Historiography examines how the past has been viewed or interpreted. Historiographic issues about the American Civil War include the name of the war, the origins or causes of the war (slavery or states' rights), and President Abraham Lincoln's views and goals regarding slavery.
The question of how important the tariff was in causing the war stems from the Nullification Crisis, which was South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff and lasted from 1828 to 1832. The tariff was low after 1846, and the tariff issue faded into the background by 1860 when secession began. States' rights was the justification for nullification and later secession. The most controversial right claimed by Southern states was the alleged right of Southerners to extend slavery into territories acquired by the United States.
Under Lincoln's leadership, the war was fought to preserve the Union. However, as the war evolved in response to political and military issues, Lincoln decided in 1862 that slavery had to end in order for the Union to be restored. He was faced with the questions of how to free the slaves and, once they were free, what their legal and economic status would be.
Economic issues
Slavery was the major cause of the American Civil War, with the South seceding to form a new country to protect slavery, and the North refusing to allow it. Historians generally agree that other economic conflicts were not a major cause of the war. Economic historian Lee A. Craig reports, "In fact, numerous studies by economic historians the past several decades reveal that economic conflict was not an inherent condition of North-South relations during the antebellum era and did not cause the Civil War."Lee A. Craig in Woodworth, ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (1996), p. 505 When numerous groups tried at the last minute in 1860–61 to find a compromise to avert war, they did not turn to economic policies.Donald 2001 pp 134-38
Regional economic differences The South, Midwest, and Northeast had quite different worldviews. They traded with each other, and each became more prosperous by staying in the Union, a point many businessmen made in 1860–61. However, Charles A. Beard in the 1920s made a highly influential argument to the effect that these differences caused the war (rather than slavery or constitutional debates). He saw the industrial Northeast forming a coalition with the agrarian Midwest against the Plantation South. Critics pointed out that his image of a unified Northeast was incorrect because the region was highly diverse with many different competing economic interests. In 1860–61, most business interests in the Northeast opposed war. After 1950, only a few mainstream historians accepted the Beard interpretation, though it was accepted by libertarian economists.Woolworth, ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (1996), 145 151 505 512 554 557 684; Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Harrington (1969); for one dissenter see Marc Signal. "The Beards Were Right: Parties in the North, 1840–1860". Civil War History 47, no. 1. (2001): 30-56. As historian Kenneth Stampp— who abandoned Beardism after 1950 — sums up the scholarly consensus: "Most historians...now see no compelling reason why the divergent economies of the North and South should have led to disunion and civil war; rather, they find stronger practical reasons why the sections, whose economies neatly complemented one another, should have found it advantageous to remain united."Also from
Tariffs The Southerners in Congress set the federal tariffs on imported goods, especially the low tariff rates in 1857; this led to resentment by Northern industrialists. Controversy over whether slavery was at the root of the tariff issue dates back at least as far as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.Lincoln-Douglas debate at Alton, October 15, 1858 During the debate at Alton, Lincoln said that slavery was the root cause of the Nullification crisis over a tariff, while his challenger Stephen Douglas disagreed. John C. Calhoun, who led South Carolina's attempt to nullify a tariff, supported tariffs and internal improvements at first, but came to oppose them in the 1820s as sectional tensions between North and South grew along with the increasingly sectional nature of slavery. Calhoun was a plantation owner who claimed that slavery was a positive good. Also, Calhoun said that slavery was the cause of the Nullification Crisis.As early as 1830, in the midst of the Nullification Crisis, Calhoun identified the right to own slaves as the chief southern minority right being threatened. As Calhoun said:
"I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or, submit to have their paramount interests sacrificed, their domestic institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves and children reduced to wretchedness." Ellis, Richard E., The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States' Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (1987), p. 193; Freehling, William W., Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Crisis in South Carolina 1816–1836 (1965), p. 257. Ellis further notes that "Calhoun and the nullifiers were not the first southerners to link slavery with states' rights. At various points in their careers, John Taylor, John Randolph, and Nathaniel Macon had warned that giving too much power to the federal government, especially on such an open-ended issue as internal improvement, could ultimately provide it with the power to emancipate slaves against their owners' wishes." While most leaders of Southern secession in 1860 mentioned slavery as the cause, Robert Rhett was a free trade extremist who opposed the tariff. However, Rhett was also a slavery extremist who wanted the Constitution of the Confederacy to legalize the African Slave Trade.William C. Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America, p. 67 Republicans also saw support for a Homestead Act, a higher tariff and a transcontinental railroad as a flank attack on the slave power.James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 225 There were enough Southern senators to keep the tariff low after 1846.Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857, pp. 267–269 Even when the tariff was higher three decades before the war, only South Carolina revolted, and the issue was nullification, not secession. The tariff was much lower by 1861. When the Confederacy was formed it set a very high 15% tariff on all imports, including imports from the United States.
