I just finished this evening a fascinating book on the events leading to the Civil War -- The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War 1848-1861, by noted American historians David M. Potter and Don Fehrenbacher. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History and many Civil War historians consider it the authoritative book on the coming of the war. It reads more like a book you'd be assigned in college, with extensive footnotes, rather than a more popular David McCullough-style history. Here are some surprising things I learned:
1. Long before slavery became a flashpoint for sectional division, the North and South were already generating intense animosity over free trade. The North wanted high tariffs on British and French goods so its manufacturing sector could develop free of international competition. This, however, significantly raised the price of goods and equipment for the South, which viewed the tariffs as a tool the North intended to use to obtain economic ascendancy over the South. This led directly to South Carolina’s unilateral attempt to nullify the national tariff in 1832. The crisis was headed off only when Pres. Andrew Jackson threatened to send federal troops there to enforce the tariff, while getting Congress to agree at the same time to make it less onerous. But sectional bitterness remained.
2. Political conflict over slavery intensified with the acquisition of massive new territories in 1848 after the Mexican War. Would that territory be free or slave? But John Brown’s raid on the Harpers’ Ferry federal arsenal to provoke a slave revolt in 1859 took the sectional conflict to a whole new level. When abolitionists in the North subsequently called on slaves to massacre Southerners, many fence-sitters there felt the point of no return had been reached.
3. Even then, public sentiment on secession still was almost evenly divided in the Southern states. In fact, in late 1860 and early 1861, the votes for/against secession convention delegates ran close to 50/50 splits in some Southern states.
4. In January 1861, Stephen Douglas unsuccessfully proposed in Congress a last gasp national referendum on a constitutional amendment in which the voters would declare their intention to restore the old Missouri Compromise of 1820. That compromise had kept the peace between the sections from 1820 to 1850 by permitting slavery in any new states formed below the 36°30’ parallel (which forms the northern borders of Arkansas and the panhandle of Texas), but banning it in the two-thirds of the territory north of that line.
5. The initial round of Southern states defecting to the Confederacy occurred in the Deep South in December and January 1861 – first by South Carolina, then Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, followed by Texas in February. But then the secessionists actually suffered stunning defeats. Virginia – the critical state – and Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, as well as “border” slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware all refused to leave the Union. Thus in March 1861, the future of the rebellion was in serious doubt.
6. At that point, the only step certain to lead to civil war was military coercion by the North to force the departed Southern states to return to the Union. In fact, one Massachusetts newspaper wrote: “The idea that free states intend to march armies into the seceding states to force their return to loyalty seems too monstrous for serious denial.” But after Fort Sumter was fired on and surrendered, that is exactly what Lincoln ordered – calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to invade the South and preserve the Union.
7. Lincoln explicitly did not call on these volunteers and initiate the Civil War to end slavery. In 1860, he campaigned on a platform to preserve the Union, but allowing slavery to continue where it existed in the South. He reiterated this position again in his First Inaugural Address as president in March 1861. Abolition of slavery became a specific aim only a year and a half into the war, with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Even then, the proclamation freed only those slaves in the rebelling states, but not in those states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) that had remained loyal to the Union.
8. The immediate precipitating cause of the war was Lincoln’s call for the volunteers. When that happened, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina each changed their minds and decided to join the Confederacy after all, making it much more formidable in both its geographic extent and its military resources. Perhaps most notably, Robert E. Lee, who had pledged to follow whatever Virginia did, declined command of the Union volunteers and withdrew to Virginia. If his state had remained in the Union, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Lee leading the forces into the Deep South to quickly end the rebellion, rather than the opposite. In that event, he rather than Grant might have been hailed as the military savior of the Union. How different history might have been if Virginia had stayed.
1. Long before slavery became a flashpoint for sectional division, the North and South were already generating intense animosity over free trade. The North wanted high tariffs on British and French goods so its manufacturing sector could develop free of international competition. This, however, significantly raised the price of goods and equipment for the South, which viewed the tariffs as a tool the North intended to use to obtain economic ascendancy over the South. This led directly to South Carolina’s unilateral attempt to nullify the national tariff in 1832. The crisis was headed off only when Pres. Andrew Jackson threatened to send federal troops there to enforce the tariff, while getting Congress to agree at the same time to make it less onerous. But sectional bitterness remained.
2. Political conflict over slavery intensified with the acquisition of massive new territories in 1848 after the Mexican War. Would that territory be free or slave? But John Brown’s raid on the Harpers’ Ferry federal arsenal to provoke a slave revolt in 1859 took the sectional conflict to a whole new level. When abolitionists in the North subsequently called on slaves to massacre Southerners, many fence-sitters there felt the point of no return had been reached.
3. Even then, public sentiment on secession still was almost evenly divided in the Southern states. In fact, in late 1860 and early 1861, the votes for/against secession convention delegates ran close to 50/50 splits in some Southern states.
4. In January 1861, Stephen Douglas unsuccessfully proposed in Congress a last gasp national referendum on a constitutional amendment in which the voters would declare their intention to restore the old Missouri Compromise of 1820. That compromise had kept the peace between the sections from 1820 to 1850 by permitting slavery in any new states formed below the 36°30’ parallel (which forms the northern borders of Arkansas and the panhandle of Texas), but banning it in the two-thirds of the territory north of that line.
5. The initial round of Southern states defecting to the Confederacy occurred in the Deep South in December and January 1861 – first by South Carolina, then Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, followed by Texas in February. But then the secessionists actually suffered stunning defeats. Virginia – the critical state – and Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, as well as “border” slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware all refused to leave the Union. Thus in March 1861, the future of the rebellion was in serious doubt.
6. At that point, the only step certain to lead to civil war was military coercion by the North to force the departed Southern states to return to the Union. In fact, one Massachusetts newspaper wrote: “The idea that free states intend to march armies into the seceding states to force their return to loyalty seems too monstrous for serious denial.” But after Fort Sumter was fired on and surrendered, that is exactly what Lincoln ordered – calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to invade the South and preserve the Union.
7. Lincoln explicitly did not call on these volunteers and initiate the Civil War to end slavery. In 1860, he campaigned on a platform to preserve the Union, but allowing slavery to continue where it existed in the South. He reiterated this position again in his First Inaugural Address as president in March 1861. Abolition of slavery became a specific aim only a year and a half into the war, with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Even then, the proclamation freed only those slaves in the rebelling states, but not in those states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) that had remained loyal to the Union.
8. The immediate precipitating cause of the war was Lincoln’s call for the volunteers. When that happened, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina each changed their minds and decided to join the Confederacy after all, making it much more formidable in both its geographic extent and its military resources. Perhaps most notably, Robert E. Lee, who had pledged to follow whatever Virginia did, declined command of the Union volunteers and withdrew to Virginia. If his state had remained in the Union, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Lee leading the forces into the Deep South to quickly end the rebellion, rather than the opposite. In that event, he rather than Grant might have been hailed as the military savior of the Union. How different history might have been if Virginia had stayed.
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