The Causes Of The Civil War, by Joel M. Sipress

When I started reading this book, I was concerned about the sort of book that this would be because of its focus on building the critical thinking ability of students and its rejection of a coverage approach to history by encouraging students to engage in the sorts of historical arguments that historians ourselves engage in. It just so happens that this short volume, of a bit more than 100 pages, is about a subject I deeply care about and have studied deeply as well, and it ended up being a surprisingly worthwhile read for a variety of reasons. For one, this book is not meant to indoctrinate students about the Civil War by feeding them a particular idea about the Civil War but is rather meant to introduce students to a serious debate, by presenting a worthwhile selection of sources and arguments that allow students to form their own intelligent perspective. When I saw that this was the case, that this was a thoughtful book that taught to a worthwhile debate and provided a serious selection of material to provide for the raw materials of student learning about why it is that the United States fought the Civil War.

While this book is divided into two sections, these sections (like the North and South in the Civil War) are by no means equal. The book begins with a list of maps, information about the author, acknowledgements, and a series introduction as a whole. The main part of the book begins with the big question about why the Civil War erupted in 1861, providing some historical context about the rising sectional conflict of the time after the Mexican-American War as well as Lincoln’s behavior in response to the secession of Southern states. A short timeline follows, again to place the start of the Civil War in context. The next section of the book covers the conversation of historians about the causes of the civil War, presenting three positions that historians take: that the Civil War was caused by two separate and hostile cultures within the United States, that the Civil War was caused by slavery, and that party breakdown led to an atmosphere of increasing sectional hostility that made the Civil War eventually impossible to contain. It is indeed this third case that makes contemporary observers of the United States uneasy about our own political future. The majority of the book is then made up of texts that provide the raw materials to debate this question.

These texts are worth exploring in greater detail. First, there are texts relating to the sectional crisis, including Frederick Douglass’ discussion of the meaning of the 4th of July to slaves and Salmon P. Chase’s famous “Appeal of the Independent Democrat,” the speeches of Senator Albert G. Brown and representative Lucius Gartrell, two southern Congressmen in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War, Stephen A. Douglas’ letter to a New Hampshire newspaper editor about his Kansas-Nebraska act supporting popular sovereignty, and the introduction to Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. This is followed by a case study on the caning of Charles Sumner, starting with Sumner’s inflammatory speech that compared Senators Butler and Douglas to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, followed by a selection of Northern and Southern responses to the caning that demonstrated a strong sectional divide across political parties. This is followed by a series of maps that showed the national election results from 1836 to 1860. After this there is a selection of secession documents that show what Southern politicians had to say about the reasons for secession. A case study follows about the debate over secession in Georgia, where the two sides were competitive, with a timeline of Georgia’s secession, Thomas Cobb’s secessionist speech, Alexander Stephen’s unionist response, Joseph Brown’s secessionist public letter that sold secession to non-slaveowning Georgia voters (his political base), and excerpts from Alexander Stephen’s “Cornerstone Speech” when he accepted the role of Vice President of the new Confederate States of America. Six documents are then included about Lincoln’s options after secession, which includes Republican newspaper editorials, the complex role of Horace Greeley in the secession debate, letters from Abraham Lincoln to Republican leaders, Lincoln’s letter to Alexander Stephens during the Georgia secession debate, Lincoln’s first inaugural address, and his post-Fort Sumter proclamation calling militia and convening Congress, which pointed to the existence of the Civil War. The book ends with additional resources and an index.

When one examine the causes of the Civil War, it is thoughtful to examine the complexity of the causes that led to it. To be sure, there were underlying hostilities between the sections of the North and South, and slavery was connected to the base of these problems. Even different attitudes towards education demonstrate how slavery poisoned relations between the two sections, in that while education was seen as a universal element of advancement for immigrants and the native population in the North, in the South, the education of the slaves was seen as deeply threatening to the existence of slavery, which put the funding of education in general as being of dubious social value. And while the breakdown of party discipline in the collapse of the Whigs and in the division of Democrats into sections certainly made it feasible and even necessary for politicians on both sides to push for extreme positions, it is worth considering that not only the differences but also the similarities of the two sections increased the conflict until it reached a level that was impossible to contain. Much is spoken in this book–often by Southerners themselves–about their fierce sense of personal honor and their refusal to suffer being viewed as unequal to the best that the North had to offer, but at the same time, the people of the North were offended at being viewed as the accomplices to slave traders and slave catchers and slave owners as was being asked and demanded of them by Southern politicians. And once the more numerous voters of the North refused to give in to Southern demands, pride forced both sides into a position where compromise was impossible, and deadly conflict inevitable. Let us learn from it even as we debate the precise role of each element or potential causes in the ultimate outbreak of the Civil War.