The Role of Slavery in the War

by Robert F. Hawes Jr.

When confronted with the fact that slavery played such a large part in Southern motivations for secession, I think that we should ask our open-minded opposition friends to bear a few things in mind, primarily this:  Slavery was a pawn in a much larger game.

And that game was being played for control of the federal government.  As an industry-based economy, the North desired a more active role for Washington in terms of protecting its commercial interests.  This automatically set it at variance with the South, which was of course an agriculture-based economy.  For Southern interests to succeed, free-trade had to be maintained, and this mandated opposition to any attempts to broaden the federal government's role with respect to commerce.  These factors created a situation early on in this country whereby the Northern states became the advocates of expanded government, while the Southern states became the advocates of limited government.  The various political parties then adjusted themselves accordingly with the old federalist-consolidationists finding a new home in Northern politics following their defeat in Jefferson 's election to the Presidency.

With the Northern population on the rise, the population-based House of Representatives quickly became the advocate of Northern interests.  The battlefield for those determined to control the government was then destined to be the Senate, which was state-based and equal between the two sections for some time.  Control of the government could not be had without control of the Senate.  And the only way to gain control of the Senate was to add more Northern states to the Union than Southern states.  This battle for the Senate thus became a battle for the territories out of which new states would be created and added to the Union.

Unfortunately for the consolidationists, political lines overlapped somewhat more in the beginning, so a way had to be found to isolate the matter geographically.  This naturally led to the use of slavery as a means of separating the politics of the two sections due to the fact that slavery already geographically divided North and South.  Consider how the Missouri Compromise was resolved:  one "free" state was admitted to the Union, and one "slave" state was admitted, thus balancing power in the Senate once again. This balance of power, not a regard for slavery itself, was the heart of the matter.

Thomas Jefferson commented that the Missouri question had awakened him "like a fire bell in the night," and that he believed it was "at once the knell of the Union."  Writing to William Short on August 22, 1820 , Jefferson commented:  "This is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.  A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper."  Writing to Albert Gallatin in the same year, Jefferson also commented that he perceived the Missouri solution had negated the old political separations and "devised a new one, of slave-holding, and non-slave-holding states, which, while it had semblance of being Moral, was at the same time Geographical, and calculated to give them ascendancy by debauching their old opponents to a coalition with them."

Jefferson considered the attack upon slavery to be a means by which the old federalists could sway men who would otherwise oppose them to their side of the political spectrum.  For it stands to reason that if one advocates an expanded role for the federal government in the first place, one gives himself the power to do something about slavery as a result.  Opposition to Southern political aims now became synonymous with opposition to slavery, and with this merger the consolidationists found a winning combination in their war for control of the central government.  The issue of slavery as one of morality was, to Jefferson , "dust" thrown "into the eyes of the people...to fanaticize them."  With the political hosts thus arrayed against one another on geographical terms, George Washington's nightmare had come to pass and, again, quoting Jefferson to Albert Gallatin:  "...it gave a geographical and preponderant line of the Potomac and Ohio, throwing twelve States to the North and East, and ten to the South and West.  With these therefore (the Northern majority of states) it is merely a question of power:  but with this geographical minority it is a question of existence."

Jefferson's question of "existence" for the Southern states in 1820 later gave rise to Calhoun's question "of submission or resistance" for the South in 1850.  Politically speaking, the Southern states were in a struggle for their existence after the Missouri Compromise.  As much as we regret it now, and as most Southerners regretted it then, slavery was the basis of the Southern economy and thus of Southern society in general.  The threat of its sudden overthrow spelled disaster for the South just as a major commercial calamity would have spelled disaster for the North.  But the political battles that led to secession in 1860 did not rise from the institution of slavery itself, but from a struggle to prevent Southern subjugation to Northern aims on all fronts including slavery.  The South found itself being reduced to a junior member of the Union to the furtherance of the North, and it rightfully objected just as the colonial patriots had once objected to their own subjugation to the whims of the British parliament in which they were not represented. 

And while the South was certainly represented in the Washington government, the other section of the Union was using its power to curtail that representation so as to actively subjugate the South.  The war over slavery in the territories was a war for control of the government, and our Southern ancestors understood that very clearly.  The power of their own central government was being used to deny them a meaningful voice in that government, and they were expected to just sit back and go along with it or else be dubbed "agitators."  Despite this, they chose to remain in the Union until the election of Lincoln when the North had at last proven that it could govern the Union without the input of the South (as Lincoln failed to win so much as one electoral vote in the South).  Unfortunately, the handwriting was on the wall by 1850.  In that year, the Northern majority added California to the Union , forever destroying the old Missouri Compromise line.  At that point, the South entered into an end game with the North at a material disadvantage.  Checkmate was inevitable.  And most scholars agree that, had the South seceded in 1850, the North could not have won the war.

So when the Lincoln-apologists cry and moan about Southern defense of slavery, let us be quick to remind them that slavery was simply a pawn to be used in Northern attempts to consolidate the government to their own advantage.  Let us also quote them the words of Abraham Lincoln from his debate with Stephen Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois on August 21, 1858: 

"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation.  If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go up North, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some Northern ones go South, and become most-cruel slave masters. When the Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution   exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution..."

Southern defense of slavery was, in 1860, due to the dilemma of a man who has a tiger by the tail.  You can't hold on forever, but you can't afford to let go right away either.  Instantly abolishing slavery would have been ruinous to the South in general and to the black race in particular.  Lincoln himself, during that same debate with Douglas in Ottawa , had asked, concerning abolition:  "What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition?"  Yet, Lincoln later proved himself to be a man of expediency and not principle, as he determined to emancipate slaves and risk all of the consequences of their becoming "underlings" if it allowed him to defeat his enemy.

And the plight of blacks following the war speaks for itself.  Read the federal slave narratives some time.  It clearly describes the struggles of a people who had basically been turned out into the street by Lincoln 's war effort.  They were uneducated and impoverished and expected to make a go of it by themselves in a war-ravaged land.  It stands as a testimony to the strength and character of Southern society in general that the entire region did not collapse into anarchy and bloody knavery following the fall of the Confederate government.  Whites and blacks worked together to forge what they could with what they had, and this country has seen no greater example of the races working together than the South lifting itself from the ashes of catastrophic war.

And, as a last note, the person who previously commented that slavery had nothing to do with the start of the war is absolutely correct, and we would do well to continue to separate the causes of secession and war in our discussions of the period.  As Webb Garrison has stated in "Lincoln 's Little War," Abraham Lincoln's war-cry was essentially:  "You can keep your slaves, but you must return to the Union."  In the end, it was all about empire.

The quote from Lincoln's debate with Douglas was found in:

Nicolay, John G., ed.; Hay, John, ed. 'First Joint Debate at Ottawa , August 21, 1858 ' in "The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln," 3 (New York: Francis D. Tandy Company, 1894), pp. 226-228.

Jefferson 's comments on the Missouri Compromise were found in:

Merrill D. Peterson, ed., "Jefferson : Writings" (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984) pp. 1434, 1448-1449.

Robert F. Hawes Jr.
Phoenix1861@aol.com

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