 4, p. 548
• Frederick Douglass , Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 433-435
• Johnson Hagood , Confederate officer, regarding Robert Gould Shaw . As quoted in Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-century Reform (2003), by Lorien Foote, Ohio University Press , p. 119
• Frank Shaw , regarding Robert Gould Shaw 's resting place, as quoted in Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-century Reform (2003), by Lorien Foote, Ohio University Press , p. 120
• Ulysses S. Grant , Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant , Ch. 37
• John Marshall Harlan , as quoted in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896)
• James M. McPherson , Drawn by the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War , p. 91
• James M. McPherson , as quoted in "An exchange with a Civil War historian" (19 June 1995), by David Walsh, International Workers Bulletin
• James W. Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me
• Victor Davis Hanson , The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (1999), New York City: The Free Press, p. 210
• Kevin Levin , "Black Confederates to the Rescue... Again" (24 June 2015), Civil War Memory .

The Battle of Gettysburg , Pennsylvania (July 1863)

The enemy seemed to have gathered all their energies for their final assault. We had gotten our thin line into as good a shape as possible, when a strong force emerged from the scrub wood in the valley, as well as I could judge, in two lines in echelon by the right, and, opening a heavy fire, the first line came on as if they meant to sweep everything before them. We opened on them as well as we could with our scanty ammunition snatched from the field.

It did not seem possible to withstand another shock like this now coming on. Our loss had been severe. One-half of my left wing had fallen, and a third of my regiment lay just behind us, dead or badly wounded. At this moment my anxietv was increased by a great rbar of musketry in my rear, on the farther or northerly slope of Little Round Top, apparently on the flank of the regular brigade, which was in support or Hazlett's battery on the crest behind us. The bullets from this attack struck into my left rear, and I feared that the enemy might have nearly surrounded the Little Round Top, and only a desperate chance was left for us. My ammunition was soon exhausted. My men were firing their last shot and getting ready to "club" their muskets.

It was imperative to strike before we were struck by this overwhelming force in a hand-to-hand fight, which we could not probably have withstood or survived. At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough. It ran like fire along the line, from man to man; and rose into a shout, with which they sprang forward upon the enemy, now not 30 yards away. The effect was surprising; many of the enemy's first line threw down their arms and surrendered. An officer fired his pistol at my head with one hand, while he handed me his sword with the other. Holding fast by our right, and swinging forward our left, we made an extended " right wheel," before which the enemy's second line broke and fell back, fighting from tree to tree, many being captured, until we had swept the valley and cleared the front of nearly our entire brigade.

• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain , in his official report on the Battle of Little Round Top , as published in the U.S. Congressional Record.
• President Abraham Lincoln, regretting the failure of U.S. Army commanders to destroy the Confederate Army before it could recross the Potomac and retreat into the safety of Northern Virginia (1863).
• James Longstreet , as quoted in General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography (1993), by Jeffry D. Wert, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 283.
• Abraham Lincoln , Gettysburg Address (1863).
• Ronald C. White, The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words (2005), New York: Random House, p. 251.
• James Loewen , Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong (2007), p. 350
• James Loewen , "What Does Rockville, Maryland's Confederate Monument Tell Us About the Civil War? About the Nadir? About the Present?" (19 July 2015), History News Network .
• Kevin Levin , "The Terror of Being Black at Gettysburg" (2013), History News Network .
• Brooks D. Simpson , "The Soldiers' Flag?" (5 July 2015), Crossroads

The Siege of Vicksburg (June – July 1863)

• A Confederate soldier besieged at Vicksburg to the Confederate commander (1863).
• Abraham Lincoln , on U.S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign (5 July 1863). When he said this, Lincoln had not yet received news of the surrender of Vicksburg the day before. As quoted in Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865 (21 February 2000) by Brooks D. Simpson, p. 215.
• Abraham Lincoln , letter to Ulysses S. Grant (13 July 1863), Washington, D.C.
• Ulysses S. Grant , letter to Jesse Root Grant (15 June 1863), by U.S. Grant.
• Ulysses S. Grant , General Orders, No. 50 (1 August 1863), Vicksburg.
• Joseph Gillespie , letter (December 1866).

