Was the American Civil War 'Inevitable?'

unionblue

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Ocala, FL (as of December, 2015).
To All,

This topic may have been partially addressed in some of our numerous threads but I feel only in a partial manner when talking about other causes of the Civil War.

What say each of you to the above question? I would like to know your views on this topic and I would like to have them stated without 'sound and fury' from those who read others views.

Just want to hear what you think and why.

And I am reminded of a quote I saw today in a news article.

"War is never inevitable, though the belief that it is can become one of its causes." --Joseph Nye, former U.S. assistant secretary of defense.

Sincerely,
Unionblue
 
There are two ways to interpret this question, one philosophical and the other historical. In the first sense it was inevitable. Why? Because all things which have happened had to be inevitable or they would not have happened. Once something has taken place it can be seen as inevitable that it would so happen. But since this is an historical site, let's try the second interpretation which is that nothing is inevitable in history until it does happen.
When I taught history to my AP high school students I would pose two essay questions to write on. The first, in October, was at what point did the American Revolution become inevitable, the second, in April, when did the Civil War become so. I was always fascinated by the answers I got, from some pretty bright students.
In case you are wondering most students chose something like the Parliamentary response of the Intolerable Acts, the decision of Parker's Minutemen to assemble on Lexington Green. Some chose something less proximate such as the decision to abandon the policy of Salutary Neglect or the treaty of Paris, 1763 removing the French from North America, a somewhat more remote cause.
But as this is a Civil War site I would argue that none of the remote causes need necessarily have resulted in Southern secession, or even given that fact, would an ensuing war have been inevitable. Lincoln could have traded a fort for a state and let the erring sisters go in peace. Certainly there were remote causes making a rupture between North and South more likely to occur, Wilmot Proviso, Federal fugitive Slave Act, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Kansas Nebraska Act, Dred Scott decision but none of this, even all together was sufficient to spark secession and I would argue that if the provocations to offended feelings never went beyond this, the slights would have amounted to little more than what one experiences in the stands at an Eagles-Cowboys football game (yes, if played in Philly there might be some fatalities).
I do think, however that Harper's Ferry, while not making war inevitable, did create the kind of rancorous atmosphere that started the average Southerner thinking seriously about secession. However, even the election of Lincoln in 1860 did not make civil war inevitable. Lincoln could have died before inauguration of typhoid fever, like his son would, or have been murdered in Baltimore on his way to DC or, as I said above he could have traded a fort for a state. He might have backed the Crittenden compromise. Even his decision to reprovision Ft. Sumter need not have started the war. Had the telegram to South Carolina's governor been worded differently, " I am sending only some food, no reinforcements, until we can work out some mutually agreeable resolution to the problem of the present garrison. Would South Carolina care to purchase the fort and take over its upkeep?" Perhaps not likely, but until Edmund Ruffin actually pulled that lanyard contingency still operated and war was not inevitable, but once that friction primer went off fate decreed otherwise.

But he did have a boat load of reinforcements along with resupplying which was known by all.
 
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At the 1860 Republican Convention, one of the main speakers charged that the South was going to come right out and announce that it wanted to restore the slave trade. Though not in the majority, the brand of abolitionism that wanted, like John Brown, to bathe the country in blood, was the voice heard most loudly in the South. The moderates on both sides were drowned out.
 
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At the 1860 Republican Convention, one of the main speakers charged that the South was going to come right out and announce that it wanted to restore the slave trade.

Well, Alexander Stephens, who would become VP of the Confederacy and was generally considered to be a moderate, had publicly announced his desire to do exactly that just a year earlier.

Though not in the majority, the brand of abolitionism that wanted, like John Brown, to bathe the country in blood, was the voice heard most loudly in the South.

Not only was John Brown not in a majority, he was in an infinitesimal minority. He and his agents spent a couple years traveling the country looking for recruits to accompany him to Harpers Ferry and came up with about twenty.

The moderates on both sides were drowned out.

The people of the North elected a moderate for President. But yes, the fire-eaters of the South drowned out the moderates of the South, and they also drowned out the moderates of the North by portraying John Brown as a typical abolitionist, and portraying abolitionists as typical Northerners.
 
