Some dispute the role of slavery as the central cause of the war, but
we remain prisoners of the past if we do not face this fact
Eric Foner
Monday December 20 2010
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/20/american-civil-war-usa
One hundred fifty years ago, on 20 December 1860, the South Carolina
secession convention officially dissolved [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/
2010/12/19/105532/150-years-later-s-carolina-celebration.html] the
state's connection with the American Union. The secession of South
Carolina set in motion a crisis that culminated in four years of civil
war, the preservation of national unity and the destruction of the
largest slave system the modern world has known.
Contemporaries had little doubt about the reasons for secession. With
no support in the slave states, the Republican party had just elected
Abraham Lincoln president on a platform committed to halting slavery's
westward expansion. Lincoln himself had called slavery a "monstrous
injustice" and had declared that the nation could not exist
indefinitely half-slave and half-free. In explaining its decision,
South Carolina's convention warned that the ultimate result of
Republican rule would be "the emancipation of the slaves of the
South".
Within a few months, 10 slave states had joined South Carolina in the
Confederate States of America. Its founders forthrightly announced
that they had created a slaveholders' republic. The new nation's
"cornerstone", declared Confederate Vice-President Alexander H
Stephens [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_H._Stephens], was the
principle "that slavery, subordination to the superior race" was the
"natural and moral condition" of black Americans.
Four years later, in his second inaugural address [http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_second_inaugural_address], Lincoln
would affirm that slavery was "somehow" the cause of the war. This is
now an unquestioned axiom among historians. Yet, many Americans today
resist this basic truth. They insist that differences over other
issues ? states rights, the tariff, constitutional interpretation ?
led the nation into war.
What does it mean to say that slavery caused secession and the war?
Not that the South was evil and the North moral. In his second
inaugural, Lincoln spoke of "American", not southern, slavery ? his
point being the complicity of the entire nation in the sin of slavery.
Few northerners demanded immediate abolition. Abolitionists were a
small and beleaguered minority. Sectional differences certainly
existed over economic policy, political power and other matters. But
in the absence of slavery, it is inconceivable that these differences
would have led to war.
Rather, it means that by 1860, two distinct societies had emerged
within the United States, one resting on slave labour, the other on
free. This development led inexorably to divergent conceptions of the
role of slavery in the nation's future. Northern Republicans did not
call for direct action against slavery where it already existed ? the
constitution, in any event, made such action impossible. But Lincoln
spoke of putting slavery on the road to "ultimate extinction", and he
and other Republicans saw his election and a halt to the institution's
expansion as a first step in this direction. Secessionists saw it this
way as well.
A century and a half after the civil war, many white Americans,
especially in the South, seem to take the idea that slavery caused the
war as a personal accusation. The point, however, is not to condemn
individuals or an entire region of the country, but to face candidly
the central role of slavery in our national history. Only in this way
can Americans arrive at a deeper, more nuanced understanding of our
past.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010
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