Talk:Historiographic issues about the American Civil War

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This page is in response to many questions posted on the discussion page for the American Civil War article.Jimmuldrow 22:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

I realize why this page was created. And it is very, very well-written. But to me, this page reads like a textbook, or even a manual, and violates WP:NOT#TEXT. One would not find "Simple answers about the American Civil War" in a paper encyclopedia, for example. That an article like this is needed indicates, perhaps, that the introduction page to the American Civil War article needs radical revamping and that much of the detailed material needs to be moved to their own pages. On the other hand, this is a complex topic, and simple questions about it deserve complex answers. It might just be too bad if elementary or middle school children can't readily understand it. (That's what teachers are for.) - Tim1965 01:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I understand the reasons why this article has been suggested for deletion. I disagree that this should be deleted, however, because this article has been badly needed for some time. I always thought we'd develop a "controversies of the ACW" or some such article, and here Jim has done that. I think we should fix, perhaps move, but not delete. BusterD 10:50, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Suggest move to: "Issues of the American Civil War". It's a noun with a prepositional phrase, the preferred construction. I see only tiny fixes necessary to accomplish the move. What do you think, Jim? BusterD 13:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead and delete. I'll try to find a better way to address these issues. Any attempt to do so in the main article doesn't seem to work, and adds clutter.Jimmuldrow 23:32, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't delete. I'll be moving the page as I suggested above about 9 1/2 hours from this timestamp, unless I hear disagreement. BusterD 14:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest a better title might be "Historiological issues of the American Civil War". This should at least limit the contents to issues on which either current historians disagree (i.e. could the South have won the war) or in which the current consensus of historians has replaced a previous school of thought (i.e. the role of tariffs and/or economic factors in the origins of the war.) Tom (North Shoreman) 15:09, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I see your concern here, and I don't necessarily disagree, but the suggested title has one of the big negatives of the exisiting title: overlongness. Plus an awkward word usage (albeit a correct one). Originally I was thinking "Controversies of the...", but issues seems a better and more inclusive word choice. BusterD 15:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

You should consider moving this article to WIKIBLOG, which is where folks can air their opinions in an ever-changing article with no stability. Since WIKIBLOG does not exist, this article should be deleted. Various opinionations aired in this article, such as the wild assertion that economics really didn't play a roll in the wars origin, make this article fairly worthless. I can easily cite a dozen or more books on Lincoln, alone, documenting his mercantile-theory and Henry-Clay perspectives on the economy, and how he forced this paradigm into the radically altered federal government. Also most of this article is redundant to:

• Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War
• Secession in the United States
• States' rights
• Origins of the American Civil War
• Mercantilism
• Henry Clay
• Nullification Crisis

and I could list another 25 pages or more. I move that we delete this page, unless someone can conjure some incredible argument otherwise.Grayghost01 (talk) 01:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot the scholarly Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln is redundant to this too ... a sexually frustrated man takes out his bottled-up anger on the South. Perhaps Wiki is merely a cited blog concept? Issues of the ACW certainly supports that theory.Grayghost01 (talk) 01:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Economic causes of the Civil War

I have a problem with the statement: "Historians generally agree that economic conflicts were not a major cause of the war." As a university graduate I can tell you that most history professors spend a great deal of time talking about how "economic sectionalism" was a major factor in causing the civil war, especially in the advanced classes. One book I remember reading was "Causes of the Civil War" by Kenneth Stamp. He devotes almost as many pages to economic causes of the war as to slavery and many more pages than state's rights. I don't know who writes these articles or what your qualifications are, but it seems to be to be a collection of laymen opinions than a scholarly paper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.59.179.45 (talk) 17:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I did not write this but I note that the quote to which you object is at least partially supported by a direct, attributed quote from Kenneth Stampp himself in the next paragraph: ""Most historians...now see no compelling reason why the divergent economies of the North and South should have led to disunion and civil war; rather, they find stronger practical reasons why the sections, whose economies neatly complemented one another, should have found it advantageous to remain united." The footnote is an expanded quote from Stampp which concludes: "The conclusion seems inescapable that if economic differences, real though they were, had been all that troubled relations between North and South, there would be no substantial basis for the idea of an irrepressible conflict."

