The Civil War Really Was About Southern Identity

And slavery.

But don't take my word for it. Read South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes. It's right there in the first sentence.

the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in... withdrawing from the Federal Union. (p. 3)

This is unacceptable, because each of the United States is "and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES." [capitalization sic]. (p. 3-4)

Later on,it is more specific:

Those [Northern] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions. (p. 9)

In other words, the Yankees are trying to run our country.

I think this is important to remember. This is a complaint that has persisted to the present day. Whether it is slavery, or segregation, or gay marriage, Yankees do impose their beliefs on the South. I do happen to think that these beliefs are worthy of advancement, but I can appreciate the resentment of those on the receiving end of our busybody righteousness.

That much said, it is important also to be clear that the particular way in which Yankees were sticking their nose into Southern business was by trying to outlaw slavery. South Carolina's Declaration makes this very plain, too.

[The non-slave-holding states] have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign [carry away] the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection. (p. 9)

In particular, the federal government has "united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery." (p. 9) Yes, they are talking about Abraham Lincoln.

They mar their righteous indignation, however, when they condemn the north for "elevating to citizenship, persons, who, by the Supreme Law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens." (p. 10) This is a reference to the Dred Scott decision, that infamous act of the Supreme Court which held that the descendants of slaves cannot be citizens. In other words, it was a case of the South imposing their views of race on the rest of the "free and independent states."


Indeed, for a long time, the federal government seemed to yield to the South more often than not. There was the Presidential intervention to try to get the Africans on the Amistad declared escaped slaves. There was the Fugitive Slave Act, that required states where slavery was illegal to capture people, and return them to slavery. And there was the Constitution itself, where Southern states wanted to be able to count their slaves as people to increase their representation in the federal government. The North held that if slaves were not citizens, they shouldn't count, and the mess was settled with a compromise, split the difference, that left no one happy: slaves would count as partial people. But again, in deference to the South, the compromise counted them as slightly more than half, 3/5 of a person. Finally, the Dred Scott decision, which took away the citizenship of African Americans in the North. So, while I do sympathize with the Southern feelings of Yankee infringement, it did go both ways.

In fact, up until the North began to seek to outlaw slavery, the North did little in the way of imposition of its will upon the South. They argued against the spread of slavery to new territories, and they spoke critically of slavery, but they did not, for instance, attempt to pass laws forbidding "cruel treatment" of slaves, or the selling of a mother's children, or even summary execution of slaves. On the other hand, the South did get laws passed requiring Northern police to enforce the status of their slaves, to arrest and deport runaway slaves, and, ultimately, to deny them citizenship. The gripe of the South was that the "free and independent states" of the North did not comport their laws the way the South wanted them.

It is an interesting alternate history question. If Southern states had not demanded the Fugitive Slave Act, if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Dred Scott, and declared that since he had been brought into a territory where slavery was illegal, he was therefore a free man, would the Civil War have occurred? We'll never know. But certainly these two events hardened resentment in the North. For slavery to exist in Mississippi may have been reprehensible to liberal Yankees, but to be forced into complicity with slavery was intolerable. Would Lincoln have been elected on an anti-slavery platform without this moral outrage?

But, to return to the original question, yes, one of the causes of the Civil War was that the South felt their way of life was under threat by the North. But, yes, the particular way that the North threatened the South was by demanding an end to slavery. Anyone who denies this is denying the published words of "The People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled." (p. 3)