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Yes, but he need not have sent any other ship and if he had sent only a small steamer and having sent a telegram worded as I suggested, it would have allowed South Carolina, and the Lincoln Administration a bit more time to work out a solution that would have prevented a war. Secession did NOT make war inevitable. More likely, yes, but more likely is not inevitable.
 
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As already noted, as far as American History is concerned, Many of the founding Fathers were very worried that division of slavery would result in war. As far as a CW is concerned Jefferson's predictions concerning the 1820 Compromise, were realized. The Wilmont Proviso controversy culminated in the 1850 Compromise, that collapsed underthe results of Douglas' Nebraska Bill and resulting secessions.
In philosophical terms it is easy to see the track of inevitability to war over slavery, but in Historical terms , the road to conflict over slavery seems just as inevitable.
 
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The War was caused by the Yankee problem, take away Yankees and no war. Southerners were recognized as normal Americans, Yankees were the peculiar species. Look at what happened when the first one became President, John Adams tried a power grab, his son tried the same.

The North as a whole, weren't Yankees prior to the War, only the areas where New Englanders settled, which included much of the North. Northern Ohio, southern Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, all had their Yankees.
Yes how dare those Yankees dare speak out against slavery and its expansion...
 
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There are two ways to interpret this question, one philosophical and the other historical. In the first sense it was inevitable. Why? Because all things which have happened had to be inevitable or they would not have happened. Once something has taken place it can be seen as inevitable that it would so happen. But since this is an historical site, let's try the second interpretation which is that nothing is inevitable in history until it does happen.
When I taught history to my AP high school students I would pose two essay questions to write on. The first, in October, was at what point did the American Revolution become inevitable, the second, in April, when did the Civil War become so. I was always fascinated by the answers I got, from some pretty bright students.
In case you are wondering most students chose something like the Parliamentary response of the Intolerable Acts, the decision of Parker's Minutemen to assemble on Lexington Green. Some chose something less proximate such as the decision to abandon the policy of Salutary Neglect or the treaty of Paris, 1763 removing the French from North America, a somewhat more remote cause.
But as this is a Civil War site I would argue that none of the remote causes need necessarily have resulted in Southern secession, or even given that fact, would an ensuing war have been inevitable. Lincoln could have traded a fort for a state and let the erring sisters go in peace. Certainly there were remote causes making a rupture between North and South more likely to occur, Wilmot Proviso, Federal fugitive Slave Act, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Kansas Nebraska Act, Dred Scott decision but none of this, even all together was sufficient to spark secession and I would argue that if the provocations to offended feelings never went beyond this, the slights would have amounted to little more than what one experiences in the stands at an Eagles-Cowboys football game (yes, if played in Philly there might be some fatalities).
I do think, however that Harper's Ferry, while not making war inevitable, did create the kind of rancorous atmosphere that started the average Southerner thinking seriously about secession. However, even the election of Lincoln in 1860 did not make civil war inevitable. Lincoln could have died before inauguration of typhoid fever, like his son would, or have been murdered in Baltimore on his way to DC or, as I said above he could have traded a fort for a state. He might have backed the Crittenden compromise. Even his decision to reprovision Ft. Sumter need not have started the war. Had the telegram to South Carolina's governor been worded differently, " I am sending only some food, no reinforcements, until we can work out some mutually agreeable resolution to the problem of the present garrison. Would South Carolina care to purchase the fort and take over its upkeep?" Perhaps not likely, but until Edmund Ruffin actually pulled that lanyard contingency still operated and war was not inevitable, but once that friction primer went off fate decreed otherwise.
Lincoln did tell them that supplies only would be landed at the fort as long as no resistance to the mission was shown
 
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Yes, but he need not have sent any other ship and if he had sent only a small steamer and having sent a telegram worded as I suggested, it would have allowed South Carolina, and the Lincoln Administration a bit more time to work out a solution that would have prevented a war. Secession did NOT make war inevitable. More likely, yes, but more likely is not inevitable.
The Confederates had already shown that they would fire on any ship carrying the US flag twice, so why should they send only one ship...
 
