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What were the economic causes of the Civil War?
Without a doubt, slavery and states’ rights, perhaps inseparable notions in nineteenth-century America, were the major impetuses to the country’s most bloody and personal war. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South seceded, removing 11 US states; leaving 23 states (along with 5 supporting border states) making up the opposing Union. While the war proved the South to be the smaller and weaker power, the Southern states, and thus the Confederacy, represented no slouch in their importance to US economic interests. This paper attempts to piece together the underlying economic causes of the Civil War, specifically within the context of a stronger nation (size, economically, morally, you-name-it) annexing a weaker nation that does not wish it.
A book directly related to the economic topic is Marc Egnal’s Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War. Also, James L. Huston’s Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War should provide a head-on perspective regarding the central issue this paper will address, and of course continue to offer additional historiographic trajectories. Finally, Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund Jr.’s, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflaciton: The Economics of the Civil War will be employed to understand how the Civil War was, itself, funded, perhaps revealing the interests that funded or supported the Union’s war efforts. These books will also tell of the economics of the South’s decision to secede in the first place, a critical discussion in understanding why retaining the rebel states would be of significant financial interest.
It is work like Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams, Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman’s Slavery’s Capitalism, and the contribution of Modernizing a Slave Economy‘s John Majewski (also featured in Slavery’s Capitalism) that will lead my discussion regarding just how much of an economic powerhouse the South was at the time of secession. These selections provide evidence not only that the South was more than able to stand on its own, agriculturally and, Majewski argues, industrially, but that the North was a significant benefactor of the South’s unbelievable growth, largely through the mass continuation of slavery. As subsequent history would show, this power would not be enough to fend off being forcibly reintegrated back into the Union.
Realpolitik economic realities flow through near every major historical decision, and this paper will attempt to address some of these overlooked realities. The North had expanding industry and population, and the benefits of a century of international recognition, as per Gould. The loss of the Southern states would have a major economic impact on the Union’s position in this community, reaping not only major financial losses (not to mention ‘losing face’), but forcing the Union to compete abroad economically with the Confederacy. I would imagine that the loss of the South’s tax base would not have been a welcome development to the US federal government as well. Were Northern industrialists firmly behind the War’s causes, and how much was this community’s conversations over economics, as opposed to abolitionism or secession’s infringement on the Constitution, say?
Finally, I think it would be worthwhile to incorporate some historiography, or at least an understanding of Western expansion and annexation in the nineteenth-century, as it was a golden age of takeovers of sovereign (or claimed sovereign) territory. There were all sorts of moral reasons employed for these takeovers; concerns over the barbarities of conquered peoples and concerns for societies’ lack of ability to govern themselves. Slavery was the moral and political reason for the takeover of Southern territories, so much so that economic issues (not to mention the truly central states’ rights issue) are somewhat intellectually taboo. Slavery was a hot topic from the founding of the nation’s Constitution, and was one of, if not the most, intensely debated issues decade after decade leading up to the Civil War. Yet, I feel that a focus on the finances involved in the antebellum US, the damaging effects of secession, and the promise of reunion will proffer a unique insight into the motivating forces that cost 700,000 lives yet that is recognized to have liberated so many more. Building on the historiography of economics and the Civil War, with a dash of works on capitalism and expansion, I hope to offer some interesting and, most likely, entirely unexpected conclusions.