Urban Farming Cuba

Died Of A Theory

There is a tendency to simplify events in history. America fought in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism; America was brought into World War II by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The cause of the American Civil War is often summed up in one word, slavery. The true answer is far more complex than that and so are the events that led to the Northern victory. Many social and economic factors played a hand in the prelude and conflict itself. Only then does the drama of the Civil War truly unfold itself.

The economies of antebellum North and South had obvious differences, mainly an industrial North and an agrarian South. Rich farmland in the Southern States and slaves as a source for labor allowed plantation owners to make large profits off their crops. The invention of the cotton gin, which mechanically separated seeds from the cotton, by Eli Whitney expanded the profits of cotton growers.

Demand for cotton grew rapidly. During the 1830s more than half of US exports were cotton. On the eve of the Civil War, the south grew two-thirds of the world's cotton. The rapidly industrializing north consumed much of this cotton, as did Europe. Rising demand and rising prices enticed many slave owners to pull slaves from the cities to work on their plantations.

Farmland in the north was not well suited for much beyond sustenance farming. Innovations in railroads and canals contributed to a great growth of industry in the north. Imported goods from farm rich areas of the nation to the north made specialized farming impractical there.

The farmer seeking to maximize financial return on his labor..."cannot afford to make at home his clothes, the furniture or his farming utensils; he buys many articles for consumption for his table." Levine p 54

A free labor economy instead developed in the north. The labor force was largely landless. Many worried the northern population would become as dependent as the southern slave population. One New Yorker stated in 1847 that New York City was "overburdened with population, and where the two extremes of costly luxury and living, expensive establishments, and improvident waste are presented in daily and hourly contrast with squalid misery and hopeless destitution." Levine p 70

Demand for goods increased by large "waves" of immigrants and growing northern wealth, the already mentioned advances in transportation, and the growth of cotton production in the south, fuelled the northern economy. Textile manufacturing, shoemaking, food processing, machine production, and mining facilities expanded to meet demands. In a sort of twisted trade route, northern factories consumed more cotton, southern plantations increased production, which reinforced the slave labor system.

Religious differences between the north and south contributed to differences that led to war. The Second Great Awakening that began around 1830 spurred new interest in religion among the masses. Often ministers conducted sermons not in churches, but in fields and other impromptu locations. Laymen were encouraged to participate in religious ceremonies and to give their own sermons. The fire of the Second Great Awakening spread to Upstate New York, to a region known as the Burned-Over District. The Burned-Over district gained its name from the great social and religious changes that began in the area. The evangelical revivalist Charles Finney lived here for some time. The women's rights movement and the Seneca Falls convention met here. The area also became a hotbed of the abolition movement. Evangelicals set up interdenominational reform organizations throughout the north combating social ills by providing access to religion, charity, and advocating reform laws. Christian ideals prevented evangelicals from morally accepting the southern slave institution.

[Charles] Finney detested the peculiar institution, bracketing it with war and "licentiousness" as "evils as abominations." The true Christian, he said, "longs for their complete and final overthrow." Levine p 93

Evangelicalism spread to the south as well. Poor southern whites joined Methodist and Baptist churches originally to reject the Anglicanism of the planter elite. Some ministers attempted to speak out against slavery. Those vocal on antislavery were censored, removed from office, and brought up on criminal charges. One Presbyterian assembly went so far as to state that though they disagreed with slavery, "hasty emancipation to be a greater curse than bondage itself." Levine p 111

This shift from speaking out against slavery to saying nothing encouraged planters to join evangelical churches as well. Slave-owners now had a religious mouthpiece to advocate their properties lot in life. One pamphlet asked priests, "to show from Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, that slavery is not forbidden by the Divine Law." Levine p 112 "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ", was often quoted to slaves.

The role of women in antebellum period cannot be overlooked. Because of the North's industrialization, women no longer manufactured from the home. Instead women maintained the home and tended the children. The emphasis placed on raising responsible children who would become good citizens encouraged the idea that women could do the same outside the home as well. Still they were not supposed to usurp their husband's role in politics. As moral leaders in the community women became involved in many abolitionist societies. They saw many parallels between their place in society and slaves. Later women's rights leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton got their start in the abolition movement.