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Well, Alexander Stephens, who would become VP of the Confederacy and was generally considered to be a moderate, had publicly announced his desire to do exactly that just a year earlier.



Not only was John Brown not in a majority, he was in an infinitesimal minority. He and his agents spent a couple years traveling the country looking for recruits to accompany him to Harpers Ferry and came up with about twenty.



The people of the North elected a moderate for President. But yes, the fire-eaters of the South drowned out the moderates of the South, and they also drowned out the moderates of the North by portraying John Brown as a typical abolitionist, and portraying abolitionists as typical Northerners.
My only point is that Southerners thought John Brown was the voice of abolitionism, while Republicans may well have thought Alexander Stephens was the voice of Southern Democrats. The OP asks if the war could have been avoided. For that to happen, the moderates have to firmly assert themselves. That idea seems to fly in the face of what defines a moderate.
 
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It's difficult to escape the contagion, I've caught myself spouting Yankeeisms a time or two.

Charleston had a few Yankees as well. But those you speak of weren't Yankees, at least by my definition. You gotta be from New England or in an area settled by New Englanders.

Here's an animated map of their migrations.

http://www.rootsandroutes.net/roots.htm


I use union sympathizers as a proxy.
 
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jgoodguy's phrase "The South had to have a war to survive." then would be meaningless. It was the Confederacy that went to war with the firing on Ft. Sumter, not the South.

IMHO, the South and the Confederacy are used interchangeably on this site in casual exchanges. If someone wants specificity we adjust.
 
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I doubt it. Edmund Ruffin, Barnwell Rhett, and people of that ilk just would have started bloviating about how the Yankees were racially inferior to the Mexicans, and would prove even easier to beat. If you think that is a joke, just recall what they said about the Northern will and ability to fight as it was...

I have often wondered whether, if the Mexican War had been much more difficult, expensive, and bloody for the United States, the Civil War might never have happened because the true cost of war would have been truly understood and the rash political figures who made their disastrous decisions in 1857-61 would have been given pause.
 
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There is that, but Yancey isn't my candidate. Instead, I'd point the finger at Stephen Douglas.

There were a handful of fire-eaters like Yancey, and a many, many more moderate Calhounists like Jefferson Davis. Southern supremacy over national affairs, slave power, and secession/nullification of the inconvenient were a deeply embedded political philosophy by the 1860s. Eliminating one figure, however prominent, wouldn't have changed any of that.

But Douglas... the thing is that for some of its worst calumnies, Southern Calhounist Democrats needed Northern collaborators. It's interesting to think what might have happened to the tenor of the national debate had there been no silver-tongued, ambitious man from the Mid-West eager to ride Southern votes to the White House proposing to overthrow the Missouri Compromise.

Once it happened it was inevitable. Before that, there were many many moving parts that if one fellow got sick and died or just did not go to work one day, the result would be no civil war. My favorite candidate is Yancy dying in '58-'59.

There is an alternative view ignoring slavery and noting that in the 19th century, former loose groups of related nations were violently consolidated into modern States say Germany and Italy and possibly France. In that view, conflict was inevitable.
 
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Or if you need proof of my previous post on the Mexican War and what old Edmund Ruffin might have said, look no further than this modern example...

The War was caused by the Yankee problem, take away Yankees and no war. Southerners were recognized as normal Americans, Yankees were the peculiar species. Look at what happened when the first one became President, John Adams tried a power grab, his son tried the same.

The North as a whole, weren't Yankees prior to the War, only the areas where New Englanders settled, which included much of the North. Northern Ohio, southern Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, all had their Yankees.
 
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Insofar as their internal debates went, yes. But in the North, the abolitionists were viewed by most as a peculiar, and sometimes even undesirable minority. Even when most Northerners came to adopt emancipation, they did so only as a war measure and with grudging acceptance. What became the Radical Republicans didn't even exist as the faction they eventually came to be in 1860.

In the South, on the other hand, the hotheads held political office, owned the majority of the newspapers, and were potent fixtures in the Democratic Party.

