CAUSES OF WAR
The Real Factors That Caused Secession Of The Southern States
by
Jerry Rowley
(as inspired by a speech by The
United Episcopal Rt. Rev. Hall
of Pensacola, FL SCV Camp)
When our country was founded in 1776, there were many different
positions held as to the proper amount of national or federal government
necessary to govern. Several compromises were made, the largest of which was
the first ten amendments (the “
Bill of
Rights”) to the new constitution. The Southern Colonies would not ratify
the constitution without these amendments.
All this took time and thus, the government was not fully formed until 1789
when our first president,
George
Washington, took office. The two main
factions were those of the New England colonies that felt the federal
government should be the main ruling power and the Southern Colonies that
thought individual freedom and states rights were more important. The first
cabinet was made up of a compromise group to try to please both sides. It
turned out this was not to work very well. Almost immediately, there was
bickering between the Yankee Secretary of Treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, and
the Southern Secretary of State,
Thomas Jefferson. It got out of hand and
became a scandal in the newspapers. President Washington called the parties
on the carpet and ordered them to stop public bickering and do the business
they were assigned. He threatened to ask for both their resignations if they
did not comply. His wishes were carried out publicly, but behind the scenes,
they never agreed on anything except their strong dislike of each other! This
became more than just the two men, but rather the groups they represented,
Yankee and Southerner. It was culminated by the infamous duel between Aaron
Burr and Alexander Hamilton where Burr killed Hamilton. This much-publicized
event left a bitter taste in of the Yankees and made the
differences more pronounced and verbalized
in the papers. The bitterness continued to fester.
As the years wore on towards 1825, some of the most prominent Yankees in New
England became disenchanted with the religious principles of the Pilgrims.
Many of the Congregational churches turned away from Christ and became
Unitarian. They did not believe Jesus Christ was truly God incarnate, or in the Holy
Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some of the more prominent citizens actually became agnostics and
denied God entirely in private. In fact, they had become academic dreamers,
and joined the Fabian Socialist Society in England. Others were followers of a
French Socialist, Charles Fourtier. Many of these were
considered great writers and thinkers, such as Henry David Thoreau and
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was a Unitarian
Minister until he finally went into total atheism and embraced
transcendentalism.
Horace Greeley,
publisher of the New York Tribune, was also in line with them and other
prominent Yankees. During the 1840s Greeley had written numerous articles
promoting a voluntary system of agricultural collectives he called
"associations," based on the writings of French socialist Charles
Fourier. Although he employed Karl Marx as a European correspondent in the
1850s, Greeley exchanged most of his high-minded utopian schemes for
down-and-dirty party politics in the contentious decade leading up to the
Civil War. The list goes on of fellow “transcendentalists” as follows:
Bronson Alcott,
Louisa May
Alcott, Thomas Carlyle, William Ellery Channing,
William Henry Channing, Lydia Maria Child, Moncure Conway, Emily Dickinson,
Frederick Douglass,
Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, T. W. Higginson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Samuel
Gridley Howe, Harriet Martineau, Theodore Parker, The Peabody Sisters,
William James Potter,
George Ripley, F. B. Sanborn and Walt Whitman. You see
here some of the most notable people in New England. They considered
themselves the social elite of their time and had great political power plus the might of the
pen (sometimes stronger than the sword).
In 1840, this group had decided to take up a new cause. They were
looking for a new "messiah". They became acquainted with a man
named John Brown.
John Brown
had taken up preaching and taken an oath to
not only end slavery in the South, but also to "avenge the evil with the
blood of the slave owners". With the support of these wealthy and
powerful people, John Brown took his sons and a few followers to Kansas, a
new territory that was going to be coming into the Union. These Yankees
wanted Kansas to come in as a "free state" (free of slavery). John
Brown started to preach that God's vengeance was to be enacted through him in
the manner of "
Nat Turner
and his white massacre" (that
took place in Southampton, Virginia earlier in 1831). Since the 1790's when
slaves rebelled in Santo Domingo and slaughtered 60,000 people, Southerners
realized that their own slaves might rise up against them. A number of slave
revolt conspiracies were uncovered in the South between 1820 and 1831 but
none frightened Southerners as much as Nat Turner's rebellion. John Brown
took his band of cutthroats and committed mass murder against a slave holding
family in the night. This terrible act got him good press in the North with
his friends.