Stampp's book: Stampp, ed., Kenneth M. Causes of the Civil War revised edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1974. ISBN 0-671-62237-4 is 182 pages long. The section entitled "Economic Sectionalism" is 16 pages long, pages 63 to 78. The latest entry in the section was written in 1935. The previous entry by the Beards, from 1927, represents a view that Stampp no longer accepted by the time he compiled this book. The section on states rights and nationalism is 21 pages long, pages 42 to 63. The two sections on the slave power and the right and wrong of slavery, pages 7 to 42 and 101 to 140 are 74 pages in length. Stampp's premise, as expressed in his revised introduction in 1974 (page 1), is that there is disagreement over the cause or causes of the Civil War but that the question is worth further study. He presents a collection of speeches, newspaper articles and essays from the period of the war and from postwar historians up to the time of the book's publication in seven sections (page 5) totaling 82 entries. A considerable majority of these items are from the Civil War period itself and immediate postwar period. The first edition of the book was published in 1959. I found only three essays or excerpts written in the 1960s, three from the early 1970s.

Slavery itself could be considered an economic issue. Lost Cause rationalizations by Jefferson Davis and other contemporaries aside, the other economic issues that divided the sections of the country, such as tariffs, were inextricably bound to the continuance of slavery, as a matter of fact and according to many modern historians. More importantly, they were not significant enough standing alone to precipitate a civil war. See the excerpts from "The Impending Crisis" below.

Stampp viewed most Southerners as guilty over the morality of slavery and insufficiently committed to its continuance and thus insufficiently committed to win the war. Of course, he would consider other causes for the war but in the introduction to "Causes of War," he says: "The proposition that a "necessary" condition for war was the abolition of slavery in the North while it flourished in the South may be persuasive, but it is not subject to conclusive proof. Benson's causal explanation of the Civil War, like all others, is at present no more than a plausible hypothesis, though, in my opinion, a highly persuasive one." Gary Gallagher is a distinguished modern historian who disagrees with Stampp's views on such points as will to win and weak support for slavery among Southerners. See Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-674-16056-8, pages 25–26, 46, 69, 70.

Here are some excerpts from the writings of other notable modern historians after the publication of Stampp's revised book on causes of the Civil War:

In Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84944-5 at page 43, Eicher writes: "Those who now deny that slavery was the paramount issue in the minds of Southerners need only read the papers of the Confederacy's early leaders – Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, Robert M. T. Hunter, and Howell Cobb included – to educate themselves."

In McPherson, James M. Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. ISBN 0-394-52469-1, p. 1, McPherson writes: "The social and political strains produced by rapid growth provoked repeated crises that threatened to destroy the republic. From the beginning, these strains were associated mainly with slavery. The geographical division of the country into free and slave states ensured that the crises would take the form of section conflict. Each section evolved institutions and values based on its labor system. These values in turn generated ideologies that justified each section's institutions and condemned those of the other." At page 51, McPherson writes: "Slavery was the main issue in national politics from 1844 to the outbreak of the Civil War. And many times before 1844 this vexed question burst through the crust of other issues to set section against section, as in the Missouri debates of 1819–1820, Even the nullification crisis of 1832, ostensibly over the tariff, had slavery as its underlying cause."

"The greatest danger to American survival at midcentury, however, was neither class tension nor ethnic division. Rather, it was sectional conflict between North and South over the future of slavery." McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-503863-0. p. 7. "Underlying all of these differences was the peculiar institution. 'On the subject of slavery,' declared the Charleston Mercury in 1858, 'the North and South...are not only two Peoples, but they are rival, hostile Peoples.'" p. 41.

"The greatest wedge between the North and the South was slavery. Southerners' emphasis on states' rights and on permitting slavery in the West was based on protecting slaveholding interests. Throughout the early nineteenth century and the antebellum period, a variety of slavery issues occupied the forefront of American politics and social movements." Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman. The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, Inc., 2009 edition. ISBN 978-1-4391-4884-6. First Published 2002. p. 93.