Alexander Stephens, Barnwell Rhett, Jefferson Davis, Isham Harris, Yancey, Brown, and so on. I mean, how many slave power diehards and secessionists does one need to list off before the point that militancy was the order of the day for Southern Democrats becomes clear?

To make the same case for the Republicans, you need to equate Lincoln, Seward, and Blair with John freaking Brown!

At the 1860 Republican Convention, one of the main speakers charged that the South was going to come right out and announce that it wanted to restore the slave trade. Though not in the majority, the brand of abolitionism that wanted, like John Brown, to bathe the country in blood, was the voice heard most loudly in the South. The moderates on both sides were drowned out.
 
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Off the top of my head, let's rephrase the question: what would have PREVENTED the civil war.
1) The deep south (the original seceded states) would have accepted Lincoln's election and agreed that no new slave states would be added to the Union. Anybody want to place a bet on that?
2) The new Republican administration would have agreed to at least some of the Crittenden Compromise on limiting the number of slave states. Again, anybody want to bet on that?
3) The independent state of South Carolina would not have fired on the fort, and agreed to a Federal presence in the harbor.
4) Jefferson Davis, head of the new Confederacy, would not have deployed troops to fire on FS.

Let's go back many many years....

There is quote from the South Carolinian Pierce Butler at the Constitutional Convention:
"The security the Southn. States want is that their negroes may not be taken from them which some gentlemen within or without doors, have a very good mind to do."

Butler went on to have a major role in the writing of the Fugitive Slave clause. But does this quote demonstrate a kind of paranoia in the south? Remember this is before the cotton gin, before 19th century abolitionism, before anything.

At the turn of the 18th-19th century Virginia, and a few other Southern states, allowed easy manumission. There were many slave holders who were troubled with the institution (not least George Washington and "King" Carter) who freed their slaves. Now for many reasons (we don't have to go into it here) the Virginia House decided to make it difficult to free slaves. They (the elected representatives) started to make it more difficult beginning in the late teens, and certainly by the time Jefferson died, it was extremely difficult to free slaves.
And as others have pointed out on this thread, anti-Slavery opinion began to be - if not suppressed - at least frowned upon.
After the Nat Turner episode (or war, or revolt, or whatever) the suppression or exile of anti-Slavery spokespeople became even more the course of events.

When do you want to say the war become inevitable? Inevitable meaning there was no compromise with slavery.
Was Jim Crow a compromise? It lasted until the 1960's. I don't want to go into the present mess as that is modern politics. But I stand ready to be enlightened, it is just that I don't see any light.
 
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IMHO, the South and the Confederacy are used interchangeably on this site in casual exchanges. If someone wants specificity we adjust.
The South is geographical in nature; the Confederacy is political in nature. The terms are not synonymous.
 
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Insofar as their internal debates went, yes. But in the North, the abolitionists were viewed by most as a peculiar, and sometimes even undesirable minority. Even when most Northerners came to adopt emancipation, they did so only as a war measure and with grudging acceptance. What became the Radical Republicans didn't even exist as the faction they eventually came to be in 1860.

In the South, on the other hand, the hotheads held political office, owned the majority of the newspapers, and were potent fixtures in the Democratic Party.

Alexander Stephens, Barnwell Rhett, Jefferson Davis, Isham Harris, Yancey, Brown, and so on. I mean, how many slave power diehards and secessionists does one need to list off before the point that militancy was the order of the day for Southern Democrats becomes clear?

To make the same case for the Republicans, you need to equate Lincoln, Seward, and Blair with John freaking Brown!
I don't make the case that Lincoln=Brown. But after the Harper's Ferry Raid of 1859, Brown became the face of abolitionism in the eyes of the South. People who owned no slaves and had no skin in the game could be manipulated to live in fear of slave revolts. I've even read that George Washington lived in mortal fear of Martha being so murdered in her bed. He was able to free his own slaves, but had to scheme to be able to free Martha's, in dribs and drabs. If Washington was paranoid about slave rebellions, I can imagine people with far less lofty ideals being caught up in that "superstition."
 
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