The idea of white supremacy played a large role in bringing about the war. Southern views on race and the place of African Americans in their society are well known. Many believe that the antebellum North held an enlightened opinion of African Americans, that they placed their African brothers and sisters on the same level as whites. This belief is naive and false. Slavery clashed with the Northern populations idea of progress and a modern nation. Still Northern whites placed themselves above blacks. The working class of the North, who many claimed faced the same plight as Southern slaves, focused on their own goals. Also there was a prevalent at the time that freed slaves would flee to the North taking white working class jobs.

The South would instead use white supremacy to justify slavery. Slave masters saw themselves as fathers and the slaves as their children. Owners used this to push the "humane" aspects of their labor system. Slaves brought from "backward" Africa were completely taken care of by planters, bestowed wisdom and given love.

there is no class of people, as far as I have seen in this country, or Europe, of the same grade, where there is so much real happiness, where the wants of nature are so abundantly supplied, where the requirements of labour are as little, and where the guaranty against poverty and distress from all conditions of existence is so great. Levine p23

These forms of white supremacy mixed with capitalist ambitions to create a dangerous mix which spilled over into national politics. If the aforementioned mix was the fuel for the war, the westward expansion of slavery was the match. When Missouri applied for statehood in 1818 it wished to gain admittance as a slave state. This worried many Northerners. The three-fifths clause, established in 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention, counted the slave populations in each slave state three-fifths. This gave the slave states control of 47% of the House. With only a few Northern votes they could easily gain a majority. The South used this advantage to dominate the presidency for many years.

Missouri joining the Union as a slave state would tip the balance of power decidedly in favor of the slave states. After two years of debating a compromise was struck. Missouri could enter as a slave state if Maine were admitted as free. Also slavery was banned from all territories in the Louisiana Purchase above the 36 30 parallel, except in Missouri. The Missouri Compromise still did not sit well with many Northerners.

Northern farmers wanted western lands for their own use as homsesteads, and many urban people shared the farmers' dream. Neither group wanted those lands preempted by slave plantations. Neither wished to dwell among slaves, compete with slave labor, or be governed locally by slave-owning politicians. Levine p178

The slave issue became a dangerous one to discuss. Concern grew in the South that antislavery speech and literature would spur slave insurrections. The leading abolitionist and found of the abolitionist paper "The Liberator" William Lloyd Garrison had a $5, 000 reward for bringing him "to answer for his actions before a court in [Georgia]" Levine p166. Mailing antislavery literature to the South became a crime. Antislavery speech was banned in the capital. These repressive moves affronted the Northern population. Northern whites felt their civil liberties being threatened by Southern pro-slavery power.

When the Mexican-American broke out over where the border between Mexico and Texas lay, the Northern population saw it as another abuse of pro-slavery power. The South would gain more slave territory from the war at the expense of Northern tax dollars.

The Mexican war is rapidly becoming unpopular with the people of this section of the Union...the great and universal objection made to it is that its effect is to be to extend slavery. Levine p179

Northerners were not just being paranoid. A South Carolina paper said, "every battle fought in Mexico and every dollar spent there, but insures the acquisition of territory which must widen the field of Southern enterprise and power in the future. And the final result will be to readjust the power of the confederacy, so as to give us control over the operation of government in all time to come." Levine p175. The Slave powers knew that the territory gained in the war with Mexico would become slave land if the government simply went by the old Missouri Compromise lines.

During the war, Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmont attempted to introduce a stipulation to a Mexican War funding bill. Wilmont wished the west to be preserved for white men and white labor, something the majority of Northern whites were behind. In the bill, Wilmont stated that all lands aquired in the Mexican War would be free not slave territory. Wilmont's bill did not pass, but his platform of western land for whites did cary on to form the basis of the Free Soil Party and later the Republican Party.

These issues boiled for four years after the end of Mexican American hostilities. By 1850 the issue of what to do with the area acquired from Mexico in the war was threatening to split the country asunder. Senators Stephen Douglas and Henry Clay organized a bill of Compromise that would settle the issue of slavery in the west, while satisfying the North and the South. The bill can be divided by two main issues, land claims from the Mexican War and slavery issues. First land claims. The first part settled Texas' national debt of $10, 000, 000 if it gave up some of its land claims. Second, the lands of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah were organized with the choice of slave or free state being left up to a popular vote in each territory. Third, California, in the middle of the gold rush, would come in as a free state. This was a major blow to the south.

The first of the slavery issues in the bill dealt with slavery in the Nation's capital. Selling of slaves in the District of Columbia would cease, but Washington could not abolish slavery until Maryland abolished slavery. Next the Compromise stated that the Congress could not abolish the interstate slave trade. The last part of the Compromise bill was the fugitive slave act.

