The Cause of the American Civil War - The American Industrial Revolution

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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2015
Industrial Modernization and the American Civil War
by Corey Patrick Gray
For more information, please contact [email protected]

The central question of this thesis is what caused the American Civil War. I have sought to show in this study that the American Industrial Revolution provides the explanation. After the Industrial Revolution took hold in America, the country's social, political, and military landscape changed. The nation was transformed from holding a generally uniform mindset to one separated along ideological lines. This investigation explores positive correlations between social, political, and military events of the period and the threads that connect them. The narrative of a consistently visible ideological clash between traditional and modern rationales is not meant to create a cause-and-effect relationship between industrialization modernization and the Civil War. Yet, in light of these correlations, the ideological conflict between traditionalism and modernization does help explain how and why the period was characterized by such profound change.

Modernization and traditionalism provide vehicles for understanding the transitions that occurred after the Industrial Revolution. The impact of industrialization touched all aspects of American life. This study reviews the effects in separate social, political, and military sections to show the depth and breadth of change that occurred in those days. Each section in this study gives examples that reflect a common thread of ideological friction and change. The adversarial relationship between modernity and tradition provides predictable patterns that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the same group of events. The pattern has three general phases: cohesion, instability, and ultimately a fracture.

The social impact of industrialization began in cities. Before the Industrial Revolution in America, the social landscape was predominantly agrarian. Most Americans looked to agriculture to define the relationship with the world and to each other. It was a culture that relied on religion and proven habits of the past to understand the present and the unknown of the future. The technological advantages of industrialization changed the definition of nature for those working in and around factories. The creation of an alternative ideology, even in its infancy, produced social challenges and changes. Industrial population centers took on a new ideological rationale: modernization.

Modernization was based on an industrial nature which looked towards of the future with little regard for the past. Urban areas took the first steps toward social realignment by questioning and redefining traditional mores and norms. As rural traditionalists and modernizing urban areas began to clash, economics came to the fore. The newfound economic influence of northern cities, combined with their position on free wage labor, was a threat to those in the agricultural South.

Before the revolution, most Americans viewed politics as a necessary evil to accomplish large general tasks. Political parties emerged due to mounting economic tensions between agricultural and industrializing sections of America. The main economic question was how much support should be diverted from agriculture to industry. Agricultural traditionalists viewed the question as an affront to their economic livelihood and way of life. A secondary question that emerged was whether the nation should be a free wage labor society or a slave owning society. As political parties grew in importance, they began to splinter and realign along geographic lines. The realigned parties became densely packed geographic entities that struggled to compromise on social, economic, or
political issues. In the final stages before the outbreak of the war, earnest attempts to form compromises were unsuccessful. In the wake of the retreating political middle ground, the final attempts at compromise resulted in secession.

The military was an institution little affected by the turmoil sweeping through the country. The result was a military that began the war fighting in a traditional fashion despite the advances of industrialization. Traditional strategy and tactics gave way to necessity as the war dragged on. Social and political pressure from both sides forced field commanders to break from traditional tactics. They exploited the advances of modernization to achieve decisive victories to bring the war to a close.

By the end of the 1862, there was intense social and political pressure from both sides to bring the war to a close. In an effort to break the enemy's will and destroy his army, generals on both sides increasingly relied on industrialization to gain decisive military advantages. The initial result of incorporating industrialization into the war expanded the battlefield to include civilians who supported the effort. Incorporating industrialization dramatically increased the size and scope of battles in the war. From the beginning of 1864 to the end of the war, some generals were able to effectively employ the industrial modern
military rationale to exploit the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the industrial of warfare.

Two generals highlighted in this study are Ulysses S. Grand and William Tecumseh Sherman. They were central figures in the latter half of the war and their final campaigns reflect the war's transformation from traditional to modern. Their application of hard war was not a new military tactic; but why they employed it was novel. They ultimately rejected the traditional military rationale in favor of a modern one. Sherman in particular aligned his thinking with industrial modernization and was able to understand the inherent weaknesses of a military wedded to civilian industrialization. Sherman's successes in
destroying the South's economic and industrial centers, communication, and railway lines helped bring the war to a close. Evidence of the impact of industrialization modernization can clearly be seen in the fact that it was the destruction of the industrial centers that produced decisive results, not slowly traditional victories on the battlefield.

Up to this point I have provided evidence of the impact of industrialization through a three-phase linear approach from pillar to pillar. To conclude the study, let us now step out of the linear presentation and overlay the three phases of the pillars on top of one another. It is at this point that the significance of the American Industrial Revolution comes to the forefront. We can see from this vantage point that its impact was highly disruptive to every significant facet of American life—all at the same time. Industrialization was the revolutionary driving force behind the transformation that occurred in America's values, mores, economy, and ultimately in the war itself. I have striven in this study to show through a multi-disciplinary approach that the American Industrial Revolution effectively explains what caused the American Civil War.


https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:253076/datastream/PDF/view

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