The Causes of the American Civil War

This subject started out in another thread as a discussion about the
causes of the Civil War, starting from the assertion that slavery was
the cause of the Civil War, and that the cause of every war is
political.

I have always had a hard time figuring out how you go from slavery to
the civil war. Consider the following:

(*) President Lincoln had no intention of trying to end slavery any
time soon. It turns out he had a plan for the Federal government to
provide monetary compensation to the Southern states for ending
slavery within 30 years. But that can't possibly be the reason why
the South started the Civil War; that would be like someone starting
a war today because of something that might (or might not) happen in
2030. It just doesn't make sense.

(*) "Slavery" is a perfectly plausible cause of war, and indeed many
wars have been fought over such a cause -- but in those cases it was
the slaves who rose up against their masters. Nothing like that
appears to have happened in the Civil War.

(*) Every war has a "political" cause, and that cause is often just a
pretext. Hitler took over the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia
supposedly because of the number of Germans living there, when the
"real" cause was the acquisition of the Czech armament works. Saddam
invaded Kuwait because, politically, it was Iraq's "nineteenth
province," when the "real" reason was more likely the acquisition of
the oil wells. So even if we say that slavery was the "cause" of the
Civil War, we have to at least be very suspicious that this political
reason was no more than a pretext.

(*) I don't see pure "politics" as being the cause of any war, or at
least any crisis war. In particular, no one goes to war because they
feel sorry for someone else, whether it's someone else's slaves. There
has to be some underlying motive such as an economic motive, or a
retaliation motive, or a preemption motive. In the case of the Civil
War, the South had a perfectly good alternative to war if politics was
the only issue: They simply had to wait until the 1864 election, and
try to elect someone more to their liking than Lincoln. In fact, the
President had been a Southerner for 48 of the first 60 years of the
Republic, and so it was reasonable to believe that a Southerner could
be elected in 1864 or 1868.

(*) Another problem with identifying slavery as the cause of the
Civil War is that it's a "North-centric" view. Since the South
initiated the Civil War, we should at least ask the Southerners what
they thought the cause of the war was, and they would answer quite
differently. According to South Carolina's 1860 "Declaration of the
Causes of Secession," the causes had to do with the North's violations
of its commitments and obligations under the Constitution with regard
to a whole litany of issues, not just slavery. (See further
discussion below.)

So, it seems possible to list slavery as "a" cause of the Civil War,
but the claim that slavery is "the" cause of the Civil War, or even
"the most important" cause of the Civil War cannot be easily
supported.

When I look for the cause of a war, I look for something deeper. I
want to know the visceral reason why someone decided to pick up a gun
or caused someone else to pick up a gun in order to kill someone
else.

In looking for the cause of a war, especially a crisis war, I look
for "visceral fear and fury": Fear over threats to one's life, threats
to one's way of life, threats to the existence of one's nation or
identity group, and fury at those who are blamed for those threats.

It's only this kind of "visceral fear and fury" that can lead to a
declaration of war.

To this end, I felt that the Panic of 1857 had to be the "real" cause
of the Civil War, with the plausible explanation that the South
blamed the North for the economic difficulties, and the North blamed
the South for having the economic advantage of slavery.

The Panic of 1857 caused thousands of businesses to go bankrupt; the
effects were international in scope (like the 1930s depression), and
the unemployment rate in parts of New York City went has high as 90%.
The problem was that I couldn't find any real historical evidence
supporting the view that it caused the Civil War.

Tolstoy on the causes of war

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in the same time frame as the
Civil War, In describing the "causes" of Napoleon's war against
Russia, he was obviously stumped. Here's what he wrote:

Originally Posted by Leo Tolstoy in 'War and Peace'

> It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by
> England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.
> Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament
> that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of
> Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;
> to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental
> System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers
> that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them
> employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of
> re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists
> of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance
> between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well
> concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of
> Memorandum No. 178.

> It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of
> other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of
> points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but
> to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its
> magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these
> causes seem insufficient.

> To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men
> killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was
> ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
> astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what
> connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of
> slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged,
> thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined
> the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

I have exactly the same problem when faced with descriptions of
slavery as the cause of the Civil War. To paraphrase Tolstoy, "We
cannot grasp what connection slavery has with the actual fact of
slaughter and violence: why because Lincoln was elected, hundreds
thousands of American men from the North and South killed and ruined
the people of Gettysburg and Atlanta and were killed by them."

The Southern causes for the Civil War

Tolstoy reminds us that if we're going to ascribe a political reason
to the cause of war, then we're going to end up with multiple causes,
since different groups have different political views. One thing
that I find really objectionable about saying the slavery was "the
cause" of the Civil War is that it's a North-centric point of view.
The North won the war, so naturally they get to say what caused the
war, but that might simply be a pretext.

