What caused the American Civil War?

all this talk we've had about the Confederate flag has prompted people to take stands on the Civil War and its causes who would have thought it would be so contentious a century and a half later well that's history for you Hey safer here the civil war was caused by slavery thanks for watching I'm just kidding it's war of course it's more difficult than that the answer is actually extremely ambiguous slavery might be at the root but it is certainly not the direct cause the simplest and most basic cause of the civil war was the election of 1860 Abraham Lincoln was not even on the southern ballot the problem was the Whig party had been steadily fading away and there was a huge split in the Democratic Party so because of this fractious Ness Lincoln skated in with in majority of only 40% of the vote representing a sea-change toward the Republican Party which had only come into existence in the last election cycle the south having not even put him on the ballot decided that it was time to secede and so they did an amendment was proposed to protect state institutions including slavery which actually passed and is still technically pending ratification as well as a proposed compromise even a peace conference was held in February 1861 but Congress rejected it nothing would bring the South back into the Union much like the Revolution once the Confederacy was formed they became inconsolable with their former country the Confederacy did try to deal with Lincoln as an equal government but Lincoln refused to accept their secession as Lincoln took the presidency the south had already seceded and the north was trying to bring them back he waited keeping military stores where they were finally after months of the crisis a fort in South Carolina called Sumter was bombarded by local militia Lincoln had his excuse the Confederacy was the aggressor now and Congress passed a declaration of war so where does slavery fit into all this the war was definitely turned into a cause for slavery in 1863 when Lincoln proclaimed it on the first day of that year it was later turned into a constitutional amendment striking slavery from America altogether but you'll hear a bunch of stuff from southerners will say that the Civil War is never about slavery until then and that is foolish to say the least yes the argument was about whether the South had the right to secede or not but why were they seceding in the first place why wasn't Lincoln on the ballot in the south the debate did have its roots in slavery it had been an ongoing debate since the Second Continental Congress it was the most contentious subject during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 abolitionists have been being lynched in the South for a decade and a half sometimes even in the North compromise after compromise was struck to avert the Civil War when Kansas was going to be admitted to the Union there was a bloody war fought over the choice to be a slave state or not there had been repeated attempts to avoid the slavery issue such as dealing with Western issues like polygamy in Utah or lawlessness in California Indian raiding throughout the West and the general lack of communication but those issues were heavily politicized by abolition the Republican Party was formed mostly to stop the spread of slavery to other states as best they could their first candidate the Explorer and Californian war hero John C Fremont was fiercely against slavery's expansion and even wanted to stop enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act Lincoln was not on the ballot in the south for obvious reasons but there was more to the causes of the Civil War than that another dividing issue had been the long debate over how high tariffs should be the South was disproportionately affected by tariffs and so they wanted them lowered while higher Terrace helped northern industrial growth there was a long-standing debate over what direction the nation should go called the Jefferson Hamilton debate Jefferson wanted an agrarian utopia where every white man was Lord of his own plot of land while Hamilton was more utilitarian and wanted industrial growth these two competing visions were exemplified in the tariff debate the South thought it was time to follow Jefferson's ideal on their own after all they formed a confederacy Jefferson had been an anti federalists was never part of the creation of the Constitution and was a southern slave owner they thought of themselves as continuing that vision in the south you'll still hear the civil war called the War of Northern Aggression even though they were technically the aggressors there was a serious debate in 1861 over whether any state had a right to secede so the South thought that they were exercising their constitutional rights as States often called the states right debate a final factor was that there was a rising ideal in the USA before the Civil War people said these United States but there was a subtle change to the United States where once it was a union it had become a nation by the end of the war people started using the term nationhood I can do an episode on how recent nations really are but suffice to say the US was not a nation until the Civil War since the European revolutions of 1848 the tide of nationalism had been invested into the ideals of manifest destiny and that manifest destiny was the main part of the Republican anti-slavery rhetoric as some historians interpreted the Civil War was fought over the definition of the USA as a nation of course you could just say the Democrats started it since they were the ones to secede and attack Fort Sumner but that would be simplistic because of the Civil War are obviously convoluted was it just slavery or a concoction of a whole lot of different problems tell me what you think in the comments below hey guys I did a collaboration work with another channel named jabbsi on this particular subject actually the whole war in general if you would like to see that click on his thumbnail real quick and you'll go right to the video be sure to check out his channel while you're at it you

Channel: The Cynical Historian

Views: 156,894

Keywords: history, documentary, civil war, 1860, 1861, Lincoln, slavery, cause, confederacy, secession, secede, war of northern agression, american, american civil war, US civil war

Id: Mu9-5n0vpGs

Length: 6min 26sec (386 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2016