"The cause was grounded in the raw materials of Southern life: slavery and race, planters and patricians, plain folk and folk culture, cotton and plantations. But to become the cause and inspire revolution, the elements of Southern social economy had to affect the Southern mind and emotions." Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. ISBN 0-06-014252-9. p. 16.

"Beginning in the Spring of 1861, the United States split into two warring nations, North and South, set apart by cultural differences and the bitter and divisive issue of slavery. Many Northerners, particularly New England men, marched south on a crusade to put an end to the Confederacy's "peculiar institution," a slave system that they had come to view as an intolerable blight on the republic, while others fought to preserve the 85-year old union of states that they cherished as the world's beacon of liberty. Their opponents in the seceding states fought to preserve a way of life they had inherited from their ancestors. Whether they viewed slavery as a good or evil, few could conceive of accepting any change imposed from the outside." (page 8) and "To be sure, many Southerners differed with Northerners in favor states' rights over the claims of the federal government. But that issue in itself was not enough to shatter the Union until it mixed explosively with the controversy over slavery." (page 17). Kagan, Neil, and Stephen G. Hyslop. Eyewitness to the Civil War: The Complete History From Secession to Reconstruction. Washington D.C.: National Geographic, 2006. ISBN 978-07922-5280-1.

"For forty years northerners and southerners had quarreled incessantly over the tariff, land policy, and other public issues. They fought over social matters from family values to education, and their spats over religion led many Protestant sects to separate into northern and southern branches. All of these issues and more heightened feelings between the sections, but none of them could touch the passions aroused by the one question that divided them above all others, slavery. No other issue has ever dominated American politics so completely for so long." Klein, Maury. Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0-679-44747-4. pp. 37-38.

See also Cornerstone Speech in which Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said on March 21, 1861: "Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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." In Weigley, Russell F. A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-253-33738-0, p. 9, Weigley says of the Cornerstone Speech: "The embarrassment was simply such as is usually prompted by unvarnished plain-spoken truth."

In The Impending Crisis, America Before the Civil War 1848 – 1861 New York: Harper Perennial, reprint 2011. First published New York, Harper Colophon, 1976. ISBN 978-0-06-131929-7, David M. Potter (in a work edited and completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher) examined the causes of the Civil War at great length. He wrote at pp. 41 – 42: "These three explanations – cultural, economic, and ideological – have long been the standard formulas for explaining the sectional conflict. Each has been defended as though it were necessarily incompatible with the other two. But culture, economic interest, and value may all reflect the same fundamental forces at work in a society, in which case each will appear as an aspect of the other. Diversity of culture may naturally produce both diversity of interests and diversity of values. Further, the differences between a slaveholding and a nonslaveholding society would be reflected in all three aspects. Slavery presented an inescapable ethical question which precipitated a sharp conflict of values. It constituted a vast economic interest...."

He further said at page 42: "The importance of slavery in all three of these aspects is evident further in its polarizing effect upon the sections. No other sectional factor could have brought about this effect in the same way" and at page 44: "From this viewpoint, the centrality of the slavery issue appears clear. Slavery, in one aspect or another, pervaded all of the aspects of sectionalism." Donner60 (talk) 04:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Title

This ought to be 'Causes of the American Civil War'. 'Issues of the American Civil War' would be topics like conscription, European diplomacy, cross-border trading etc. Valetude (talk) 19:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

How is this article different from Origins of the American Civil War?

This article was called Issues of the American Civil War. I renamed it because I thought and still think that was too much like Origins of the American Civil War — what's the difference between the issues and the origins (which article treat it as "Causes of")?

The name used for the war — that's not a question of causes or origins, it is how the war has been interpreted, how it is viewed in retrospect. That seems lkke historiography to me. So I thought the two articles could be distinguished this way:

This article is about the Civil War as it has been seen after it ended. For the issues of the Civil War as seen during the war and during the lead-up to it, see Origins of the American Civil War.

But the content of the articles is not divided up this way. There's a lot of overlap. Shuold they be merged? If not, why? deisenbe (talk) 06:52, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Writing Workshop

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Frediyang (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by T5555555T (talk) 19:42, 9 November 2023 (UTC)