So if we want to look at the political causes of the war, then we
should at least ask the South what THEY think the political causes
were.

It's true that slavery was a big part of the South's issues, as shown
by the 1860 South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession:

Originally Posted by South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession

> We affirm that these ends for which this Government was
> instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been
> made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding
> States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the
> propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights
> of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by
> the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution
> of slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them
> of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to
> eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have
> encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their
> homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries,
> books and pictures to servile insurrection.

With regard to slavery, South Carolina's argument was that the North
was violating the commitments which led the Constitution to be
adopted. But South Carolina had long considered the North to be
violating that same Constitution in other areas.

In fact, South Carolina had threatened to secede before. The South
was furious over tariff acts passed in 1828 and 1832, claiming that
these tariffs harmed the South but poured money into the North to pay
for their factories. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina wrote a long
series of essays advocating a policy of "Nullification" of the tariff
laws, on the grounds that they violated the Constitution, and showing
how the South could secede from the Union if the North denied the
Nullification policy. Although the Nullification crisis and the
secession threat was contained at that time, it was Calhoun's ideas
that were used 30 years later for an entirely different issue -
slavery.

The Southern resentment over economic issues ran very, very deep, as
shown by a speech that Representative John Reagan of Texas gave on
the floor of the House of Representatives on January 15, 1861. In
speaking to Northern leaders in general, he said:

Originally Posted by Rep John Reagan of Texas in Jan 1861

> "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you
> annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation
> laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our
> manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied
> with the vast tribute we pay to build up your great cities, your
> railroads, and your canals. You are not satisfied with the
> millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the
> balance of exchange, which you hold against us. You are not
> satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition
> of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with
> all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our
> rights and institutions. . . .

> "We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition.
> But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to
> do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more
> self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to assert and
> maintain our separate independence. It will compel us to
> manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own
> great cities, our own railroad and canals; and to use the tribute
> money we now pay you for these things for the support of a
> government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to
> none of them."

The result of all this is that it's clear to me that BOTH slavery and
economic issues were "causes" of the Civil War. But in both cases
there's still a missing connection: What is it about either issue
that causes someone to pick up a gun and start killing people?

Slave insurrections

The key to the dilemma can be found in a sentence of the South
Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession quoted above:

Originally Posted by South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession

> They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to
> leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by
> emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Slave rebellions had been a concern almost from the beginning of the
Republic, as the result of a massive 1791 slave rebellion in Santo
Domingo that resulted in some 60,000 deaths.

America's first major slave insurrection occurred in 1800 when an
army of 1,000 slaves, led by slave Gabriel Prosser, gathered with a
plan to assault Richmond. The plan was thwarted by a black informer,
and Prosser and 34 of his followers were hanged.

The pace of slave rebellions picked up in the 1820s, but the
best-known is Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831. Here's a description:

Originally Posted by The Almanac of American History p. 225

> On 22 August, Turner and about 70 recruits began a two-day
> rampage. They killed Turner's master and about 70 others. Some
> decapitated children (some of the slaves might have been drunk);
> Turner himself killed only one white. Many blacks chose not to
> join Turner because they sensed the futility of his effort.
> Indeed, the revolt was soon crushed. Turner managed to escape and
> hid out in the woods for 30 days before being caught. In the
> search to find him, 100 Virginia slaves were slaughtered. Turner
> was hanged. His uprising had been the most serious in the country
> to date. It so shook Southern states that they passed more
> stringent laws related to slaves, increased censorship against
> abolition, and made military preparations to halt further
> uprisings.

Here we see that the problem - slave insurrection - was handled by
containment and compromise, as in all awakening and unraveling
periods. The slaves were punished, and new laws were passed.

By the 1850s, the generational change into a crisis period was
occurring. The people who had grown during the violent Revolutionary
War were retired or gone, and a slave insurrection produced much more
anxiety. This is similar to America today: The numerous terrorist
attacks, including the massive 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had
little effect on Americans, but the 2001 attack traumatized the
entire country.

The slave insurrection incited by John Brown in 1859 affected
Americans of that day just as the 9/11 attack affected us. Here's
the description:

Originally Posted by The Almanac of American History p. 275

> With support from leading abolitionsts, [John] Brown then
> conceived of a plan for establishing a stronghold in the
> Appalachian Mountains where escaped slaves and freed blacks could
> take refuge and then lead an armed uprising throughout the South.
> He rented a farm near Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and from this base
> he launched an attack with 21 men on October 16, 1859. He seized
> the town and the U.S. Armory there, but the local militia kept
> them under siege until a troop of U.S. Marines, led by Robert E.
> Lee, assaulted the engine house wehre Brown and his followers were
> making their last stand. Ten of them were killed, and the wounded
> Brown was captured. Tried and convicted of treason, Brown was
> hanged in Charlestown on December 2. If his raid failed, Brown's
> eloquent defense during the trial convinced many Northerners that
> the abolition of slavery was a noble cause that required drastic,
> possibly violent action. His last prediction that "much
> bloodshed" would follow proved to be right. Although his violent
> tactics were not approved by many (and were discreetly disowned by
> the prominent abolotioinists who had encouraged him), Brown became
> something of a martyr. He inspired the words to a marching song
> that was the unofficial anthem of the Union troops, "John Brown's
> Body lies A'mouldering in the Grave."

