The Civil War
This conflict was between two groups of American states, the Union and the Confederacy.
The Confederacy lost this conflict.
The confederacy was a group of eleven states that formally seceded from the union:
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- North Carolina
-
South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Virginia
President Lincoln would not recognize this secession as valid, and in April, 1861, war began.
This was fought in large part over issues relating to slavery in American states. There were other serious issues as well. The actual secession of the southern states provided the political capital required to instantiate the war.
The Roots of the Civil War
The roots of the War Between The States can be traced to the political philosophical differences of the founding fathers and the subsequent burdens of taxation imposed on the South by the Northern States.
"Why is it that the South is perfectly willing for the North to secede, while the reverse is true of the North as respects the South? There must be a reason for this, as there is for everything else and the reason is plain enough... They know that the South is the main prop and support of the federal system... They know that it is the (Unknown Built-in or Squiggly: tag="southern" data="States'") import trade that draws from the people's pockets $60 million or $70 million per annum in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests... They know that they can plunder and pillage the South, as long as they are in the same Union with us... They are enraged at the prospect of being spoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater and gusto." (Editorial, "The New Orleans Daily Crescent," January, 1861).
The war with England had rendered it impossible for Americans to purchase foreign goods, giving rise to primitive means of manufacturing goods for themselves. Making only coarse homespun goods at first, the factories began to multiply and utilize improved machinery. They were built mostly in the New England States where rivers furnished water power and the scarcity of fertile land made agriculture relatively unprofitable.
Trade resumed at the end of the war and English goods began to flow into American homes. Cotton from the South was sent to English mills where workers labored for much lower wages than those in the Northern States. Northern manufacturers turned to Congress for help and the result was the enactment of a Protective Tariff which raised prices on English goods sold in America. Planned by Alexander Hamilton, this tariff gave an economic advantage to the North at the expense of the South. Almost entirely agricultural, the Southern States objected to the tariff because it compelled them to pay more for their goods. Declaring it unconstitutional, they said it bestowed benefits upon one section of the country to the injury of another.
When Congress passed a bill in 1828 for the protection of raw manufacturing materials such as hemp and wool, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina bitterly opposed it. This bill brought more taxes into Northern coffers at the expense of the South and ultimately led South Carolina to invoke the doctrine of Nullification. That doctrine held that states had the right to declare null and void any federal law they deemed unconstitutional and not in their best interests. The first notable expression of that doctrine was in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1799.
The division over the tariffs brought about a clash between federalists and anti-federalists. The anti-federalists held that the Union was a compact of states which had voluntarily formed it and existed only with the consent of the several states. As they had consented to form the compact, so they had an equal right to withdraw from it. In 1830 Senator Hayne of South Carolina advocated the doctrine of states’ rights with powerful eloquence. He said each state had a right to resist, within her own borders, any act of Congress that was a violation of the Constitution. His position was opposed by Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster who denied the independent status of the states that was recognized by the treaty with England that ended the War for Independence.
"Article 1. - His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof." (British-American Treaty Ending American Revolution).
Invoking the doctrine of Nullification in 1832, a convention of delegates met in Charleston, South Carolina and passed the Nullification Ordinance. Declaring the Tariff Act unconstitutional, the ordinance pronounced it null and void in South Carolina and said duties would not be paid in that state.
President Andrew Jackson reacted to the ordinance by instructing the customhouse officer at Charleston to collect the duties and, in the real first act of the War Between The States, sent an armed vessel to enforce his order. That brought a threat of secession from South Carolina and a compromise was offered by Senator Henry Clay to gradually reduce the tariff. Jackson acquiesced and secession was temporarily averted. But the tariffs continued until April 1861.
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