The origins of the Civil War starts with the existence of slavery in the South and its abolition in the North. This key issue feeds into the development of: differing economic systems and priorities; differing cultures and attitudes; differing political views and stand-points.  Whilst it is clear that differences and tensions emerged between the North and South it is also important to remember that there were in fact  ‘many Norths’ and ‘many Souths’  meaning that neither the North or the South in themselves were homogeneous or unified.  The South was not unified, as for example only 1 in 5 owned slaves and groups such as the farmers in the north of Georgia resented the power of the planter class.  In the North, abolitionists were a minority and views on slavery varied greatly, partly because many aspects of the Northern economy were dependent on Southern production of cotton.

However, there was growing mistrust between the North and the South, with both sides suspecting the other of trying to gain political dominance and both seeing their own economic systems and ways of life as being superior.
 

1. What are 'states' rights'?

The USA has a federal system of government.  Federalism is central to the question of ‘states rights’ which became a key issue in the origins of the civil war.  During this period a system of dual federalism (layer cake Federalism) was in place.

Starter:

The following video gives a succinct overview of how dual federalism worked; note the Venn diagram here showing the differences between the powers of central government and those of the states.

Task One

ATL: Thinking skills

Task Two

ATL: Research and Communication Skills

The issue of how much power should be held by Federal Government and how much should be reserved for the states was a major issue in the early years of the USA and the arguments continued into the build-up to the Civil War.  During this period the call to protect states’ rights increasingly became a focus of the Southern states.  The Nullification Crisis (see below) highlighted a difference between the North and South over states’ rights.  While in the North there was general support for a strong Federal Government in the South there was more support for weaker Federal Government and more autonomy for the individual states.  In the North, Federal Government policies such as infrastructure programs which encouraged railway building as well as tariffs were seen by many as necessary to support US industry.  In the South these same actions were viewed as promoting Northern interests at the expense of Southern interests.

States’ rights is often quoted as a key reason for the division between the North and South and cause of the Civil War.  It is however important to note that what is key here is the question: ‘States’ rights to do what?’ The answer here seems to be ‘right to maintain slavery’.  Earlier divisions over the topic of states’ rights between the Federalists and non-Federalists were not based on a North/ South divide.  As the arguments over slavery and fears of abolitionism grew, states’ rights was seen as a key safeguard of the continuation of slavery and their way of life by many in the South.

Task Three

ATL: Thinking Skills

2. What was the Nullification Crisis?

Painting of John Calhoun, Vice President of the US between 1825 and 1832

Definition of NULLIFICATION

1:  the act of nullifying :  the state of being nullified

2:  the action of a state impeding or attempting to prevent the operation and enforcement within its territory of a law of the United States

The Nullification Crisis took place in 1832-33 and it highlighted the issue over states' rights.

The crisis was a confrontation between South Carolina and President Jackson stemming back to the Tariff Act of 1828. When a new Tariff Act was introduced the South Carolina Legislature voted to nullify the Act and threatened to secede from the Union if the Tariff was imposed. 

Calhoun (vice-President 1825-1832) of South Carolina  was key in the Nullification Crisis.  He claimed that nullification would actually prevent disunion.  Calhoun believed that by allowing states to opt out of laws that were not in their interests, they would be more likely to stay within the Union; laws would not become a source of argument between states or sections as those who did not like the laws could opt out.   South Carolina (and Calhoun) hoped to provide leadership for the South and that the other Southern states would rally behind their stance on the tariffs and a states right to nullify a law.  This hope was not fulfilled.  The rest of the South at this stage showed a degree of mistrust of South Carolina’s efforts at sectional leadership.  (South Carolina would however, many years later, successfully manage to unite the South against the Federal Government.)

The reaction to the South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification which was enacted into law on November 24, 1832 was swift and strong. President Jackson issued a proclamation on nullification:

‘I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.’

Task One

ATL: Thinking skills

President issued The Force Act which authorized the use of military force to prevent any avoidance of the Tariff by South Carolina.

Tensions ran high and for a time it appeared that military conflict between the Federal Government and South Carolina was a real possibility.  Henry Clay, however, intervened and worked out a compromise with Calhoun that led to the lowering of tariffs over the next decade; ‘The Compromise Tariff Act’ of 1833 was accepted by South Carolina.  Conflict was therefore avoided without an embarrassing loss of face from either side.

Task Two

ATL: Thinking skills

Task Three

ATL: Research and communication skills

Task Four

ATL: Research skills

Task Five

ATL: Thinking skills

3. What were the political issues that divided North and South before 1860?

The period from the mid-1830s up until the mid 1850s is often referred to as the ‘Second Party system’ as in this period the Democrats and Whigs competed for power. The Democrats supported the policies of Andrew Jackson while the Whigs opposed them.

