Created by NHCS - 2016
History Lab: To what extent was slavery the main cause of the Civil War?
Background:
The Northern and Southern sections of the United States developed along different lines. The South remained a predominantly agrarian economy while the North became more and more industrialized. Different social cultures and political beliefs developed. All of this led to disagreements on issues such as taxes, tariffs and internal improvements as well as state’s rights versus federal rights.
Since the Civil War even began up into present day, historians and general citizens have debated the extent to which slavery was the direct cause of the Civil War. The following 11 balanced sources are designed to bring this discussion to the forefront.
SS Standards
8.H.1.3 Use primary and secondary sources to interpret various historical perspectives.
8.H.1.4 Use historical inquiry to evaluate the validity of sources used to construct historical narratives (e.g. formulate historical questions, gather data from a variety of sources, evaluate and interpret data and support interpretations with historical evidence).
8.H.1.5 Analyze the relationship between historical context and decision-making.
8.H.3.3 Explain how individuals and groups have influenced economic, political and social change in North Carolina and the United States.
8.G.1.3 Explain how human and environmental interaction affected quality of life and settlement patterns in North Carolina and the United States (e.g. environmental disasters, infrastructure development, coastal restoration and alternative sources of energy).
8.E.1.1 Explain how conflict, cooperation, and competition influenced periods of economic growth and decline (e.g. economic depressions and recessions).
8.C&G.2.2 Analyze issues pursued through active citizen campaigns for change (e.g. voting rights and access to education, housing and employment).
8.C.1.1 Explain how influences from Africa, Europe, and the Americas impacted North Carolina and the United States (e.g. Columbian Exchange, slavery and the decline of the American Indian populations).
8.C.1.3 Summarize the contributions of particular groups to the development of North Carolina and the United States (e.g. women, religious groups, and ethnic sectors such as American Indians, African Americans, and European immigrants).
ELA Common Core Standards
RI 8.1: Cite textual evidence to support analysis of text, both inferential and explicit.
RI 8.4: Analyze impact of word choice, including analogies/allusions, on meaning and tone in text.
RI 8.6: Determine author’s point of view and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence/viewpoints. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.
RI 8.8: Trace/Evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing reasoning and relevance of evidence to support claims; recognize irrelevant evidence.
RI 8.9: Analyze two or more texts that provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation. Range of Reading Level and Text Complexity.
RI 8.10: By end of year, independently read and comprehend nonfiction in 6-8
High School Standards
Social Studies:
AH1.H.1.3 Use Historical Analysis and Interpretation to:
1. Identify issues and problems in the past.
2. Consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past.
3. Analyze cause-and-effect relationships and multiple causation.
4. Evaluate competing historical narratives and debates among historians.
5. Evaluate the influence of the past on contemporary issues.
AH1.H.2.1 Analyze key political, economic, and social turning points from colonization through Reconstruction in terms of causes and effects
ELA Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.7
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.9
Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.10
By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.
Source 1: United States Map (1861 – 1865). The History Place
Source 2: Alexander H. Stephens “The Corner Stone” Speech / Savannah, Georgia March 21, 1861 (Abridged) Source: Teeaching American History (Abridged)
Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time…
…Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Source 3: Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley. August 22, 1862. From Teaching American History.org
…As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same timesaveslavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same timedestroyslavery, I do not agree with them.
My paramount object in this struggleisto save the Union, and isnoteither to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeinganyslave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeingallthe slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I donotbelieve it would help to save the Union.
I shall dolesswhenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall domorewhenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
Source 4: Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession / The Avalon Project – Yale University / Jackson, MS: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1861
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Source 5: Percentages of Slaveholding Population / Chart taken from Rice University /
Source 6: “The Union as it Was” / Thomas Nast Political Cartoon / 1874 / Library of Congress
Source 7: “Slavery and the Civil War: Not What You Think” / June 14, 2011 / The Huffington Post
…The war was fought over state’s rights and the limits of federal power in a union of states. The perceived threat to state autonomy became an existential one through the specific dispute over slavery. The issue was not slavery per se, butwho decidedwhether slavery was acceptable, local institutions or a distant central government power. That distinction is not one of semantics: this question of local or federal control to permit or prohibit slavery as the country expanded west became increasingly acute in new states, eventually leading to that fateful artillery volley at Fort Sumter.
Specifically, eleven southern states seceded from the Union in protest against federal legislation that limited the expansion of slaveryclaiming that such legislation violated the tenth amendment, which they argued trumped the Supremacy Clause. The war was indeed about protecting the institution of slavery, but only asa specific case of a state’s right to declare a federal law null and void. Southern states sought to secede because they believed that the federal government had no authority to tell them how to run their affairs. The most obvious and precipitating example was the North’s views on slavery. So yes, the South clearly fought to defend slavery as a means of protecting their sordid economic system and way of life, but they did so with slavery serving as the most glaring example of federal usurpation of state powers of self-determination. The war would be fought to prevent those states from seceding, not to destroy the institution of slavery. The war would be fought over different interpretations of our founding document.
…President Lincoln did not issue the Emancipation Proclamation until January 1, 1863, more than one and a half years after the war started. His goal was initially to preserve the Union, and he only issued that proclamation when he felt doing so would promote that objective. One could argue that if the primary cause of the war was slavery then Lincoln’s first act would have been to free them. Historians have written many volumes on Lincoln’s timing and motivation, but one thing is clear: slavery was not his first priority.
Source 8: Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address / March 4, 1865. From Teaching American History.org
…“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that thecause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether…"
Source 9: Creator and title unknown / Early 1800s. / Image courtesy ofAmerican Memoryat the Library of Congress.
Accompanying text:
“God bless you massa! you feed and clothe us. When we are sick, you nurse us, and when too old to work, you provide for us!” This represented the pro-slavery view of the ante-bellum South in its defense of the “peculiar institution.”
Source 10: The Confederate Constitution / Article IV, Section 2. / Formerly approved by the Confederate States of American, March 11, 1861 / The Avalon Project – Yale University
ARTICLE IV
Sec. 2. (I) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
Source 11: Frederick Douglass, “There was a right side in the Late War” / Speech delivered in New York City / May 30, 1878.
Nevertheless, we must not be asked to say that the South was right in the rebellion, or to say the North was wrong. We must not be asked to put no difference between those who fought for the Union and those who fought against it, or between loyalty and treason…
But the sectional character of this war was merely accidental and its least significant feature. It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest.
Document Source Analysis Sheet
Source or Text / What message do you think the creator was trying to send with this source? / What stands out to you about this source? / Support or Challenge the belief that the Civil War was fought over slavery?Source 1:
Civil War map of the United States.
Source 2:
The Corner Stone speech – Alexander Stephens
Source 3:
Letter from Abraham Lincoln.
Source 4:
Mississippi Secession Document
Source 5:
Slaveholding % Chart
Source 6:
Thomas Nast Cartoon
Source 7:
“Slavery and the Civil War” article
Source 8:
Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Speech
Source 9:
Source 10:
Confederate Constitution
Source 11:
Frederick Douglass Speech