In 1851,
Harriet Beecher Stowe
wrote a book depicting slave owners as the
most lowly of all creatures. Her historic novel was of course "Uncle
Tom's Cabin". She followed this book with another anti-slavery “Key to
Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1853, and then “Dread” in 1856. These books were highly
touted in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and they quickly became best
sellers. Many hundreds of copies were printed and distributed by a kind of
underground group throughout the South. The authoress also traveled around giving
anti-slavery speeches, even in Europe. Stories started to circulate that this group of Yankees
were trying to turn the blacks against their owners and have them revolt and
massacre all whites. In-fact that is exactly what they had in mind. They
intended to use John Brown as their agent of vengeance!
By 1859,
John Brown
had gained some very interesting followers
and supporters.
After such bloody encounters as Pottawamie
Creek in Kansas, John Brown began to amass arms and make battle plans in
earnest for a full-fledged invasion of the South. His band had grown to a small well-armed
force of twenty-one men and himself. Of the twenty-one, three were Brown’s
own sons; five were black and the rest white. In October of 1859, it was
decided that they would go to Harper's Ferry, Virginia and raid the U.S.
Federal Armory. They were to take all the weapons and turn them over to a
band of slaves and train them to fight. The concept was to
"liberate" these slaves (from allover the South) and turn them into
a vengeful army to do "Gods work" (according to John Brown) in
killing all the Southerners they could find in their beds. John Brown’s band
of cutthroats took the entire town of Harpers Ferry, liberated and armed a
few slaves, and then took the arsenal. Local Militia was called up, a siege
commenced, and a small battle ensued. When Washington learned of the attack
on the armory, they dispatched U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee with a small
force and a group of U.S. Marines to stop this attack on the Federal Armory
and restore order. Lee's second in command was non-other than Lieutenant
J.E.B. Stuart. The Marine officer in-charge was
Israel Green. When they arrived at the armory,
they found John Brown in control but besieged by the local militia. He had
killed the army guards and along with several town’s people and taken over
the armory. Lee withdrew the Local Militia and sent the Marines to surround
the armory. Then, he sent Lt. J.E.B. Stuart to give John Brown the order to
surrender or die. John brown refused and Stuart gave the signal to attack (a
wave of his famous hat). The federal troops stormed the door with a ladder
and the Marines stormed into the armory. Lee was able to end the battle with
Brown and capture those who were not killed outright in the battle. John
Brown, and what was left of his gang, was turned over to civilian
authorities. During the trial, Henry David Thoreau argued for leniency of John
Brown. The court didn't listen to Thoreau and found John Brown guilty.
He was to be hanged as a traitor to his country on December 2, 1859. After the
condemnation of Brown and his associates, fearing from published threats that
an attempt might be made by Northern sympathizers to rescue them, Governor
Wise ordered Virginia troops to Charlestown to guard the prisoners until
after their execution. Toward the last of November about 1,000 were there
assembled. Among them the cadets of the Virginia military institute, under
command of Col. F. H. Smith, the superintendent.
Maj. T. J. Jackson, the
famous "Stonewall" Jackson of the war, was present in command of
the cadet battery. He witnessed the execution of Brown about midday, December
2, 1859.
All of this got good press once again in the Northern papers. All the infamous
"atheist thinkers" (such as Emerson, Thoreau and Greeley) said nice
things about there "hero", Brown, and took up the "torch to
abolish slavery" and also his pledge "to wash the South in blood".
