The chief and immediate
cause of the war was slavery. Southern states, including the 11 states that
formed the Confederacy, depended on slavery to support their economy.
Southerners used slave labor to produce crops, especially cotton. Although
slavery was illegal in the Northern states, only a small proportion of
Northerners actively opposed it. The main debate between the North and the
South on the eve of the war was whether slavery should be permitted in the
Western territories recently acquired during the Mexican War (1846-1848),
including New Mexico, part of California, and Utah. Opponents of slavery were
concerned about its expansion, in part because they did not want to compete
against slave labor.
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A
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Economic
and Social Factors
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By 1860, the North and
the South had developed into two very different regions. Divergent social,
economic, and political points of view, dating from colonial times, gradually
drove the two sections farther and farther apart. Each tried to impose its
point of view on the country as a whole. Although compromises had kept the
Union together for many years, in 1860 the situation was explosive. The
election of Abraham Lincoln as president was viewed by the South as a threat to
slavery and ignited the war.
During the first half
of the 19th century, economic differences between the regions also increased.
By 1860 cotton was the chief crop of the South, and it represented 57 percent
of all U.S. exports. The profitability of cotton, known as King Cotton,
completed the South’s dependence on the plantation system and its essential
component, slavery.
The North was by then
firmly established as an industrial society. Labor was needed, but not slave
labor. Immigration was encouraged. Immigrants from Europe worked in factories,
built the railroads of the North, and settled the West. Very few settled in the
South.
The South, resisting industrialization,
manufactured little. Almost all manufactured goods had to be imported. Southerners
therefore opposed high tariffs, or taxes that were placed on imported goods and
increased the price of manufactured articles. The manufacturing economy of the
North, on the other hand, demanded high tariffs to protect its own products
from cheap foreign competition.
Before the Civil War,
the federal government’s chief source of revenue was the tariff. There were few
other sources of revenue. For example, neither personal nor corporate income
taxes existed. The tariff paid for most improvements made by the federal
government, such as roads, turnpikes, and canals. To keep tariffs low, the
South preferred to do without these improvements.
The expanding Northwest
Territory, which was made up of the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, was far from the markets
for its grain and cattle. It needed such internal improvements for survival,
and so supported the Northeast’s demands for high tariffs. In return, the
Northeast supported most federally financed improvements in the Northwest
Territory.
As a result, although
both the South and the West were agricultural, the West allied itself with the
Northern, rather than the Southern, point of view. Economic needs sharpened
sectional differences, adding to the interregional hostility.
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B
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Political
Factors
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In the early days of the
United States, loyalty to one’s state often took precedence over loyalty to
one’s country. A New Yorker or a Virginian would refer to his state as “my
country.” The Union was considered a “voluntary compact” entered into by
independent, sovereign states for as long as it served their purpose to be so
joined. In the nation’s early years, neither North nor South had any strong
sense of the permanence of the Union. New England, for example, once thought of
seceding, or leaving the Union, because the War of 1812 cut off trade
with England.
As Northern and Southern
patterns of living diverged, their political ideas also developed marked
differences. The North needed a central government to build an infrastructure
of roads and railways, protect its complex trading and financial interests, and
control the national currency. The South depended much less on the federal
government than did other regions, and Southerners therefore felt no need to
strengthen it. In addition, Southern patriots feared that a strong central
government might interfere with slavery.
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