CAUSES OF CIVIL WAR OUTLINE

--Road to War--

I.               Sectional Differences:

A.    The Breadbasket West:

St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Chicago

Chicago:          1833: 150 houses

                                                                        1847: 17,000 people

                                                                        1860: 109,000 people

B.    The Urbanizing North

1820: 6.1%

1860: 20%

1860:  110,274 industrial

establishments

(128,300 in entire country)

1860 Northern City Population

1.         New York City - 813,669

2.         Philadelphia - 565,529

3.         Brooklyn - 266,661

4.         Baltimore - 212,418

5.         Boston - 177,840

6.         Cincinnati - 161,044

7.         St. Louis - 160,773

8.         Chicago - 112,172

9.         Buffalo - 81,129

10.      Newark - 71,941

C.   The Oligarchic South

--1860: 5.6 million whites

--1700 own around 100 slaves

--46,274 own around 20 slaves

--slave population was 3.84 million

--26,000 free blacks in the South

--36% of families in South own

slaves in 1830

--25% of families in South own

slaves in 1860

--Traveling the 1,460 miles from Baltimore to

New Orleans in 1850 meant riding five different railroads, two stage coaches, and two steamboats.

--By 1850, 20 percent of adult white southerners

could not read or write, compared to a national figure of 8 percent.

DO THESE DIFFERENCES MATTER?

                                    Wilmot Proviso (1846)

II.  COMPROMISE OF 1850

            1845: 15-13   (Texas and Florida)

            1846: 15-14 (Iowa)

            1848: 15-15 (Wisconsin)

1.     Fugitive Slave Act

2.     Abolish slave trade in D.C.

3.     Cali in as Free State

4.     Popular Sovereignty in new territories

5.     Resolved boundary dispute btw. Texas

and New Mexico

III. The Trouble Escalates:

A. Transcontinental Railroad

--Stephen Douglas

            B. Kansas-Nebraska Act

            C. “Bleeding Kansas” (1854-1858)

                                    --New England Emigrant Aid Company

                                    --“Beecher’s Bibles”

                                    --John Brown

                                    --Pottawatomie Creek (May 24, 1856)

            D. The Caning of Sumner (1856)

SOUTHERN RESPONSE:

Louisville, Kentucky, Journal (28 May 1856)

The assault of Brooks upon Sumner in the Senate Chamber has created a prodigious excitement throughout the North. The assault is deeply to be regretted, because in the first place it was a very great outrage in itself, and because in the second place it will, especially if not promptly and properly punished at Washington, greatly strengthen the anti-slavery and anti- Southern feeling in the Northern States and thus help the Black Republican party.

Columbia, South Carolina, South Carolinian (27 May 1856)

We were not mistaken in asserting, on Saturday last, that the Hon. Preston S. Brooks had not only the approval, but the hearty congratulations of the people of South Carolina for his summary chastisement of the abolitionist Sumner.

Immediately upon the reception of the news on Saturday last, a most enthusiastic meeting was convened in the town of Newberry…The meeting voted him a handsome gold-headed cane, which we saw yesterday, on its way to Washington, entrusted to the care of Hon. B. Simpson.

Here in Columbia, a handsome sum, headed by the Governor of the State, has been subscribed, for the purpose of presenting Mr. Brooks with a splendid silver pitcher, goblet and stick, which will be conveyed to him in a few days by the hands of gentlemen delegated for that purpose. In Charleston similar testimonials have been ordered by the friends of Mr. Brooks.

And, to add the crowning glory to the good work, the slaves of Columbia have already a handsome subscription, and will present an appropriate token of their regard to him who has made the first practical issue for their preservation and protection in their rights and enjoyments as the happiest laborers on the face of the globe.

IV. On the Verge of War:

            A. Dred Scott

An Excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery.

Washington recounts a conversation with an elderly black man who said he had been born in Virginia and sold into Alabama in 1845. I asked him how many were sold at the same time. He said, “There were five of us: myself and brother and three mules.”

B. Panic of 1857

C. Lincoln-Douglas Debate for Senate

                        (Rep.)                          (Dem.)

         

August 21, 1858 (first debate)

I would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro.

 I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the Free States and the Slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall. (Douglas)

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.

There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

A house divided against itself cannot stand…I believe that this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. (Lincoln)

            D. John Brown's Raid

            E. The Election of Lincoln

                        Lincoln (Rep.)

                        Douglas (Dem.)   {border and North}

                        Breckinridge (Dem.)  {South}

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: March 4, 1861

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 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."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Fort Sumter, the first official “battle” of the Civil War, would occur a month later  (April 12, 1861)

…and what’s the point of talking about all of this?

628,000 Americans died in the Civil War (670,000)

…exceeds the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through the present.

            We don’t declare wars anymore…and that is dangerous.

William Tecumseh Sherman

“My aim was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, follow them to their innermost recesses and make them fear and dread us. War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it’ll all be over…War is all Hell.”