The Eastern Theater (1863–1865)

• General William Tecumseh Sherman , letter to Major R.M. Sawyer (31 January 1864), from Vicksburg.
• John Sedgwick , allegedly these were among his final words. He was serving as a Union commander in the American Civil War , and was hit by a sharpshooter's fire a few minutes after saying them, at the battle of Spotsylvania to his men who were ducking for cover, on May 9 , 1864 . The words have often been portrayed as if they were absolutely his last statement, with the sentence being presented as if he did not even finish it, and altered into the form: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." . Though it may be a slightly more striking version of events, it is unlikely to be true. Civil War Home site: eye-witness account .
• Ulysses S. Grant , after hearing of John Sedgwick's death (May 1864), as quoted in The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern May 7–12, 1864 (1997), by Gordon C. Rhea, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, p. 95.
• General Ulysses S. Grant , during the campaign in Virginia (11 May 1864), commanding Union forces, on his intention to keep up offensive operations in Virginia, in contrast with his predecessors.
• Confederate general after viewing Union dead in the Battle of Cold Harbor (3 June 1864).
• Confederate officer, reflecting on U.S. Grant, the new Union commander (1864).
• General Ulysses S. Grant , the Union Army's commander, instructions for Gen. Philip Sheridan for his invasion of the Shenandoah Valley in northwestern Virginia (1864).
• William Tecumseh Sherman , telegram to General U.S. Grant (1864), as quoted in Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and The American Civil War (1989), by Roger L. Ransom.
• General William Tecumseh Sherman , letter to Henry W. Halleck (4 September 1864), whose Western Army invaded Georgia and waged total war against the Confederacy, destroying cities and property along a band 60 miles wide during his march to the seacoast at Savannah (September-December 1864).
• General William Tecumseh Sherman , telegraph message to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (22 December 1864), following Sherman's capture of the seacoast city of Savannah, Georgia. As quoted in Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea (2008), by Noah Andre Trudeau, New York: HarperCollins, p. 508
• E.W. Evans , interview by Geneva Tonsill
• James Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), New York: New Press, pp. 225–226.

Lincoln vs. McClellan: The U.S. presidential election of 1864 (November 1864)

• Karl Marx to Abraham Lincoln , Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America (c. 1864-1865)
• Republican Party Platform of 1864 (17 May 1864).
• William Harris , "The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership" (2000), Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association , pp. 30-61.
• James Loewen , Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), New York: New Press, p. 192.
• Sidney Milkis and Michael Nelson , The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2014 , p. 179.

The Thirteenth Amendment passed: Slavery abolished (January 1865)

• George Washington Julian, journal
• James Edward English , as quoted in In Memoriam: James Edward English (1891), by Anna Morris English, Michigan: Library of the University of Michigan, p. 23.
• Anna Morris English , In Memoriam: James Edward English (1891), Michigan: Library of the University of Michigan, p. 23
• Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson , The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2014 , p. 179
• William Davis , Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), New York: The Free Press, p. 159
• Thomas Sowell , "The Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community" (7 July 2015), National Review
• B.D. Amis , "The Negro National Oppression and Social Antagonism"

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, (March 4, 1865)

• Fondly, do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” ** Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inagural Address”, March 4, 1865, in The Writings of Abraham Lincol n 330-31 (A.B. Lapsley ed. 1906).

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln visits Richmond (4 April 1865)

• Abraham Lincoln , after witnessing a man bow down to him. In Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 295.
• Abraham Lincoln , to a group of freed slaves. In Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 297-298.
• Abraham Lincoln , in Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (1996), by Don Edward Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, editor, p. 257.
• Abraham Lincoln , in response to talk of demolishing Libby Prison . In Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 299.
• Abraham Lincoln , regarding the treatment of former Confederate soldiers. In Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 312.
• Charles Carleton Coffin , The Atlantic (June 1865).