Starter:

National political parties at this time were a loose collection of state parties.  The only time they really came together was at national conventions every four years when they chose their Presidential ticket (President and vice President candidates) and set their national platform (set of policies they campaigned on).  The fact that there were two national parties helped maintain unity in the USA as both parties were trying to win votes in both North and South.   Any potential Presidential candidate would need to seek support in both North and South and therefore was unlikely to take a radically pro or anti-stance on slavery or its expansion.

What were the views of the Democrats?

• Opposed to strong Federal Government, advocating as little government intervention as possible. Democrats tended to favour states' rights, arguing that as much as possible should be decided at state rather than Federal level.
• Democrats opposed tariffs, leading to support in the South and also support from poorer immigrants in the Northern cities (in particular from Irish Catholics). 
• The Democrats strongly supported westward expansion, a key issue, notably in Polk’s victory in the Presidential election of 1844.

What were the views of the Whigs?

• The Whigs favoured government intervention to protect American industry.  This took the form of support of tariffs and also government-sponsored internal improvements in building railways and canals.
• The Whigs were seen as the party of business and of the old elites.  While there were slave owners (including leading figures such as Henry Clay) amongst the Southern Whigs, there were also Northern Whigs who supported social reforms such as the abolition of slavery.

Task One

ATL: Thinking skills

Task Two

ATL: Research and Communication

4. What were the economic differences between North and South?

Starter:

What does the following excerpt from a speech by a Texas Senator reveal about the 'southern mentality'?

‘We are an agricultural people….we have no cities- we don’t want them…..we want no manufacturers; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want.

Louis T Wigfall Texas Senator 1861’

Task One

ATL: Self-management skills

• The North was industrializing and saw industry and commerce as the way forward for the economy in the USA.  Ideas such as ‘The American system of manufacturing’ were developed with greater mechanization and the production of standardized interchangeable parts that led to the creation of assembly lines. 
• There was a boom in the railway industry in the North; by 1860 the USA had more railway track than the rest of the world combined.  The majority of this connected Northern cities, industries and ports.
• In agriculture the North embraced new developments with the use of more scientific approaches (use of fertilizers, new crop varieties and crop rotation) and the use of new machinery.  These, along with the opening up of new farm land to the West, saw food production increase four-fold between 1840 and 1860.
• The South clung to its more traditional values and methods.  Mechanisation was seen as a threat to the system of slavery; the negatives of industrialization and urbanization were seen as outweighing the positives.   Whilst the North saw the South as backwards, the South saw 'not modernizing' as a positive choice.
• The growth in demand for cotton brought great wealth to the South.  The prosperity it brought was seen by Southerners as validating their economic system and use of slavery.  Wealth was however not distributed very equally in either the North or South.  In the both North and South the wealthiest 10% of the population held 70% of the sections wealth. 
• The planter class in the South strongly defended slavery which was the basis of their wealth, while the industrialists of the North advocated modernization as the way to economic growth.  While the industrialists invested in new machinery, new factories and new technologies, the planters invested their money in slaves leading to rapid increases in their value.  The fear of losing this wealth was one of the reason why they defended slavery so strongly.
• The South operated a system of slave labour, this removed the need for mechanization.  It also meant that this portion of the labour force lacked the motivation of pay or improving their position.  This led to lower productivity. 
• In the North there was the use of free labour meaning that all workers could strive to improve their lot.  This links to the idea of the ‘American dream’ by which people from humble backgrounds can strive against adversity and gain success, wealth and position.  Abraham Lincoln’s journey from rail splitter to President can be seen as evidence of this.
• There was also free labour in the South; these free workers in many cases supported slavery as they feared the competition for work and falling wages that would follow emancipation.
• In 1800 the majority of Northerners and Southerners worked in agriculture (68% in the North and 82% in the South).  This changed dramatically in the North, with only 40% of the population working in agriculture by 1860.  This is stark contrast to the South where the percentage only fell by 1% to 81% in 1860.
• Northern agriculture shifted from mostly subsistence farming, whereby families grew food and raised livestock for themselves, toward a more market-based system with farmers selling surplus crops and herds.
• In the North, the market revolution and westward expansion set in motion changes that transformed the region into an integrated economy of commercial farmers and manufacturing cities. These farmers changed from being self-sufficient, to being bound to a web of transportation which drew them into a new market economy.
• Meanwhile in the South the cash crops of cotton, sugar and tobacco continued to dominate.
• The South disliked tariffs which they saw as favouring the North in protecting industry while potentially alienating the South’s key markets for their products, notably Great Britain and also pushing up prices.
• The North saw the Southern methods of production as being inefficient, and Northern workers feared competition from slave labour in the new territories.
• From the beginning, cities formed part of the Western Frontier. However, during the market revolution these cities grew rapidly. Fewer than one in ten Americans lived in towns (settlements with more than 2500 people) in 1820. One in five did so by 1860 (one in fourteen Southerners compared to one in four Northerners). Some cities saw spectacular growth. Chicago had 40 people in 1830. However, the development of railroads meant that by 1860, Chicago had 109,000 in habitants. New York had 800,000 habitants by 1860.
• Urban centres saw dramatic changes due to the market revolution. The number of cities with populations exceeding 5,000 rose from 12 in 1820 to 150 three decades later. Urban merchants, bankers and master craftsmen took advantage of the new economic opportunities, by driving to increase production to decrease labour costs. This changed the nature of work. Traditionally, textile workers had manufactured goods at home, where they controlled pace and intensity of their own labour. Now, business men gathered workers into large workshops or factories to oversee their work and to sub-divide tasks.
• In the South, New Orleans had a population of 175,000 but cities such as Charleston and Richmond had populations of under 40,000.  Urbanisation was a clear difference between North and South.
• Economic expansion fueled a demand for labour, which was met, in part, by increased immigration from abroad. Many people from Ireland and Germany emigrated to America, settling in the northern states. There were 5 million immigrants entering the USA between 1830 and 1860.  Almost all settled in the North.
• By 1860 one in six northerners were foreign born, while the figure for the South was just one in thirty.