The law stated, "any marshal pursuing accused runaways in a free state [could] force free-state citizens to join his posse." Levine p186. A new federal body was established to try cases of runaway slaves as to prevent "less dependable" northern judges from presiding. Frederick Douglas said the Fugitive Slave Act was deliberately constructed to involve the North directly in slavery.

Many northern politicians felt the Compromise of 1850 a cause for celebration. The Union's divisions, they believed, were finally healed. The containments of slavery placed in the Compromise sat well with most Northerners. If slavery had been held at bay and Northerners were not directly involved in it, they would have been happy. Instead the Fugitive Slave Act made them accomplices to slavery, but more importantly Southern Slave Power. Again Southern Slave Power attacked white Northern civil liberties.

A fire lit the North. Northern citizens attacked slave hunters. Juries refused to participate in fugitive slave cases. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous fugitive slave narrative "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published going on to sell 1.2 million copies. If they North had not been behind abolition and curtailing Slave State Power before, the Fugitive Slave Act stirred the beehive.

In a somewhat selfish move, Stephen Douglas introduced a bill that further exacerbated an already tense situation. Douglas wanted to have a railroad line built between Illinois (his constituency) to booming San Francisco. The line would go through the Nebraska territory. To gain Southern support for the bill, Douglas gave in to Southern demands that the territory in question not be subject to the lines drawn in the Missouri Compromise. The territory would be divided into two parts, Nebraska to the north and Kansas to the South. Both territories would put slavery to a popular vote.

Pro- and Anti-Slavery interests began rushing settlers to the Kansas territory. Backed by President Franklin Pierce, the pro-slavery forces ran the government of the territory. Only pro-slavery settlers were allowed to hold office. To even speak anti-slavery views publicly was a crime punishable by five years jail time. Inciting a slave rebellion meant a death sentence. At the end of 1855 two governments vied for control of the Kansas territory.

Early the next year in March, roughly 1, 000 pro-slavery Missourians crossed into Kansas. They invaded the free-state settlement of Lawrence. There they destroyed and looted homes and businesses. The following day, while giving an anti-southern speech entitled "The Crime Against Kansas" Charles Sumner was beaten unconscious with a cane by South Carolina's Preston Brooks. The North viewed this as a clear expression of the Southern mentality. Brooks was welcomed home as a hero.

The divisions between North and South were clear. It is no surprise that when a little known senator from Illinois accepted the Republican nomination for president, on a platform of prohibiting further expansion of slavery, whispers of secession began to spread across the South.

Lincoln won the presidency in 1860. In the first months of his presidency Lincoln approved an amendment to the constitution that prohibited Congress from interfering with slavery within the states. This was not enough for the South. Southern Plantation owners believed slavery must be expanded to continue to exist.

Expansion seems to be the law and destiny and necessity of our institutions. To remain healthful and prosperous within...it seems essential that we should grow without. Levine p233

Still some in the North, mostly wealthy businessmen with Southern interests, called for compromise. Lincoln refused. Lincoln said, "If we surrender, it is the end of us. A year will not pass, till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union." Levine p232.

This was March of 1861. Seven states had already seceded from the Union. On April 12th at 4:30 A.M. Confederate ships opened fire on Fort Sumter. And it began.

The American Civil War was the South's to lose. Many site the North's superior troop numbers and large industrial capacity made a Northern victory inevitable. Historian Shelby Foote stated, "The North fought that war with one hand behind its back. If necessary the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war." McPherson p43. Southern leadership knew this fact, yet they still went to war.

For the South to win the war they only had to outlast the North. They could fight a defensive war. Many commanders would be familiar with the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, the recent defeat of Napoleon in Russia, and of course the American victory in its revolution. As history had shown, Southern armies defending their home territory had distinct advantages that canceled out the North superior numbers. The South could wait for the North to come to it. The North would have to fight on unfamiliar territory against an enemy that could set up defenses. The deeper into Southern land the Northern army stretched the longer and more vulnerable their supply lines would become. If they could keep the North losing men and spending money long enough, public opinion would force the North to sue for peace. How then could the South lose?

