Will post prompt later

1. Louis Wischnewsky
History 170
Prof Farrington
20 Jul 11
Final Exam Extra Credit: Question Four
The road to the Civil War is as clear as the road to the American Revolution. After
Monroe, the rhetoric between anti- and pro-slavery groups steadily grew more and more harsh.
While there is no doubt that the Civil War would not have happened were it not for the issue of
slavery, there were many other factors at play. Virtually all of them involved political jockeying
for power instead of rationally seeking solutions, a problem that perplexes this nation over a
century later.
Somehow or another, as fate would have it, we had thirteen states considered free and
thirteen that practiced slavery. This divided the Senate, more than anything, evenly and made
sure no laws would be passed that supported one side more than the other. That is what made the
issue of territorial expansion a very touchy subject. Any states added to the Union in the North
would surely shift the senatorial power to the anti-slavery movement. Any states added to the
South would have the exact opposite affect. It is probably safe to say that all Americans, both
Northerners and Southerners bought into the concept of Manifest Destiny hook, line and sinker.
As a result no one wanted to pass up on territorial expansion … so long as it was an expansion in
the North if you were a Northerner and in the South if you were a Southerner. There is no
unambiguous evidence that can support the claim that Southerners wanted to expand slavery
itself, even into the new territories. Southerners wanted Texas in the union and, hopefully, a
couple other states strictly as a form of insurance that slavery would not be forced to end in the
current states that allowed slavery. After all, there is no rational way pro-slavery people could

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have hoped to vastly expand the use of slaves: where would those slaves have come from? The
slaves would have been taken to the new states from states that already contained slaves meaning
that current slave states would have lost representative power in the House. The exchange would
have been a growth in representation in the Senate. The Senate could not make new laws
promoting slavery, but the Senate could surely shut down any Congressional attempts to end
slavery. So the South was looking at expansion as a way to preserve itself while the North was
looking at expansion as a way to overpower the South.
In any case, industrialism might have aided in removing a need for slaves in the North,
but that same industrialization created a greater need for slavery in the South. It can be argued
that up to the invention of the cotton gin even Southerners were having their doubts about
slavery. The Second Great Awakening was no less noticed in the South than it was in the North
and this is evidenced in two ways. First, the Second Great Awakening (SGA) caused Northerners
to renew their calls for an end to slavery, but second, the SGA also caught on heavily in the
South, even today known as the Bible Belt. So slavery was doomed to end in the South just as it
was ending everywhere else. What, then, caused the South to dig in its heels and resist the
North? A weird bias toward Southerners exists to this very day through which Southerners are
considered uneducated and hateful. Really? Well, ask the rest of the world why they do not like
the United States and guess what they have to say? No one likes to be called stupid and hateful.
Had the North been as enlightened as many of its leaders claimed to be the North might have
demonstrated a little more patience and worked with Southerners to find a way to replace the
cotton-picking labor it needed.
Thus, considering the animosity that was growing between the two regions, the moral
convictions of one side and the basic instinct to survive on the other, the Civil War was not
inevitable. Could it have been avoided? Absolutely. But it was not and that's all that matters. This

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shifts the discussion to what lead to Union victory. There are three things that lead to Union
victory. The greatest of those factors, considering some of Lee's actions late in the war, was that
Lee did not believe in the cause to begin with. It will be debated to the end of days, but it is easy
to argue that Lee went North for no other reason but to bring the war to an end. There is no
logical way a man as brilliant as Lee would have ever believed that entering the North would
turn the tide back to the favor of the South. Some might argue that Lee might have hoped the
move would have caused Lincoln or Grant to call all the Union troops back to defend the capital,
but that is a fantasy. Lee knew he was outnumbered the whole war. He knew there was no need
for Union troops in the North. He could have captured the capital, sure, but even that would not
have assured him of capturing Lincoln and without Lincoln there would be no surrender.
Capturing the capital, too, would have enormously angered the Northerners rallying them to an
even greater zeal to defeat the South. Lee knew that. There can be no doubt about it. So the
greatest factor in Union victory was that Lee was finished, mainly because he did not believe in
the cause to begin with.
The second greatest influence on the South's loss was the slaves just up and leaving their
plantations. Everyone argues that this caused confusion and a lack of income to the South, there
was a larger factor. The South already knew that slavery was ending elsewhere in the world.
They might have tried to resume the practice of importing Africans, but that is doubtful for two
reasons. First, the South was seeking aid from England. That makes the second reason important:
England had already abolished slavery. With a superpower that did not allow slavery backing
them, the South had to know they would not be allowed to import more slaves. Now go back to
the slaves walking off plantations. When that started happening, the morale of the South was
obliviated. It was obliviated because the writing was on the wall: even if they won independence,
their way of life would no longer exist. Why? Because they would have no slaves to rebuild their

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new nation with and there would be no way to get more. So with slaves walking away in even
greater volumes after the Emancipation Proclamation, the South no longer had a vision of its
future.
Finally, the third factor. The third factor was purely the numbers. With the one man that
could pull off a military victory no longer into the fight, without the means to be an
economically viable nation, the sheer numbers made victory impossible. The inability to feed
itself, a larger population base in the North, no manufacturing to replenish materiel, the war was
now an effort in futility.
Maybe it could be argued that the North was aching for a fight with the South. If that
were true, then the events leading up to the Civil War should have made it obvious that a revolt
was inevitable. However, there is no evidence that supports a hankering for a fight within the
North. In fact, there's one clear clue the opposite was true: the North knew the South was
building an army yet the North did nothing to prepare to counter that army. In any case, while
some might point to the specif events leading up to the Civil War as proof that war was
inevitable, getting into the minds of both Northerners and Southerners reveals that there were
ways to avoid the war and, by definition, that made it a war that could have been averted.
Nonetheless, a decision came to blows and once the fighting started, there might have been three
factors playing against the South, but most critical was an admired General Lee that was not all
that into the war to begin with and the removal of a reason to continue fighting, the emancipation
of the Southern slaves. The sheer numbers were a factor, but not one as critical as those two.
In closing, the Embargo Act, the Compromise of 1820, the Missouri Compromise, the
Kansa-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, Western expansion – all of those things could have been
discussed in this response. To do so, however, continues the legacy of what truly caused the Civil
War and continues to divide this nation over 150 years later: Northern bias and dislike of the

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South. A lot has changed in those 150 plus years. While the South still clings to its heroes, the
economic might of the nation is no longer so vastly imbalanced and certainly industrial
advantages go to the South today. In considering the Reconstruction and the years between Civil
War and the Civil Rights Movement, there has been that lingering question of whether or not the
war had been fought in vain. As passionate arguments about modern issues grow in intensity,
now is the time more than ever to ask that question. The answer is that if Americans have to
continue defending their way of life in one region or another instead of finding amicable
solutions may not bode well for America's future.