Task Two

ATL: Thinking skills

5. How significant was sectionalism?

Starter:

In 1856, Senator Charles Sumner was attacked after giving a speech against slavery.

What is the message of this illustration of the attack?

(click on the eye for hints)

The term 'sectionalism' is used to describe the growing trend for Americans at this time to have loyalty to a part or section of the nation (North or South) rather than the nation as a whole. As you have read, there were a number of issues that divided the North and South by the 1850s, both politically and economically, and there was growing antagonism between the North and the South: 

• The North saw the South as backward and violent while the South derided ‘Yankee materialism’ and the development of the North.
• The North was more modern, industrialised and considered itself to be more egalitarian as it did not have slavery.  The Northern population was added to by high levels of immigration (5 million immigrants entered the USA between 1830 and 1860, the vast majority settled in the North).  This led to increasing differences with the more settled population of the South.  The level of education and literacy was higher in the North, leading to the view that the South was backward and closed off to new ideas. (See economic differences below for more discussion on this)
• The South viewed their way of life as being rooted in traditional values, championing Southern manners and hospitality.  They viewed their ‘old fashioned’ and slower way of life as being preferable to modernity and the fast paced life in the North.  Northerners were perceived as being obsessed with profit and change.  They viewed the competition in the Northern way of life as leading to aggression and hypocrisy.  
• Southern society was dominated by the planter class and southern society had very clear hierarchy.   The planter class was less than 5% of the Southern population but held most of the best farm land, owned most of the slaves and dominated Southern politics.  This led to many in the North to talk about a ‘slave power conspiracy’ in the 1850s.  They argued that the planter class was dominating American politics and pushing a pro-slavery agenda that included expanding slavery and imposing it on American territories. (Although the North saw itself as more egalitarian than the South, this was arguably not completely true.  The wealthiest 10% of the Northern population held about 70% of Northern wealth - very similar figures to the South.  In both the North and South the ‘typical’ citizen was a self-sufficient farmer with a relatively small farm.  There was an enormous gap between those at the top of society in the North and those at the bottom, just as there was in the South.)
• The two 'sections' increasingly not only recognized the differences between them and the other section but also considered their section's way of doing things as being superior.  The South moved from defending slavery as a necessary evil to championing it as a superior system to that used in the North.  Southern writers and politicians claimed that slaves were better cared for by their masters than the working classes of the North were by industrialists and government. 
• The North viewed Southern society as being outmoded and violent.  Southern concerns about their honour (personal, family or sectional) could lead to violent reactions to any perceived slight.  These views were reinforced when Preston Brookes attacked Charles Sumner at his desk in the Senate in 1856 and beat him unconscious, breaking his cane in the process.

Task One

ATL: Research and Communication

• A shared history
• Shared religion (protestant Christianity, dominated North and South)
• Shared legal and political systems
• A common language
• Largely shared beliefs about race and racial differences
• 75% of southern families did not own slaves.

Another important issue is the idea of ‘many Norths’  and 'many Souths’.  It was not the case that all parts of the North were like each other and the same is true in the South.  Some parts of the North were strongly linked to the South as their economic interests intertwined.  An example of this is New York; the finance sector in this city was extensively used by the planter class, whose shipping industry carried cotton to Britain and elsewhere.  There were towns and cities in the South, such as Richmond, which were home to the Tredegar Iron Works, the fourth biggest iron producer in the country.  Areas such as northern Georgia were not dominated by plantations and many of the people there resented the dominance of state politics by the planter class.  While some southern states such as Mississippi and South Carolina had slave populations that were bigger than the white population, in many of the Upper South States, such as Missouri, the slave population was a very small proportion of the population.

Task Two

ATL: Research and communication skills

Task Three

ATL: Thinking skills