R.E. Lee surrenders to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House (9 April 1865)

• Ulysses S. Grant , letter to Robert E. Lee (7 April 1865)..
• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain , as quoted in Passing of the Armies , pp. 260-61.
• Grant to Lee at Appomattox (1865).
• Robert E. Lee , to Ely S. Parker at Appomattox Court House (9 April 1865), as quoted in The Life of General Ely S. Parker: Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant's Military Secretary Buffalo , by Arthur C. Parker, New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1919, p. 133.
• Ely S. Parker , to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House (9 April 1865), as quoted in The Life of General Ely S. Parker: Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant's Military Secretary Buffalo , by Arthur C. Parker, New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1919, p. 133.
• Lee to Grant, on the latter permitting Confederate troops take their horses home to be farm animals (1865).

At a little before 4 o'clock General Lee shook hands with General Grant... and with Colonel Marshall left the room.... Lee gazed sadly in the direction of the valley beyond where his army lay — now an army of prisoners....

All [Union officers present] appreciated the sadness that overwhelmed him, and he had the personal sympathy of everyone who beheld him at this supreme moment of trial....

General Grant... saluted him by raising his hat. He was followed in this act of courtesy by all our officers present; Lee raised his hat respectfully and rode off to break the sad news to the brave fellows whom he had so long commanded....

The news of the surrender had reached the Union lines, and the firing of salutes began at several points, but the general sent orders at once to have them stopped, and used these words...: 'The war is over, the Rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field.'

• Gen. Horace Porter, account of the Confederate Surrender at Appomattox Court House (9 April 1865).
• Abram J. Ryan , The Conquered Banner (1865).

I had known General Lee in the old army, and had served with him in the Mexican War ; but did not suppose, owing to the difference in our age and rank, that he would remember me, while I would more naturally remember him distinctly, because he was the chief of staff of General Scott in the Mexican War.

When I had left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted each other, and after shaking hands took our seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview.

What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

• Ulysses S. Grant , as quoted in Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67.
• Robert E. Lee to the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, following the surrender (1865).
• Robert E. Lee , as quoted in A Life of General Robert E. Lee (1871), by John Esten Cooke.
• Robert E. Lee , letter (1869), as quoted in Personal reminiscences, anecdoates, and letters of gen. Robert E. Lee (1874), by John William Jones , p. 234. Also quoted in "Renounce the battle flag: Don't whitewash history" (26 June 2015), by Petula Dvorak, The Washington Post , Washington, D.C. This quote is also given as: "I think it wisest not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered."
• Robert E. Lee , statement to John Leyburn (1 May 1870), as quoted in R. E. Lee : A Biography (1934) by Douglas Southall Freeman.
• Inscription on granite memorial marking site of the original Appomattox Court House, where the Civil War ended, Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, Virginia. Author unknown. Reported in Mary Louise Gills, It Happened at Appomattox (1948), p. 21. When the building burned several decades after the war, the county seat was moved to a new location three miles away.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi, letter to the American minister in Italy
• Charles Sumner , final speech in the U.S. Senate on Constitutional Amendment (9 March 1866)
• Frederick Douglass , Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (14 April 1876), Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.
• James Alcorn , letter to Amelia Alcorn, as quoted in After Appomattox: How the South Won the War , by Stetson Kennedy, p. 28.
• Horace Greeley , as quoted in Greeley on Lincoln (1893), edited by Joel Benton, p. 78.
• Alexander II , emperor of Russia, conversation with Wharton Barker, Pavlovski Palace (17 August 1879); reported in Barker, "The Secret of Russia's Friendship", The Independent (24 March 1904), p. 647.
• David Dixon Porter , as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), by D.D. Porter, p. 296.
• Ulysses S. Grant , Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), by U.S. Grant, Ch. 12.
• Ulysses S. Grant , Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), by U.S. Grant, Ch. 67.
• Weekly Blade (22 June 1895), Parsons, Kansas.
• John S. Mosby , letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (4 June 1907).
• D. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis , (1962), xx-xxi.
• A. Nevins, The War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory 1864-1865 , (1971), p.45.
• K. Stampp, “The Impressible Conflict”, in The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War , (1980), 221-22.
• Andrew Koppelman, "Forced Labor: A Thirteenth Amendment Defense of Abortion" , Northwestern Law Review , Vol. 84, (1990). pp.513-514
• Stefan B. Tahmassebi , "Gun Control and Racism" (1991), George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal , p. 67.
• Clayton Cramer , "The Racist Roots of Gun Control" (1995), Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy (1995).
• Alan Nolan , The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2000), pp. 13-14.
• Gary Gallagher , The American Civil War , Gilder Lehrman Institute.
• Woodrow Wilson , Essay on John Bright , Virginia University Magazine , 19:354-370 (March 1880).
• Eric Foner , as quoted in "The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln" (31 December 2012), The New York Times , New York
• As quoted in A former Confederate officer on slavery and the Civil War , by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• Jimmy Dick , Chat-Room (18 February 2014), Crossroads .
• Jeffrey E. Brooks , "150th Anniversary of the End of the Civil War? Not Necessarily." (9 April 2015), The Blog of Jeffrey Evan Brooks .
• Royce West (2011), "The Supreme Court Just Dealt the Confederate Flag a Blow, Here's How" (June 2015), The Washington Post .
• Edward Baptist , Twitter (18 June 2015), as quoted in "Confederate Flag’s Place at the South Carolina Statehouse Questioned After Church Shooting" (18 June 2015), Newsweek .
• Paul Butler , "Paul Butler Says What’s On His Mind" (June 2015), YouTube .