Free labor vs. pro-slavery arguments Historian Eric Foner has argued that a free-labor ideology dominated thinking in the North, which emphasized economic opportunity. By contrast, Southerners described free labor as "greasy mechanics, filthy operators, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists".James M. McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question," Civil War History 50#4 (2004), page 421 They strongly opposed the proposed Homestead Acts, which would give out free farms in the West, fearing that the small farmers would oppose plantation slavery. Indeed, opposition to homestead laws was far more common in secessionist rhetoric than was opposition to tariffs.Richard Hofstadter, "The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War", The American Historical Review 44#1 (1938), pp. 50-55 full text in JSTOR
Economic status of ex-slaves The Union government set up the Freedmen's Bureau to supervise and protect the legal and economic status of the freed slaves. It operated across the former slave states from 1865 to 1872. Proposals were made to seize Confederate property and give land ("Forty acres and a mule") to freedmen, but Congress never approved these proposals.LaWanda Cox, "The Promise of Land for the Freedmen." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45.3 (1958): 413-440. online
States' rights issues
Questions such as whether the Union was older than the states or the other way around fueled the debate over states' rights. Whether the federal government was supposed to have substantial powers or whether it was merely a voluntary federation of sovereign states added to the controversy. According to historian Kenneth M. Stampp, each section used states' rights arguments when convenient and shifted positions when convenient.Kenneth M. Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, p. 59
Stampp mentioned Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States as an example of a Southern leader who said that slavery was the "cornerstone of the Confederacy" when the war began, and then said, after the South was defeated, that the war was not about slavery but states' rights. According to Stampp, Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the Lost Cause.Kenneth M. Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, pp. 63–65
The historian William C. Davis also mentioned inconsistencies in Southern states' rights arguments. He explained the Confederate Constitution's protection of slavery at the national level as follows:
States' rights and slavery in the territories The "States' rights" debate cut across the issues. Southerners argued that under the Tenth Amendment, the federal government's powers were limited to those specified in the Constitution, and since the federal government could not take away any state's rights, it had no power to prevent slaves from being carried into new territories. States' rights advocates also cited the Fugitive Slave Clause to demand federal jurisdiction over slaves who escaped into the North. Anti-slavery forces took opposite stances on these issues. The Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution was the result of compromises between North and South when the Constitution was written. It was implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and later strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Act, which was part of the Compromise of 1850. The Southern politician and states' rights advocate John C. Calhoun regarded the territories as the "common property" of sovereign states and said that Congress was acting merely as the states' agent.McPherson, Battle Cry, page 57
States' rights and minority rights
Behind the "states' rights" arguments is the fact that the South was losing influence in the country as a whole. The North was more prosperous; its industrial economy produced more, and permitted faster population growth, than did the South's plantation economy. With population growth in the North well above that in the South, it was only a matter of time before the North, not the South, controlled the federal government. Until 1860 most presidents were either Southern or pro-South. The North's growing population would mean the election of pro-North presidents, and the addition of free-soil states would end Southern parity with the North in the Senate.