The Book Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States is an excellent book with excellent documentation. Why did so many people comment on it without reading it? I found it extremely interesting.
If the war was about slavery, why did the north have five slave states fighting against slavery?
If the war was about slavery, why did Lincoln not free the slaves in the north?
Why did the Mayor of New York City want to join the Confederacy?
If the Union wanted to end slavery, why didn't it just pass a Constitutional amendment?
There is no doubt that the Constitution gives the southern states the right to secede from the Union, but where did the Union get the right to invade the South?
Why was the Aims Resolutions established and passed by the Northern Congress in July, 1861? "That this war is not wage upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with thee right or institutions (slavery) of the States but to defent and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution(which allowed and protected slavery)..."
There's more in this book... see what the Presidents Sec. of State said about freeing the slaves or why did General Grant have slaves if he was fighting to free them?
Based on the way the issues are framed in the questions you pose, I would not buy the book. The questions are based on false premises.
I would add this.
(1) The predominant interpretation among historians concerning the causality of the War was phrased this way by history scholar Elizabeth Varon:
there's emerged in recent years a strong consensus, which scholars call the fundamentalist school, that slavery was the root fundamental cause of the civil war and that the political antagonisms between the North and South flowed from the fact that the North was a free labor society while the South was a slave labor society which remained committed to slavery and indeed to extending its domain.
The fundamentalist school can be simplistically stated as, "no slavery, no war." That is, it is hard to make the case that there would have been a war in 1861 without there being a slave labor South and a free labor North.
This does not mean war was inevitable. The conflict between slave labor and free labor did not have to necessarily lead to war. But slavery was the
essential ingredient in the conflict. Take that away, there is no secession, and without secession, there would not have been a war.
It is useful to note that under the fundamentalist school, it is the conflict between free labor and slave labor that is the underlying root of the North/South divide. That is, the fact that the North was a free labor society is as essential in the sectional divide as the fact that the South was a slave labor society. There would not have been a war if both sections were pro-slavery or both were anti-slavery. As I see it, it is overly simplistic to say that slavery, by itself, caused the war. It is the
conflict over slavery - more precisely, the
conflict between the slave labor South and free labor North - that puts the sections on the path to war.
Now, although the conflict over slavery led to secession, and secession led to war, that does not fully explain the sentiment to preserve the Union. And this is an important point to discuss. The factors which led secessionists to dissolve the Union and create the Confederacy (ie, preservation of slavery) are not the same as those which motivated Unionists (whose goal was the preservation of the Union). Therefore, any complete and comprehensive discussion of war causality must include a discussion of "why Unionism," in my opinion.
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(2) As most people commonly put it, then, the white South seceded to preserve slavery,
while the North fought to preserve the Union. That is, the Union
did not go to war to end slavery. Unionists believed that the secessionists were traitors who annulled an election they did not like, and became an economic, military, and geo-political threat to the Union. Unionists would have believed this whether the white South seceded to preserve slavery or any other reason.
Questions like "If the war was about slavery, why did Lincoln not free the slaves in the North?" are "bad questions." They are based on the premise that, if the war was "about slavery," and if secessionists left the Union to preserve slavery, then it
must be true that the Union fought the war to end slavery. But it is not true. Unionists wanted to preserve the Union, but it is the conflict between slave labor and free labor that caused the two sides to be antagonists in the first place.
EDIT: Having said that, the North did come to understand that to win the war, and to preserve the Union, slavery had to be abolished. And indeed, during the war, hundreds of thousands of slaves were freed (in Confederate AND Union states), and the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery was passed and eventually ratified.
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(3)
These are some thoughts on Lincoln's view of the role of slavery in the Civil War:
On March 4, 1865, in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln gave his second inauguration speech. He might well have used the speech to gloat. By then the Union was on the brink of victory over the Confederate States. Indeed, just one month later, on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. That was the beginning of the end of the Confederacy.
But Lincoln did not say much about the status the war, probably out of confidence for the Union's position. He did state that "(t)he progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all." And with that, Lincoln went into the main body of his oration.
Lincoln gave a speech whose tone was neither boastful nor celebratory, neither glorifying nor romantic about the Union's winning war effort. Rather, his talk was somber, poignant, melancholy, and reflective. In fact, it was almost confessional. We have sinned, he said, and the wages therefrom have been enormous.
He noted that when the war began, "all knew" that the "peculiar and powerful interest" in slaves "was somehow the cause of the war." But "neither (side) 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."
That is, no white person thought the war would result in the demise of slavery. Men on both sides thought the war would be brief and easy. This turned out to be a gross miscalculation, perhaps even, delusion.
Because God, said Lincoln, had "His own purposes." God brings "woe unto the world because of offenses… (and) if we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses," then "He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came."
Notably, Lincoln cites
both the North and the South as the recipients of this horrible penance. Slavery was not simply the South's sin; it was America's sin. And the price America paid, said Lincoln, was just: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"
Interestingly, Lincoln's view of the war as God's judgement for the sins of slavery is not well known by most people outside of the academy. Or so it appears to me. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and its talk of a "new birth of freedom," has achieved a kind of iconic status. (In the past, some schools required students to memorize the Gettysburg Address.) Many people are aware of the second Inauguration Address's call for "malice toward none" as the Union procured its victory over the Confederate enemy. But Lincoln's somber reflection of slavery as sin, and war and its attendant suffering as God's righteous judgement for that sin, has not achieved the same status or attention. This, despite the fact that our country has a strong Judeo-Christian tradition, in which Lincoln's discussion of the role of God in man's affairs should resonate (as opposed to a totally secular view of the war)
I do not have enough information or data to speculate about why this is so. But it does seem to me that many Americans are much more comfortable with delving into the glory and heroics and strategies of war, and celebrating the end of bondage, than they are with engaging in a somber reflection of human failing, commemorating these sins of the past, and (for believers) pondering the role of God in the events that befall man.
This is from Lincoln's second Inauguration Address, given from the front of the White House:
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 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.
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
- Alan
Keeper of the Scales
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