The American Civil War
INTRODUCTION
This is not a military history of the American Civil War. Instead, it tries to answer three related questions:
Was the war inevitable in 1861?
Could it have been avoided?
What were the alternatives to war?
BACKGROUND
America has a peculiar political structure. Major decisions such as abortion, gun laws and legalizing drugs are often made by states, not the national government. The Constitution does not say anything about whether slavery should be abolished or remain legal. So slavery would be legal and protected in the major cotton-producing states. Congress could pass a law outlawing slavery but it couldn’t be enforced in the slave states.
In 1861, southern cotton production was important to the northern economy. Cotton textile production was the largest industry in the north. New York City handled most of the distribution of the cotton crop and much of the financing of exports to Europe. Cotton was also by far America’s largest export. (For more on the economic integration of the three regional economies of the United States, see my post American History, 1790-1860.
So, in the foreseeable future, slavery was probably safe from legal abolition. But not from criticism and political pressure. There was increased agitation to abolish slavery.
THE SOUTH’S ECONOMIC POSITION IN 1860
The South didn’t need new land in new states to produce more cotton, although many southerners didn’t believe it. There was much unused and underutilized land in the existing cotton states. Southern agricultural publications advocated better farming techniques to increase output per acre and use the land more productively.
It was very likely that the high growth rate in the southern production and sale of cotton would slow down. Global demand was already high. One reason the South had spectacular growth rates in the past was that the South could fill the increased demand nationally and globally. Besides more land and the natural increase in the number of slaves, much of the slave population was moved from the upper south, tobacco-growing regions, such as Virginia and Maryland, and the cities and towns in the South to the cotton-growing regions. This internal migration was almost over; there were fewer slaves left in urban areas.
From an economic point of view, the South would continue to benefit from its dominant position of supplying the type of cotton needed by cotton textile mills. There was room for expansion, but not at the spectacular growth rates in the past. Both supply and demand would probably grow slower. Growing cotton in the South would probably remain profitable. In summary, the South would continue to prosper even with the status quo.
Growing cotton was still an expanding and profitable business (see the definitive economic analysis, Robert Fogel’s Time on the Cross).
1859 saw a record-size cotton crop. The crop in 1860 was even bigger. It was profitable to use slaves to produce more cotton. The South could reasonably expect a continuation of the trend of the natural increase in the number of slaves and growing demand for its cotton, even if future growth rates would be slower than in the past.
THE SOUTH’S POLITICAL FUTURE
Slavery could only be abolished by a constitutional amendment. This could not happen in 1861 because there were enough slave states to block approval.
When the South seceded in 1861, there were 34 states. To pass a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, ¾ of the states, or 26 states, would have to approve the amendment. There were only 19 states without slavery and 15 with, more than the nine states needed to defeat the amendment. Slavery was safe. So why did some of the slave states secede from the union?
Between 1820 and 1850, politicians crafted compromises to preserve southern political power. The basic tool was that there would be an equal number of slave states and free states, meaning equal representation in the Senate. But continuing western migration of Americans into the Louisiana Territory indicated that most if not all of the new states carved out of the territories would be non-slave states.
Some southern politicians worried that there would be more “free soil” (no slavery) states in the future. As many as ten new states might be admitted to the Union over the next 20 or 30 years. None of these states would have the natural environment needed to grow cotton. All of them would probably be “free soil” states. Then there would be enough states to pass an anti-slavery amendment.
Even if this didn’t happen, the slave states would have diminishing power at the national level. A southerner would probably not be elected president and the South would have a declining minority of members in Congress in the future. Non-slave states would dictate domestic economic policies and critical tariff policies. They would favor industrialization and the expansion of western agriculture.
Slavery might be threatened with legal abolition in 20 or 30 years as more non-slavery states were admitted to the union. Southern states could try to secede in the future but ratio of resources would be even worse. The wide gap between the white population of the North and the South would become even wider. It could not be filled with immigrants. European immigrants were reluctant to go to southern states because good land wasn’t available; large numbers of white southerners, including Abraham Lincoln’s family, were moving out of the South looking for better farmland. Unskilled immigrants would find few jobs because of a lack of industrial jobs and competition from slaves.
The North would continue to increase industrial and food production, and the railroad network, widening the gap in total output and material needed to fight a war.
The South would be at a worse disadvantage in terms of relative resources to fight the war. The South would be more likely to lose a war in 1881 than in 1861.
IF SLAVERY WAS SAFE FROM ABOLITION IN 1861, WHY DID THE SOUTH GO TO WAR?
If slavery was constitutionally abolished, it was likely that most former slaves would remain in the South as free workers. Cotton production would continue, with former slaves as farm workers or sharecroppers. But this was not certain. In addition, slaves were the largest source of wealth in the South. The total value of slaves was greater than the total value of the land. Slave owners would be much poorer in terms of wealth. Debts incurred in buying and maintaining slaves remained. Equally important, owning slaves provided status and power, particularly to the large slave owners who dominated local politics. Owning slaves and growing cotton was the basis of the southern society.
Even if southern slaveowners weren’t looking at longer-run trends, there were immediate reasons to be worried.
Political pressure in the North to abolish slavery was getting stronger in the North. Anti-slavery sentiment rose in the 1850s because of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dred Scott case, publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 (an abolitionist, anti-slavery novel focused on the horrors of slavery and the treatment of human beings as property), the violence in “bleeding” Kansas, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry to seize guns and presumably start a slave rebellion. In reaction, anger and fear ran high in the South.
The trigger of the secession and the war was the election of Abraham Lincoln, representing the new Republican party. Many leaders of the party were abolitionists.
Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery. But his political position was that he would leave slavery alone in the existing slave states but that no new states would be admitted as slave states. This was a more moderate position than that of many Republican politicians. Even so, the South saw this as a threat to their expansion, their political power, and possibly their long-run survival as slave states.
WHY DID THE NORTH GO TO WAR?
More people in the North saw the conflict, and later the war, as a moral crusade, as indicated by the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The conflict between liberty and slavery could no longer be ignored. There would be less chance of negotiations or political compromises than in the past.
According to Abraham Lincoln, the North went to war to preserve the Union. In other words, when a state was admitted into the Union, it could not leave. But why not just let the Southern states go? It would greatly weaken the Union. Other states might secede for other reasons. New England states talked about seceding during the War of 1812. There was the danger of the dissolution of the Union. Like during the years right after the Revolution, there would be a very weak national government. The separate states might be at the mercy of European countries.
Or each other. There were many disputes among the states before and after the Revolution. They continued. There would be no national mechanism to resolve disputes. States might go to war with each other.
The United States would now have a powerful new potential enemy along its borders in continental America. The whole point of fighting the Revolution and buying the lands in the Louisiana Purchase was to eliminate threats to the new republic. England, heavily dependent on Southern cotton for its most important industry, might form an alliance with the South. (During the Civil War, many powerful political and economic groups advocated recognizing the Confederacy.)
The economic integration of the three economies of the United States might be weakened or shattered. A Southern government would control the Mississippi River and many of its tributaries. Both countries could put up tariff and other trade barriers against the other. The South might ban the sale of cotton to northern cotton mills. The North could retaliate.
Another economic option for an independent South might have been building cotton mills in the South to capture more of the value-added from growing cotton and competing with the northern mills. This began to happen in the 1890s.
ALTERNATIVES
- · Increased national and international pressure.
- · Industrialize.
- · Have the federal government buy out the slaveholders.
- · Free the slaves.
After the 1880s, the U.S. would have been the only country in the Americas with slavery. Brazil was the other country. But slavery was unprofitable in Brazil as the country moved away from plantation crops. Slavery slowly faded away. This was not possible in South – the whole economy and society depended on one plantation crop produced by slaves.
Maybe international pressure could be brought to bear if alternative sources of cotton expanded. But this was unlikely. The South filled almost of the global demand for their type of cotton, which was the kind used by most cotton mills. Southerners knew the world (and the North) needed their cotton. They were the OPEC of the 19th century.
Slave owners didn’t even consider any alternative use of slaves. This was outside of their mental framework. South did not consider industrializing or any alternative investment to slaves. Putting up factories was what Yankees did. The whole culture was against it.
Another alternative was for the federal government to buy out the slave owners. When England outlawed slavery in all its possessions, it compensated the slave owners in the Caribbean with long-term bonds. The U.S. could have done the same thing except the cost would have been higher. Voters in non-slave states would probably have to pay most of the cost (higher taxes and fees) and might not have been happy about it.
What would it have cost? There were about 4 million slaves in 1860. The average market value might have been as high as $500/slave. So, the cost was about $2 billion. The market value of the total output of the U.S. in 1860 was about $4 billion. If the government issued bonds, at say 3%, the total yearly interest cost would have been about $60 million. This was higher than the government’s total yearly revenue. And over a long period of time, the government would also have to pay out the $2 billion. Maybe some of it would come out of higher future tax revenue. But most of it probably from the sale of new bonds. The United States had a long history of reducing federal debt.
The South did not consider another alternative. Free their slaves. It was illegal in the South to talk about it or even to possess anti-slavery publications. Both the Methodist and Baptist churches split over the issue of slavery; there was little moral or religious condemnation of slavery in the South. And it was illegal to free slaves in most slave states.
As it turned out, this is what happened after the Civil War. Ten years later, the South was producing as much cotton without slaves as before the war. But the white landowners could still exploit black labor. How? Many of the former slaves stayed on the plantations and worked for wages. Or sharecropping. There were no local stores. The planters established stores and charged their workers high prices. Most workers went into debt and couldn’t leave the plantations.
ADDENDUM: FIGHTING THE WAR TO SAVE SLAVERY
The South should have learned the main lesson of the American Revolution. The longer the war went on, the better the chance the North would have given up. The South fought mostly a defensive war. But the South’s main general Robert E. Lee was aggressive. He invaded the North in 1863 and lost the battle of Gettysburg. Combined with the loss of Vicksburg, (the North now controlled the Mississippi River and New Orleans, and was in a position to invade the deep South), the war was lost as long as Lincoln was president. But many in the North were appalled at the human cost of the war or were tired of it. Lincoln almost lost the election of 1864 to an opponent willing to discuss the end to the war. The South fought on. Why? Because by then there was little chance for negotiations. More people in the North saw the war as a moral crusade to end slavery. There would be no negotiations or political compromises as in the past. The attitudes hardened on both sides as the war produced huge casualties. It was a fight to the end.
The South knew it had two choices - independence (keeping slaves) or being dictated to by the North (abolishing slavery).
No one thought of the cost of the war. Southerners thought they were going to win the war quickly and preserve slavery. But 200,000 Southerners lost their lives; many more were seriously wounded. Much property was destroyed. (See the movie Gone with the Wind and the burning of Atlanta. In the movie, they burned down the set for King Kong.) The South couldn’t sell cotton to raise money because of the Northern naval blockade during the war. It took over 10 years to recover.
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For the background on the contentions in this post, see A New Nation: America from 1789-1860
For posts on American colonial and early national history, see
For posts on American economic history, see
The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America
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