Blog #118 – Two different takes on the causes of the Civil War
There has been a lot of time and money and energy spent talking about the causes of the Civil War ever since the guns stopped firing in April 1865. And judging by the historiography, American historians have viewed the causes in a different light depending upon the time period in which they lived in. One of the main reasons why there has been such interest in this topic is because the war set Americans vs. Americans and was, in one way, a fight over the future of the country. Were we going to remain an agriculture-based economy (think Jefferson) or were we going to keep up with the times and become more industrial? Another issue at stake was the status of African Americans in this country – would they stay or be sent back to Africa? Would slavery and second-class citizenship be their continued status or would they share in the bounty of American freedom?
Historians writing about the conflict soon after the war tended to be Northerners who blamed an aggressive slave conspiracy that wanted to spread the institution all across America. Southern historians saw the conflict as a moral one in which the North instituted an unconstitutional strategy of making the South economically subservient to the North. A third group tended to blame the politicians of the antebellum era who could not reach compromises like had been done in the past. President James Buchanan and Senator Stephen Douglas are their usual targets.
By the 1890s, a Nationalist school of history arose, sparked by America’s emergence as a world power economically and politically. One particular historian, James Ford Rhodes, wrote that slavery was the primary cause, where the South fought the war to extend slavery and that the war was an “irrepressible conlfict”. However, he didn’t see Southern slave owners as hideous monsters and in some ways blamed the cotton gin for making slavery become more entrenched in the South. Slavery, in essence, became a burden that 1860 slaveowners had inherited and some thing that they couldn’t completely control. Nationalist historians tended to focus also more on the outcomes of the war – American industry exploded after the war, a more powerful federal government emerged, and we became an imperialist nation starting in 1893.
The next group of historians, writing in the 1920s and 30s, was called the Progressive School and was influenced by the ill social effects of run-amuck industrialism and uneven distribution of wealth in the country. Charles and Mary Beard were two of the most influential of this school, and they saw the war as a “social cataclysm” in which “the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy in the South.” This school tended to focus more on the economic causes of the war instead of slavery, which fit well with some very racist historians writing at the time who portrayed the South as a land of chivalrous planters with their pathetically helpless and loyal slaves – by contrast the North were nasty, profit-driven capitalists trying to destroy the honor and tradition of the South.
Revisionist historians, writing in the 1930s and 40s, saw the war as an insufferable evil, regardless of causes. The political leaders were to blame for not taking advantage of alternatives that could have saved the nation. They thought that the war could have been avoided, and that the politicians had deliberately set apart the North and South during 1840 – 1860 as people who were both trying to preserve their culture and way of life. James G. Randall called these politicians the “blundering generation”.
Starting in the 1960s, newer historians started reevaluating all of these previous approaches and started to synthesize them together and not focusing on just one cause. Prominent historians like Michael Holt, Eric Foner (the author of a competing APUSH textbook), James McPherson, Manisha Sinha all mashed these causes together and reformulated the causes of the war together. Some focused on an ideological conflict – whether slavery or economics – that primarily caused the war. During this time, we also see more women and African American historians with their own takes on the war as the academic world becomes more diversified.
So, when you think about what primarily caused the Civil War, there is a lot to choose from. Slavery? Economics? States’ rights? Clash of cultures? Terrible politicians? Westward expansion?
I think this Venn diagram kinda shows how that maybe all of them interlock together. However, that’s not our job today. What I am asking you to do today is to compare two videos. One takes the strong stance that slavery was the main cause, while the other dissects that argument.
The following short film discusses unequivocally that slavery was the main / primary cause of the war. It is presented by the lead history teacher at the West Point Academy, Colonel Ty Seidule, and is produced by Prager U.
This video, produced by social studies teacher, Tom Richey, who is from South Carolina. His film is a direct rebuttal of the Prager U film.
After watching both videos, answer the following questions:
- Who do you think has the better argument about the Civil War? Why? Provide examples from the films.
- Do you think either man has something motivating them to take their position? If so, what? How do you think this motivation shaped their opinions?
