The war myth in United States history

by C. H. Hamlin

The Civil War was the result of a series of political crimes and blunders of which both sections of the country were equally guilty. It was not inevitable or necessary to fight in order to abolish slavery. In every other country of the world slavery had been abolished without war. The question of slavery had never been a party issue until after the Mexican War, but from then until the election of 1860 slavery was the leading political issue. During the war with Mexico, Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, offered what is known as the Wilmot Proviso, which provided that the territory acquired from Mexico should be closed to slavery. Although this bill was defeated in Congress it brought up the question of the further extension of slavery.

At the time of the Mexican War there were two national parties—the Whigs and the Democrats. These two parties embraced almost all of the people, and as both were strong in both sections of the United States, they tended to cement the union, for parties on a national basis tend to unify a nation while sectional parties lead to disunion. The anti-slavery people and the moderates gravitated towards the Whig party while the pro-slavery people gravitated towards the Democratic party.

The Whigs elected General Zachary Taylor President in 1848. Although he was a large slave holder of Louisiana, he was a moderate, and was satisfactory to all groups and sections. He had the support of Lincoln as well as of the southern Whigs. Soon after Taylor became President, Henry Clay proposed the famous Compromise of 1850, the important features of which were: admit California as a free state, organize the remainder of the territory taken from Mexico without regard to slavery, abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and pass a fugitive slave law to be enforced by the federal government. This compromise, although a Whig measure, was instrumental in killing the Whig party. No party or section was satisfied with it. President Taylor opposed it but his death before its passage brought to the presidency the Vice-President, Fillmore, who allowed it to become a law without his signature. The provision that broke up the Whig party was the strict fugitive slave law, and anti-slavery Whigs repudiated their party. The idea of returning fugitive slaves was shocking to the best moral judgment of the time. The leaders of moral sentiment—ministers, poets, and reformers of every type—advised disobedience. It was a dead letter because the moral sentiment of the age was against it. On the other hand, the pro-slavery people did not like it because it was not enforced. Thus the law was treated with contempt by both parties.

The Whig party which was moderate, national, opposed to expansion, and the extension of slavery was disrupted. The Democrats carried all except four states in 1852, and remained in power until 1860, dominated by powerful pro-slavery sentiment throughout this period.

After the fall of the Whig party the Republican party was organized in 1856. It took the name "Republican" from the followers of Thomas Jefferson and claimed it was a revival of the party of Jefferson. It was the liberal party, opposed to slavery. It was organized and until after the Civil War dominated by the liberal element in the United States. The Democratic party also claimed themselves to be followers of Jefferson, which they were not, at that time, except in a very narrow legal sense. Jefferson was opposed to slavery and special privilege in every form. In 1800 he advocated state rights or a decentralized government because he believed the states were and would always be more popularly controlled than the federal government. But by 1860 that situation was reversed. The states—especially the southern states—had begun to be dominated by the privileged group, who talked in terms of state rights to perpetuate this privilege, while Jefferson talked in terms of state rights because he feared the domination of the federal government by the reactionary element. Both Lincoln and Jefferson held the same views socially. The Democratic party of the pre-Civil War period had repudiated Jefferson. But the Republican party did not become reactionary until after the Civil War.

When the Republican party was organized in 1856, it was regarded as "red," chiefly in the eyes of the south, for it was organized principally with the idea of keeping slavery out of the west. Its campaign literature in 1856 was composed largely of the anti-slavery utterances of Jefferson. To the south "Republican," "anarchy," "abolitionist," "Lincoln," "John Brown," and "Garrison" were soon to become synonymous terms. Because of this the Republican party had no following in the south even among a great many people who wished to abolish slavery. It became a sectional party, which was its fatal weakness in dealing with slavery, as compared with the former Whig party, which had had a national following. The Republican party was sectional before 1860.

Lincoln had been a Whig, and had accepted the Compromise of 1850. Although he was one of the great men of all times, he was a victim of many of the common errors of his age. Reflecting the belief of his time, he considered slavery a stable institution. His great democratic spirit lay in the fact that he expressed the ideas of the common man, and had complete faith in him. He tried to recognize and give expression to the purposes and aspirations of the masses, which made him one of the world's greatest democrats, with democracy's strengths and weaknesses. Lincoln was not a creative thinker and had few pretensions in that direction. He had no intention of abolishing slavery in the states—he simply wished to prevent it from spreading. He also held the common attitude of his age that the Negro belonged to an inferior race.

In the election of 1860 Lincoln polled only 26,430 votes in the entire south and those were from the upper section. Douglas, the moderate Democrat, received 163,525 votes in the south; Bell, of the Unionist party, received 515,973 votes in the same section, while Breckenridge, the extreme pro-slavery candidate, received 570,871 votes in the entire south. Breckenridge carried the lower south by a plurality while Lincoln carried the west and north by a plurality, and was elected president. The Douglas and Bell voters of the south were opposed to secession, but all the secession vote went to Breckenridge although not all the Breckenridge vote was for secession. A majority in the south opposed secession but the southern states fell into the hands of the secessionists by a plurality.

Why did the south secede? Lincoln was elected on a platform defying the Dred Scott decision of 1857. According to this decision the Constitution recognized slavery and therefore Congress could not prohibit it in the western territories. This could be done only by the states through their constitutions or by the federal government through a constitutional amendment. This was a great legal victory for slavery, but Lincoln defied the decision, and expected the next move on the part of pro-slavery advocates to be an attempt to legalize slavery in the northern states through a Supreme Court decision. Lincoln, when asked what he meant by saying the union could not exist half free and half slave, said that slavery would eventually have to go but it would probably last one hundred years. He did not realize that slavery was dying. This election of Lincoln on a platform defying a decision of the Supreme Court caused the lower south to secede, as a gesture to uphold the courts and the Constitution. Lincoln coerced them in order to uphold the Constitution, for he had been legally elected president and his office required his execution of federal laws. Thus, both the north and the south fought to defend the Constitution. Both felt themselves defensive—neither section understood the other—and emotionalism in the matter was so kindled that reason could not function on either side. The Civil War was a war about an abstraction—the status of slavery in the western territory—which was the real cause of the war. There were other differences between the north and the south but none of them would have resulted in war had not the slave question entered into the conflict.

By 1860 slavery in the greater part of the civilized world was a dead or a dying institution. Great Britain in 1833 abolished slavery in all her possessions. Mexico provided for the gradual abolition of slavery as early as 1827. Brazil followed in 1888 and Spain abolished slavery in Cuba in 1878. In all these cases it was done without conflict. All the northern states of the union had become free and the western states and territories were repudiating slavery as well. When California drew up her constitution and asked for admission in 1850, the clause prohibiting slavery was adopted by a unanimous vote of her constitutional convention. In the referendum held in Kansas in 1858, 11,300 out of a total vote of 13,088 were opposed to slavery. Only a few slaves had been carried there and they could never have been permanently held as slaves. New Mexico was organized as a territory in 1850 without regard to slavery and at one time as many as twenty-two slaves had been carried there. Nevada, Colorado, and Dakota were organized as territories before 1860 but had no slaves. In Missouri slavery was on the decrease, if judged by its percentage of the entire population—in 1830, 17.8% of the Missouri population were slaves; in 1840, 15.5%; in 1850, 12.8%; and in 1860, only 9.8%. Slavery would have existed in Missouri only for a few more years, for the anti-slavery population was increasing rapidly by settlers from the free states and great numbers of people from Germany who settled in the neighborhood of St. Louis, and were especially opposed to slavery.