Americans of the day were traumatized by this terrorist act, and
Southerners particularly were terrified by the insurrections and
infuriated at the Northerners, whom they blamed for inciting the
insurrections.

The following account in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, The
end of slavery in America, by Allen C. Guelzo, Simon & Schuster,
2004, pp. 16-17, describes the situation:

Originally Posted by Allen C. Guelzo

> Behind the slaveowners' rage at Lincoln lurked the dread not only
> that Lincoln meant emancipation but that emancipation meant
> insurrection and race war on the model of the Nat Turner slave
> revolt in 1831 or the massacres of white planters by their former
> slaves in San Domingue in 1791. Lincoln's election followed by
> little more than a year the attempt of the conscience tortured
> abolitionist, John Brown, to begin a slave uprising by seizing the
> weapons stored at the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
> No matter that the raid failed, that Brown was swiftly tried and
> hanged, or that Lincoln publicly condemned Brown. "When abolition
> comes by decree of the North," predicted Georgia supreme court
> justice Henry L Benning, "very soon a war between the whites and
> the blacks will spontaneously break out everywhere." The kind of
> apocalypse Benning prophesied touched every racial and sexual
> anxiety of the white South. The race war would be fought "in
> every town, in every village, in every neighborhood, in every
> road." The North would take advantage of this turmoil to intervene
> in favor of the blacks, and the result would be the extermination
> or exile of the whites-"so far as the men are concerned, and as
> for the women, they will call upon the mountains to fall upon
> them." One planter in Maury County, Tennessee, convinced himself
> in February 1861 that "a servile rebellion is more to be feared
> now than [it] was in the days of the Revolution against the
> mother country," when the British recruited and armed runaway
> slaves to fight their former American masters in South Carolina,
> Henry William Ravenal was surprised to find so "much alarm among
> the people of servile insurrection" and wrote for the
> Charleston Mercury on "the necessity of vigilance on the
> part of our people against the secret plottings & machinations of
> the fanatic abolitionists, who will surely come among us in
> friendly guise to tamper with our negroes." In Texas, fires in
> Dallas, Denton, and Pilot Point sent fearful whites in pursuit of
> slave rebels who planned "to burn the houses and kill as many of
> the women and children as they could while the men were gone."
> Within a month, as many as fifty blacks and whites had been
> executed by home guards and vigilante mobs.

Finally we have it. We see the sense in which slavery was the
"cause" of the Civil War. We finally see the visceral link that led
Southerners from the election of Lincoln to picking up a gun to get
ready to start killing.

What about the economic factors? Yes, they must still be part of the
fabric of the war. The Panic of 1857 devastated the North, and the
Federal taxes and tariffs were doing enormous damage to the economy
of the South.

A financial crisis can be thought of as dry underbrush that feeds a
war. If the North and South had been wealthy, the there would have
been far less energy for a war, even in the face of servile
insurrection. Men who have no way to feed their families except by
joining the army will do so, and energetically if the war is a crisis
war.

Market-Dominant Minorities

This analysis of the causes of the American Civil War provides
guidance for how other wars begin. In particular, it can be modified
to show how wars begin in societies with market-dominant minorities.

In a market-dominant minority situation, the economy is controlled by
a wealthy minority of the population, and the majority of the
population suffers from poverty, sometimes extreme poverty. Almost
always, there are other differences between the minority and majority
populations, including differences in ethnicity, skin color, language
and religion.

Following the pattern of the Civil War, war breaks out during a
crisis period in the following way:

(*) The poverty and humiliation suffered by the majority leads to
riots, demonstrations, and occasional outbreaks of low-level
violence.

(*) During awakening and unraveling periods, the majority handles
these outbreaks are
handled by compromise and containment, often by simply jailing the
perpetrators.

(*) During a crisis period, the minority begins to feel visceral fear
about the the riots and outbreaks of violence, and begin to
overreact.

(*) The majority also increasingly overreacts, leading to a civil
war, and often to a majority butchering of the wealthy minority.

Conclusion: The causes of the Civil War

So I've come to agree that slavery was "the cause" of the Civil War,
but not slavery in the political sense. It was slavery in the form
of a visceral fear and fury of servile insurrection.

