There were many contributing factors to the outbreak of the Civil
War. These factors ranged from the
election of Lincoln as president, in which Lincoln stated in his inauguration speech
in March of 1861 that he would pursue his free soil policy, and the Dred Scott
v. Sanford ruling of the Supreme Court, in which the republican ideology of free
soil in western territories was determined unconstitutional, to the Compromise
of 1850 and the political incitement of northern abolitionism. I have chosen a cause to the war that
occurred at the beginning of southern succession, which originated due to the various
collective factors previously mentioned. The Union attempt, accelerated after Lincoln’s
entry to office, to maintain control of military forts in seceded southern states
was the cause of the actual Civil War conflict.
Lincoln promised in his 1861 inaugural speech “to hold, occupy, and
possess the property and places belonging to the government” [1].
As the first wave of southern states seceded, there were
still Union troops stationed at the military forts in those states. South Carolina, the first state to defect
from the Union, was followed by Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
and Texas, while Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas still
remained loosely attached to the Union. By
the time Lincoln entered into office, the problem for the Union in pursuing
this policy was that “the new Confederacy had seized Federal property including
most of the forts and arsenals in the territory of the Confederacy” [2]. Months into 1861, only Fort Sumter in
Charleston and Fort Pickens in Pensacola had not been seized from Union control.
The Union supply ship, the Star of the West,
while trying to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter had been fired on and turned
back in January 1861.
Major Robert Anderson sent correspondence to the outgoing administration
detailing the Confederate threats to vacate Fort Sumter, and stating
requirements for supplies and reinforcements if there was any chance of Union
troops maintaining control of the fort [3].
The incident of the Star of the West being turned back from Sumter had
occurred while Buchanan was still in office.
When Lincoln entered office and attempted to resupply the Union troops
at Fort Sumter, the Confederacy began shelling the fort and overtook possession
of Sumter before northern reinforcements and supplies could make any difference
in the outcome.
In response to the Confederacy attack on Sumter, Lincoln issued
a proclamation on April 15, 1861 calling for “the militia of the several states
of the Union to the aggregate number of 75,000 in order to suppress said
combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed” [4]. The result of this mobilization pushed the
fence-riding slave states of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas
to the confederacy and began the Civil War.
Until the shelling of Fort Sumter by the Confederacy, there
was still possibility of some kind of political or diplomatic reconciliation
without actual all-out war. While the contributing
economic and political dividing issues between the north and south were enough
to bring the young United States to division, I view the hardline position of
the Union in proclaiming government establishments in the territories of seceded southern states, most importantly federal and military facilities, as the main
cause of the war. After all, President Buchanan
had even “denied the legal right of states to secede, but held that the Federal
Government legally could not prevent them” [5].
Had another avenue of approach been taken, there may not have been a
Civil War. Of course, in such a scenario
where no physical warfare ever occurred, we might possibly find two neighboring
nation-states today or a single United States quite different on social,
economic and political levels from the United States we live in today.
1. Roland
Marchand. 2010. “Lincoln and the Outbreak of War, 1861.” University of California, Davis: The History
Project. Accessed January 30, 2014. http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/lessons/view_lesson.php?id=13
2. Roland
Marchand. 2010. “Lincoln and the Outbreak of War, 1861.” University of California, Davis: The History
Project. Accessed January 30, 2014. http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/lessons/view_lesson.php?id=13
3. Robert
Anderson. 1861. General Correspondence between Robert
Anderson and Samuel Cooper dated February 28, 1861. The Library of Congress. Accessed January 30, 2014. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal1/075/0752800/malpage.db&recNum=0
4. Abraham
Lincoln. 1861. "Proclamation 80 - Calling Forth the
Militia and Convening an Extra Session of Congress," April 15, 1861.
Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=70077
5. The White
House. 2014. “Biography of James Buchanan”. The White House Website. Accessed on January 30, 2014. . http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesbuchanan
No comments:
Post a Comment