People of the Civil War - Causes of the Civil War

"Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding."

These words, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, expressed his feelings of frustration with a war that had become a runaway train.

But, when looking at the events that preceded the Civil War, not as single units but as a series of related events, they beg the question: how could either side have expected anything else?

Perhaps they were no more adept then than we are now at evaluating the events around them with the intent to understand where they might lead. The Civil War, like all other wars, was the sum of its parts. Each event, though singularly powerful, was not enough to cause the passion and tenacity with which the war was fought. When, however, all of the events were combined, they produced enough sentiment and commitment to give the war both magnitude and duration.

President Abraham Lincoln once teased the anti-slavery activist and author, Harriet Beacher Stowe, suggesting that she was responsible for starting the civil war.

He was referring to the controversy that arose from the publication of her novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin". By 1854, sales of the novel had reached impressive numbers, but more impressive was the social impact of its publication.

In fact, the book is credited with playing a major role in galvanizing the anti-slavery movement.

In 1854, as different sections of the country were vying for the Trans-Continental railroad, President Franklin Pierce and Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi collaborated to purchase a 30,000-mile section of land from Mexico. From an engineering perspective, this tract was such an attractive option for the railroad route that it appeared that Davis would succeed in tying California trade to the south.

Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, for the same reason, was also attempting to secure the railroad route for the central region. In order to stop opposition by southern congressmen, Douglas offered Kansas up as a sacrificial lamb via the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

This act converted Kansas and Nebraska into Federal territories, and through a concept called "popular sovereignty," allowed them to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be "slave" or "free" states. The net result was to negate the portion of the Missouri Compromise that prohibited slavery in those areas and to draw a distinct line in the sand between the "slave-staters" and the "free-staters".

With the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Kansas became both prize and battleground as both sides attempted to enlist Kansas to their cause.

Northern abolitionists tried to flood the state with settlers who shared antislavery sentiment. Alternately, the Missourans, who were sympathetic to the slave-staters, sent people into the state to vote illegally, and as the tug-of-war over Kansas raged on, it became so violent that Kansas was dubbed "Bloody Kansas".

In fact, Kansas became the site for one of the first violent acts of the Civil War when, in May of 1856, a fanatic abolitionist named John Brown, decided that violence was the only means with which to stop slavery. So he organized his group of supporters, and invaded the pro-slavery community of Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas. Brown, and his gang, beheaded five pro-slave supporters.

After Pottawatomie Creek, he disappeared for a time and later resurfaced in 1859, when he attempted to take over one of the two major arsenals owned by the Federal Government. His plan was to instigate a black uprising by freeing a few slaves here and there, arming them, then waiting for these groups to grow larger and more powerful. Although Brown's plan failed, and he was captured and hanged, he did succeed in heightening southern fear of the potential for slave rebellions and raising doubt about the Government's willingness to protect them in the event of a black uprising.

Kansas became fodder for another bloody event when Charles Sumner, a Senator from Massachusetts, gave an inflammatory speech in which he blamed the violence in Kansas on his southern contemporaries.

In his speech, he stepped over the bounds of propriety by making a personal insult about an aged Senator from South Carolina named Andrew Butler who drooled when he spoke. Two days after Sumner's speech, Andrew Butler's nephew beat Senator Sumner nearly to death with his cane.

The fact that these men were made out to be heroes by their peers served to increase the hostility between the two parties. Apparently by this time, the situation had escalated to the point that political adversaries could not maintain a modicum of the civility that previously existed among these politicians.

The Whig party was also a casualty of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When Southern members of the party had to decide which way to vote, they found themselves caught between allegiances. Their decision to join the Southern Democrats by voting in favor of the act caused an irreparable rift in the party and further severed the ties between north and south. The factionalism worsened when the northern Whigs allied with the "Free-Soilers", another political party that shared its anti-slavery sentiment. This newly fused party later became known as the "Republican Party".

In 1856, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican John C. Fremont in the presidential election. Although Buchanan was a northerner from Pennsylvania, he supported the south in matters of slavery which made his political views extremely unpopular with the Republicans.

Buchanan became a real source of conflict through his vigorous support of the LeCompton Constitution, a document that would have admitted Kansas as a slave state.

He further enraged the Republicans with his enthusiastic enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required that runaway slaves be captured and returned to their masters. The Northerners were so offended by this that they absolutely refused to bend to it. They retaliated by forming the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who helped slaves escape to Canada.

Tensions really began to mount when, in 1857, the Supreme Court decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Scott was a slave who sued on the premise that he was forced into slavery while living part of his life on the "free" soil of Illinois. The Courts ruled that although he may have been free while living in Illinois, he automatically became a slave again when he set foot on Missouri.

Although this decision was unpopular among northern abolitionists, it probably would not have been as inflammatory were it not followed by the individual comments made on the case by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

Chief Justice Taney contended that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because the Constitution prohibits Congress from discriminating against the citizens of any state. Therefore, the legislation prohibiting slavery in an entire territory was unconstitutional.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln entered the fray by engaging in a series of Senate Campaign debates with Stephen Douglas. The debate topic centered on "popular sovereignty", a state's right to choose whether or not to be a "free state" or a "slave state".

It was over this issue that Lincoln's position on slavery begins to emerge. In fact, it was during these debates that he used two of his most revealing quotes, "A house divided against itself cannot stand", and, "I believe that this government cannot endure half-slave and half-free".

Abraham Lincoln was not so much a proponent of anti-slavery as he was opposed to the obvious eroding of the union. The relevance is, that for whatever reason, his position did not support the south. This became important when Lincoln received the Republican nomination for president in 1860, to which the south responded by announcing that if he won, they would break away from the union.

Although they tried, northern and southern democrats were unable to agree on a political strategy or a nominee for the Presidential election, so in June of 1860, they split up and each side ran its own candidate.

The north nominated Stephen Douglas, and the south nominated John Breckinridge, of Kentucky. In my opinion, this is a critical event because if the Democrats had run a single candidate, they might have won the election, and, perhaps our history would be different today.

Notwithstanding, Abraham Lincoln did win the election, and in 1861, seven southern states beginning with South Carolina, seceded from the union. There was some hope for a peaceful resolution when the remaining southern states balked at the idea of seceding. Ultimately, though, the ineffective handling of that opportunity by the still incumbent president, James Buchanan, coupled with Abraham Lincoln's unwillingness to compromise his position on slavery, led to a complete secession, and, finally, the Civil War.

Would the absence of any one of these events have altered our history in any significant way?

Would we still, God forbid, be buying and selling human beings if President Lincoln had been a weaker man? Perhaps we might not have had a civil war at all if President Buchanan had been a stronger man.

It is impossible to know for sure, but it does seem like more than one opportunity was missed along the way to change history for the better, and I can't help but wonder what opportunities we might be missing today.