Prager University – Was the Civil War About Slavery?
In a word? Yes. In this new video from Prager University, West Point professor Colonel Ty Seidule explains why.
Watch below.
Here’s more information:
Course Description
What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely…perhaps states’ rights? Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate.
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So since he teaches at West Point he gets to “settle the argument?
He makes some good points, and i agree that slavery was the *reason* for the War of Northern Aggression but it certainly was NOT the CAUSE of the war. While Southern forces did fire on Ft. Sumter, it wasn’t an unprovoked attack. The North had been agitating the South for several years leading up to that moment. Though Sumter is considered the beginning of the War, it was far from the first engagement as there had been a number of small exchanges of fire b/w opposing supporters as far back as 1858.
The Colonel tries to wrap it all up in a pretty bow but in those days men went to war because their friends and families did and they mostly fought on the side that represented their hometowns or counties. The soldiers fighting in Grey weren’t politicians- they weren’t fighting for slavery;rather they were, they believed, fighting to protect their homes and values(opposed to the more citified and “high-society” of the north.
We all know that, in fact, all men are deserving of freedom. And i think most Southern troops would generally agree. But the sheer atrocity of the acts under Sherman’s March to the Sea put the question of whose side was most “righteous” in great doubt.
And, worst of all, four million souls were suddenly left to fend for themselves in a land already razed by war.
A whole generation of American youth died in that war. Millions died of bullet wounds, starvation, illness or sheer misery. Our country was set back as much as 30years in development and growth.
And it all could have been avoided, imho, b/c slavery was never meant to last as long as it did. There would, in time, been more humane political means of solving the issue. But that wasn’t to be allowed- mainly by the British, who knew that they were about to see most of Canada overrun by American adventurers, and Mexico (under French dominion) was facing the same problem. Our War Between the States probably saved both coutries from becoming American states.
So- in my humble opinion- forces outside our country saw the slavery issue as a way to inflame anger within our borders and a way to keep Americans from Manifest Destiny-ing Canada and/or Mexico.
To make it more clear- I think the issue would have resolved itself by legal avenues instead of that atrocious war if not for foreign interference, though i doubt any history book would support my impressions.
Just my opinion, fwiw…
I tend to agree though I think a distinction needs to be made between those who declared war and those who fought it. I think too many of us from the South downplay the importance of slavery in the decision-making processes of the states. It is hard to imagine that all those soldiers, who never had or were likely to have slaves, were willing to fight and die for slavery.
Examine the logic of the Colonel on that point. The non-slave owning whites didn’t want to fall to the bottom of the ladder and therefore of course they were willing to die for slavery? In what world does that logic get accepted?
As I argued with some friends a few weeks ago, the cause of Secession and the cause of the war were two different things. As recounted in the video, Lincoln said either the whole nation would be free or slave, with no alternative. But the alternative happened – the secession of the slave states. So slavery was the cause of the Secession. But did the war start over, or was it initially conducted because of, slavery?
It’s conceded in the video that the war was not initially about slavery. The narrator conveniently fails to mention two important points. First, Lincoln himself said that if he could reunite the country without freeing the slaves, he would do so. So Lincoln’s prime concern was “union,” not freedom for the slaves. Second, even if Lincoln’s prime consideration was emancipation, that’s not relevant to the start of the war, because the war had already started before Lincoln took office, and it started under the watch of a president, James Buchanan, who believed slavery was not a federal issue, and who encouraged a Supreme Court justice to side with southern justices in the Dred Scott case. In other words, he was not someone to start a war with the South over slavery, and he did not do so.
So what started the war? The South likes to refer to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression,” but it was southern aggression that started the war – the attack on Ft. Sumter in Charleston harbor. This was an act of war that the North couldn’t ignore. Prior to this folly, there was no sentiment in the North for war. If the South wanted to leave the Union, and keep its slaves, the political will to stop them didn’t exist. But the attack on a federal installation provided the spark that ignited the Northern will for war. And once started, what would be the objective? Merely the defeat of the South? To what purpose? So they could have their way after they were beaten? Unsuitable. So the purpose of the war became “union,” as a means to bring the South back into the fold and to punish the rebels for the folly of Secession and their ill-considered act of war.
Although slavery was the cause of Secession, an act of war precipitated the Civil War, and “Union” was the North’s first and primary objective. Emancipation later became an objective, but it was never the primary objective. Saying the Civil War was about ending slavery is like saying WW II in the ETO was fought to end the holocaust. The holocaust was stopped as a consequence of allied forces’ pursuit of their primary objective – the defeat of the Reich. To say otherwise would be revisionist history. Similarly, ending slavery was a consequence of the Civil War – even without the Emancipation Proclamation (the intent of which was to hinder the Confederacy’s war effort) slavery wouldn’t and couldn’t survive Union victory. Slavery was an asp in the Union’s bosom; it had to be crushed to ensure the continued survival of a reconstituted Union.
It must be remembered that the Civil War was not an inevitable consequence of Secession. Had the South not committed an act of war against the North, it is very unlikely that any other act could have galvanized the North’s citizens to support a war against a people (and former countrymen at that) who only wanted to be left alone. Without the necessary political will, war would have been nearly impossible. Only hindsight allows us to see that war did, indeed, follow Secession. The historical reality of the events of Secession and war, taken together (especially with the presumption that the war was an inevitable consequence of Secession), can create an incorrect impression that their causes were the same when they were not. Disagreement over slavery led directly to Secession. An overt act of aggression was the proximal cause the war.