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated (April 1865)

• John Wilkes Booth , to Lewis Powell after Lincoln last public address (11 April 1865), as quoted in Blood on the Moon (2002), by Edward Steers, Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, p. 91. Also mentioned in Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (2006), by James Swanson, Harper Collins.
• Edwin M. Stanton , at Lincoln's death (15 April 1865). As quoted in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John George Nicolay and John Hay, p. 302. Though "Now he belongs to the ages" is by far the most accepted quotation of this remark, it is sometimes contended that he said "Now he belongs to the angels" but occurrences of this date back only a very few years.. Stanton had originally opposed Lincoln, dubbing him "The Original Gorilla" because of his looks and frontier speech, but eventually grew to admire him.
• Rutherford Birchard Hayes , as quoted in letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (16 April 1865)
• John Wilkes Booth , as quoted in "The murderer of Mr. Lincoln" (21 April 1865), The New York Times (1865)
• Phineas Densmore Gurley , White House Funeral Sermon for President Lincoln (19 April 1865)
• Archibald MacLeish , "At the Lincoln Memorial", stanza 4, lines 1–6, and stanza 5, New & Collected Poems, 1917–1976 (1976), p. 433–35. This poem was written for ceremonies marking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and was read by MacLeish at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., September 22, 1962.
• Ted Widmer , "Did the American Civil War Ever End?" (4 June 2015), The New York Times , New York

Quotes about the American Civil War

• Anonymous variant lyrics of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" , reported in Jean Thomas, Ballad Makin' in the Mountains of Kentucky (1939), p. 54
• Harry Blackmun , Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. at 138-39
• Kevin McCarthy in "What I've Learned: Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R, Calif.)" by Cal Fussman, Esquire , (October 12, 2010)
• David Brion Davis , Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the Americas (2006)
• Nikki Haley , interviewed by the Palmetto Patriots in 2010, as reported by Andrew Kaczynski, "Nikki Haley defended right to secession, Confederate History Month and the Confederate flag in 2010 talk" , CNN , (Updated February 21, 2023)
• Confederate States of America
• Slavery in the United States
• United States of America

External links

• Causes of the American Civil War
• Confederate states by slave and free population
• The Constitution of the Confederate States of America
• "The Cornerstone Speech"
• ↑ Hemphill, James C. (August 1915). " The South and the Negro Vote ". The North American Review 202 (717): 213–219.
• ↑ The Abbeville press . 12 (5) (Abbeville, S.C.), 05 June 1863. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers . Lib. of Congress . Available at: < https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042527/1863-06-05/ed-1/seq-1 >

• 19th century in the United States

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