Slavery
Though we examined a lot of the dynamics of the
Antebellum period, the crux of the sectional differences that led to the Civil
War, was slavery. As a result, my final
essay will deal with my own revisionist interpretation of that issue.
There are several points that I feel are critical when
examining slavery in the southern section.
The fact that slaves were only held by the aristocracy or planter class
is revealing. Most accounts that I have
seen put that group at less than five percent of the population. It is my belief that solely on the issue of
slavery, the majority of southerners would not have been willing to secede from
the union and/or go to war with the north.
The promoters of secession would have sold it by instilling fear of
northern aggression and an us against them mentality. There was a rallying of support based on
"southern pride," which still exists today. Also, I suppose, as long as the blacks were
enslaved, the poor, uneducated, white people felt farther up the pecking order. Maintaining the status quo allayed their
fears, that they too could be enslaved by the rich and powerful. Additionally, there was a trepidation that
several million newly freed blacks might seek revenge against southern whites,
slaveholders and non-slaveholders
alike. Of course, this didn't happen
when emancipation did come.
I found it interesting that politicians and newspaper
scribes of the day wrote in elevated language that the largely illiterate
southerner rabble could not possibly have understood. In comparison, today's print journalists
write in very basic language and we have limitless "news" sources
that further simplify and skew it. The
antebellum southerner trusted the more learned among them to make their choices
for them.
In the north, though the rhetoric was "all men are
created equal," and sounded good to gain momentum for the abolitionist
movement, did they really believe that?
If so, why did it take 100 years for blacks to have an unrestricted
right to vote and to fully be integrated in the public education system? Many of those who abhorred the idea of
slavery did not consider any people of color their equal, and still don't. A lot of the opposition to slavery was dread
that the expansion to the territories
would create more slave states and weaken their clout in Congress. In
addition, the economic impact of losing the agricultural production of the
south was worrisome, as I have seen it estimated at up to three-quarters of the
entire national export.
Both northerners and southerners believed they had the
Bible and the Constitution on their side with regards to the issue of
slavery. The question divided the
Christian churches sectionally.
Baptist and Methodist ministers in the south, split from their northern
brothers, and changed their doctrine to accommodate the institution of their
members and contributors. White southerners, knowing in their heart that subjugation
of another human being was evil, insisted that the slaves were no more than
property, much like livestock. This
belief allowed them to sleep at night. They
argued for the compatibility of Christianity and slavery, citing scripture to justify the evil.
It
is my opinion that if the north had a viable and profitable use of slave labor,
the abolitionist movement would have never gotten traction. It has been a common theme in our nation that
capital gains trumps morality and decency.
Before the creation of the Republican Party and the election of Lincoln,
no presidents were willing to seriously consider emancipation, rather attempts
were made to halt the expansion.
Compromise after compromise was made to placate both sides. Lincoln was no longer willing to appease the
south, nor allow secession, and the only
way to sustain the union was with military might. Thus, the Civil War.