Leadership. Lincoln was a politically astute leader, in tune with public opinion and military maneuvers. Jefferson Davis was a micromanager and did not take criticism well. The qualities of these two men show themselves in every aspect of the war

Lincoln and the North had a defined strategy and goal at the outset of the war. The Union was to be preserved at all cost. To reach this goal Lincoln employed "soft war" tactics. Military action would be taken against the South, but they could return to the Union with few war repartitions and no imposed emancipation. As Lincoln had said earlier "my official duty is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery." Freehling p87. This shrewd tactic helped to keep the slave holding Border States in the Union. These Border States gave the Union free states a physical barrier from the Confederacy. This was especially important in the capital.

Davis did not have the same united front that Lincoln enjoyed. The nature of the Confederacy led to strong state governments and a weak federal government. Each state wanted its own home army for defense. Small armies were placed to defend roughly two dozen points. A sizable Union concentration could break though at any of these weak points and flow into the Confederacy. The Union exploited this in the Western campaign. Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston sought to guard his home state of Kentucky with 40, 000 troops. Realizing he had far too few troops to defend all of Kentucky, Johnston petitioned Jefferson Davis to send troops from the Eastern Theater to the West. Davis refused.

Union general Ulysses Grant moved his forces to attack two lightly defended forts in Tennessee, Forts Henry and Donelson. After capturing the two forts, with Buell to his north and Grant to the west, Johnston was forced to abandon Nashville or face being trapped. Leodonis Polk who had been defending Columbus Kentucky was also forced to abandon his post, leaving the Mississippi open for Grant. The encirclement of the Confederacy on land on the water had begun.

The Union's military plan for victory kept in sync with the Union's political aims. The North's Anaconda Plan sought to encircle the Confederacy by water, conquering and blockading key Southern ports and gaining control of the Mississippi River. This would cut the Confederacy in two. Lincoln hoped this approach would spare human lives. Over the course of the war the Union blockade ruined the Southern economy. Cotton exports from 1862-65 dropped to only 5 percent of 1858-60. Inflation went out of control. Food shortages plagued Southern cities and armies.

The Confederacy never solidified a military plan. The Confederacy only needed to slow the enemy's advance into the South and make them pay for every inch of land they conquered while minimizing their own losses. Davis knew that the loss of no major city would cause the Confederacy to sue for peace as long as the North was still exhausting its men and money. Yet the aforementioned state sovereignty mentioned before prevented Davis from doing that. Davis's relationship with his generals also cost him. Lee and Davis got along famously. This can explain Lee's success in the Eastern Theater. While in the Western Theater his treatment of Johnston and Beauregard are felt to be "major causes of disasters in the Western theater" the theater that cost the Confederacy the war.

Davis also allowed his armies, especially Lee's, to take the offensive at the expensive of other operations. Lee was always looking for that great "knockout blow" that would complete destroy the Army of the Potomac's ability to wage war. When armies were needed in Tennessee for a defensive campaign, Davis instead gave troops to Lee for his Pennsylvania offensive. Vicksburg and the entire Mississippi were lost and Lee returned from Gettysburg leaving 25, 000 of his men behind to be buried.

Lincoln's emancipation of Confederate slaves was a great political and military success, one that helped the Union win the war. Slaves in Union states would not be freed, keeping the important Border states in the Union. Lincoln changed the war to a "hard war" at this point. The status of slavery would never return to antebellum traditions in the South. The Union army became an army of liberation. This robbed the Confederacy of two important things. England, having rid itself of slavery years earlier, could no longer be expected to officially recognize the Confederacy as a country.

The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country. McPherson p75

Ex-slaves swarmed Union lines. Many slaves wished to join the fight of the Union and help to free more of their brothers and sisters. Slaves were used in to garrison forts and supply lines. The earlier draft riots that the Union experienced could now be alleviated. The Union enlisted roughly 200, 000 black soldiers, which was the same number it had drafted. These enlisted blacks not only replaced, but outnumbered Union losses from mid 1863-65. Thanks to blacks garrisoning for Grant's armies, the Union troop's could concentrate on the siege at Vicksburg. Increased troop numbers by blacks led to a Union escape from near defeat at Chickamauga and then the Union victory at the key railroad hub of Chattanooga. Following Chattanooga was Sherman's famous march from Atlanta to the sea. The encirclement of Lee's army would soon be complete. Several months later, in May of 1865, the war would be over.

No one can be blamed entirely for starting the war. Both sides were to blame. Nor can the North receive a pat on the back for winning or the South face condemnation for losing. Though the south had many opportunities to win, and several times nearly did, deft political maneuvers and a cohesive strategy won the war for the North. Complex events brought America to war and brought it back together.