All in the name of "God Almighty", of course. Now they had their
"new messiah", and
from the grave he was much more angelic and true to “Almighty God” than he
was alive! The Northern press kept up the pressure until many people in the
North had made up their minds to support anti-slavery issues. During this
same time frame, a brand new political party was emerging in the North called
the "Republican Party". When they held their first national
convention, they picked a replanted Southerner by the name of Abraham Lincoln
to head the ticket for the presidency in the 1860 elections. Many
anti-southern speeches were reported out of this convention. When they were
printed in the Southern papers, the people of the Southern States got very
upset. The U.S. Congress also passed a very repressive tax on cotton exports,
which really added fuel to the fire. The Northern States had already had
congress pass subsidies to the fishing and ship building states. The Northern
States were not doing well economically opposed to the Southern States which
were quite well off and independent. Increasingly talk turned toward collective
government and away from states right issues, especially in congress and in
the Northern press. All this became a very scary issue in the South. The Yankees were
determined to have their way and pass laws that would cause the South to
spend all their profits on taxes that would be used in the North against
their interests. Ultimately, it was felt that the North would abolish slavery
and turn all the blacks loose upon the white people with arms given freely to
the ex-slaves. Even more bad blood grew between the North and South as the
1860 Democrat Party Convention was split over these issues. The Southern delegates
walked out and formed their own Democratic Convention. Thus, two Democratic
Candidates were nominated, Douglas and Breckenridge. The Republicans, of course, won over the split
ticket. It finally came to a head in 1861 after Lincoln was inaugurated to
office.
The Southern State Assemblies started to debate the issue of
secession
from the
Union. The talk got serious in South Carolina and they voted to secede from
the United States. Other States followed soon after; South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas -- and the threat of Secession by four more --
Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. A convention was
held and it was decided to form The Confederate States of America. The first
Capitol was where the convention was held, Montgomery, Alabama. They
appointed a well-known soldier, statesman and business leader to the job of
President of the new Confederation, Jefferson Davis. Now most of the factors
were in-place. Only one more was needed.
Abraham Lincoln knew that the South was going to want it's territorial
forts and armories within their own territory. In fact, they asked him to
send the U.S. Army troops packing to the North. The first test was to be Fort
Sumter, North Carolina. Lincoln sent reinforcements and orders to "hold
the fort at any cost". U.S. Navy ships were dispatched with troops and
supplies. When the Confederate forces came upon the fort, they asked the
commander to surrender. He refused, and the Southern forces decided to fire
on the fort and take it before the Northern reinforcements
arrived. They of course, won the battle, and the war was on! The South only wanted to be
left alone, but, Lincoln was determined not to let the Union go asunder and
ordered Yankee forces to attack the Southern homeland. The first big battle
was First Manassas and the rest is Civil War history.
This may be a different story than you have read before in some small ways.
Rest assured, it is accurate, though truncated to make a long story somewhat
shorter. The main factors of atheism, socialism and greed in the North, opposed by
the Southern
agrarian society with people who were devoted followers of
Judaic-Christian principles (The South had a large Jewish
population). They also believed in individual freedoms. Only a few of Southern
Citizens were entrenched in slavery (large plantation owners). There were
also, in 1861, many free blacks in the South. This was especially true in
Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. Only about
ten percent of the Southern people owned slaves and there were more than a quarter
million free blacks in the south. Many of these free people owned property
including numbers of slaves. Along the Gulf Coast most of these free blacks
could vote and hold office. In the South, the slaves were taken care of from birth to
death regardless of being able to work or not (very young and old folks
didn't work). In the North, wage slavery was practiced. When there was no
work, there was no pay. Those that could not earn money starved to death! These are additional factors that complicate a
simplistic answer to the cause of the war.
Was slavery good? Of course not! Was it necessary to go to war
to solve differences? Absolutely not! Was there legal precedent for
secession? You bet! Several states put it in writing that they only joined
the Union so long as they could pull out at any time. Was this right? At the
time, it was right for the South. Was it right for the country in the end?
Not! Could we see this situation arise again? No, probably not, but with the
revisionist history being taught in our schools these days, the
anti-Christian sentiment broadcast by the "politically correct
bunch" and the racial division being caused by the so-called
"liberals", rebellion
could fester beyond the point of mob rule into a serious problem. Could the
recent turn towards "Islam" in America could be an ominous factor
for evil?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nat Turner
John Brown
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