The "cause" of the war was the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Recall Lincoln's First Inaugural address: 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.


The reasons behind that attack are complex in the extreme. Certainly slavery was an issue but 95% of southerners were hard-scrabble farmers who owned no slaves. Of the remainder, most owned only one or two. It was the aristocracy (the planter class) which owned the bulk. How to explain the eager participation by the vast non-slaveholding majority is the problem.

(May 28, 2011 at 6:31 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The "cause" of the war was the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Recall Lincoln's First Inaugural address: 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.


The reasons behind that attack are complex in the extreme. Certainly slavery was an issue but 95% of southerners were hard-scrabble farmers who owned no slaves. Of the remainder, most owned only one or two. It was the aristocracy (the planter class) which owned the bulk. How to explain the eager participation by the vast non-slaveholding majority is the problem.

I think the best explanation for this was that, the attitudes of the rich conservative men aren't too different from the attitudes many would have expressed at the time of Lincoln's election, and, while there was no Fox News, there would certainly be a lot of politicians with connections to that class who would have wanted to not alienate their friends.

I think it should be added that IMO it was also a bit of an issue involving state's power verses federal power. Not much has changed when it comes to those two forces butting heads as even today people argue for both sides. Of course, it's not the sole reason, as war broke out due to many factors, but definitely an issue from my stand point.

Slavery itself was a complex issue. It could easily be argued that it was in its death throes by 1860. In the north as in the south small farmers did not employ slave labor. Slavery was abolished on a piecemeal basis in the north but it never had the agricultural base that it did in the south. However, if slave labor were economically efficient I have little doubt that it would have been employed more extensively in the north's factories. The waves of immigrants pouring in after 1848 depressed the labor market and employers were only responsible for the wages paid and could low-ball that as much as they liked. Slaves, expensive to buy with international slave trading outlawed, had to be fed and housed. The Uncle Tom's Cabin image of cruel slave owners abusing slaves is picturesque and great propaganda but slaves were important economic assets. How many people buy a car and beat it with a baseball bat? The truth of the matter is that in 1860 if you were a slave on a plantation or a factory worker living six to a room in a fire-trap tenement life pretty much sucked.

Still, I've read a lot of CW soldier's journals and diaries and listened to their songs. What is clear is that slavery was not a big topic of discussion on either side. The union soldiers were fighting to stop "treason." The Rebs were fighting for their "rights." What "rights" the Rebs thought they were being deprived of is the basis of the question.

It is interesting to note in many history books here in the States that the Civil War . . . uh . . . The War Between the States, was fought over "State's Rights."

They don't mention, however, the specific right being fought over was the "right" to own people.

Puts me in mind of the Texas school board debating how their history texts should be rewritten, so that the discussion of "the slave trade" is changed to "the Atlantic triangle trade." While both terms have been used to describe that trade, they are also both politically charged. "Slave trade" does not accurately reflect that crops and manufactured goods were traded, and "triangle trade" hides the fact that slaves were traded.

Ownership is not a question of legality but of how defensible a claim is. Small kingdom of Tipotya in a hyper-rich valley surrounded by 4 giant powers claims to own the land of the valley. Superpowerful countries around Tipotya test the claim, and find it lacking. The land is now claimed by Yuchaka, who has build walls around the valley and stationed an army there. The other three great powers test this claim, and come to the understanding that it is Yuchaka's land.

People are infact owned by other people, and by governments, and by corporations, and other things more powerful than they whom protect their claim. There are various means of protecting a thing that is owned, and various means of professing that claim, but all ownership is, at the root: that which is defended well enough to not be under continuous attack.

A fringe colony changing hands on a monthly basis is owned by nobody until it is defended to the point it is not worth attacking. A monopoly over a market is owning that market (As none dare challenge the power of the monopoly). The drug-addicted prostitute is held in an employer's power by numerous methods that similarly affect common wage slaves.

People are things, and things can be claimed, and claims can be defended.

Edit: still moody, as you can see. I demonstrated very recently to the entire galaxy that it was mine. Then I made a law (which I, owning the galaxy, could do) that everyone was to serve me from that day forth. The distaste of my peers was evident during the election... but I, owning the galaxy, took the polls by storm. The votes may or may not have been rigged. -Your new Meklar Empress, Aerzia Saerules Arktuos.

Oh, fuck, Dean. You had to start a history discussion. At least it isn't another discussion about the Constitution.

War is always complicated. There is never one reason to go to war. Lincoln was not a stupid man by any stretch. He would not have viewed war as an option if slavery or even state's rights were the only issues on the table. You, Min and a few others have outlined every issue that was at hand fairly well. However, I would like to add that the cultures of the North and South were very different. However subtle the forces are, cultures that are that different will always find reasons for fighting. Now, I am not getting into details, but merely talking about human nature. The southerners were different than northerners and vice versa. They were finding reasons to piss each other off for decades before the war began. That kind of nonsense always escalates, enters into politics and then becomes war, without proper resolution. There could be no proper resolution. The idea of a part of the south separating from the union was as old as the union itself. It had to come to a head and it did.

Oh, and the British, Canadians and Indians weren't giving the rabblerousers of 19th century United States enough to bitch about anymore. They needed something to slake their thirst.

Shell B Wrote:hat kind of nonsense always escalates, enters into politics and then becomes war, without proper resolution. There could be no proper resolution. The idea of a part of the country separating from the union was as old as the union itself. It had to come to a head and it did.

War is a very proper resolution... and it's so very formal. I don't even bother to declare a state of war when I attack people, so you can see that I totally lack propriety.

I don't care for unions that are bound only by contract... and I don't consider america to be any sort of federation that has come together for the time being for mutual gain. It is simply one being with the minor differences one would expect in any other country that controls much territory. United states is only in the way they organize these little differences, it's america

Shell B Wrote:hat kind of nonsense always escalates, enters into politics and then becomes war, without proper resolution. There could be no proper resolution. The idea of a part of the country separating from the union was as old as the union itself. It had to come to a head and it did.

And it also shows that when state governments, or their people, came to value an ideal over the nation's unity and its Constitution, they were willing to kill each other over it.

Amongst other justifications for the war, the Book of Philemon was used by both sides to justify the war.