This is the answer to the question I asked above, paraphrasing
Tolstoy: "We cannot grasp what connection slavery has with the actual
fact of slaughter and violence: why because Lincoln was elected,
hundreds thousands of American men from the North and South killed and
ruined the people of Gettysburg and Atlanta and were killed by them."

We now see the connection. And we can see how the same mechanism can
lead to wars in other situations, such as societies with
market-dominant minorities.

What about other causes -- political causes and economic causes?

I believe that economic causes play a big part in any crisis war, and
that a financial crisis fuels the war.

As for political causes, I tend to discount them almost always. It's
true that in some mid-cycle wars, the political cause might be
correct -- for example, in 1990 we invaded Kuwait for the political
reason to expel the Iraqis, and that's exactly what we did.

But people and nations don't want to admit the visceral and economic
causes of war. No country wants to admit, "We went to war because we
were afraid," or "We went to war for money." A political cause
becomes a pretext for war, and is rarely the real cause.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

I don't see the American Civil War as a typical war, but rather a unique special case. The United States were a double nation, with two (arguably three) distinct cultures and economic systems. It was an expanding nation. All cultures wanted to expand. However, the South wanted to maintain enough political power in Congress to block attempts to alter their economic system. In short, no new free states without an equal number of new slave states. As the free population was expanding faster, the North's expansionist needs came into conflict with the South's desire for political parity.

All the difficult political negotiations leading up to the war were about new states joining the Union. Bleeding Kansas was about whether Kansas would enter the Union as free or slave. The North was in no great hurry to end slavery in the old south, but they were in a great hurry to build the intercontinental railroad, and to open the West for far more settlement than the South was allowing. The South thought they had as much right to expand their culture as the North.

You touched on the different roles government might play in agricultural and industrial nations. The original US Constitution gave Congress authority to do specific things, all those things really necessary for a loose grouping of primarily agricultural states. This included maintaining post roads, but not dredging harbors. As industry developed, the industrial states favored use of federal taxes to support industrial growth in ways not specifically enumerated. This did result in a flow of southern tax moneys north. This did generate resentment. Still, this was not a significant issue in 1860. In the last Congresses before the war, this issue had been debated and resolved. The budgets had been passed without debate and with vast majorities from both north and south. While differences in the role of government were listed in several secession documents, they were not part of the last minute compromise attempts. Those who were trying to avert the war were dealing with slavery related issues only, not industrial issues.

I hadn't seen the 'market dominant minority' language applied to the Civil War before. It might be appropriate, but with one caveat. The minority itself was not the primary actor. The slaves were not rebelling. The slaves were not freeing themselves, but an outside people were allegedly attempting to free them. Without answering the following question, I would ask, can one people free another? If they were not ready to free themselves, could they really achieve freedom? As the reconstruction played out, they fell far short of equality.

The North had achieved the ability to expand westward. The efforts of southern lawmakers to restrict the role of the federal government in enhancing industrial development were frustrated. With the financial and territorial goals met, the North ceased caring about the idealistic goals of freedom and equality. Or, if they still cared, they did not care enough to maintain an occupation of the South by northern troops attempting to force change on a culture not ready for change. It was nigh on a century later that Thurgood Marshal and Martin Luther King resumed the fight, but with law and nonviolence as their tools, not war.

European wars under the great power system were different. Mike Alexander has me convinced that the war cycles were tied to economic cycles. During economic boom times, if nations could afford war, one prince or another would declare war. During down times, when nations were struggling with debts, they could not afford adventurism. Oh, the princes still preached about nobel causes. These seem as much propaganda as truth. Europe just had a culture of conflict. This continued until the destructive power of the weapons made it clear that no one was winning the wars anymore. The economy of the winner was clearly worse off than before the war was fought.

Hmm... There is more to be said, but the subject seems larger that one note. To be continued...

Dear Bob,

I just want to clarify one thing: I wasn't trying to say that the
Civil War was a "market-dominant minority" situation. What I did was
some research from which I concluded that the cause of the Civil War
was the Southerner's visceral fear of slave insurrections. I then
speculated that, by analogy, wars can arise from market-dominant
minority situations because the market-dominant minority develops a
visceral fear of violence by the majority population.

I'm actually rather excited about all this, since it all ties in very
well with the generational dynamics paradigm, and because I think I'm
coming close to solving some of the great problems of history. I just
wish I could find a way to translate it into book sales.

I agree that America in the 1860s was two separate nations, but I
guess I don't see that as being unique. In fact, I think you could
argue that any market-dominant minority culture consists of two
separate nations (or societies). That's probably what a fault line
war is all about.

In our previous discussions of Amy Chua's book, I quoted the
following paragraph to show how she supports the generational
paradigm, without her realizing it:

Originally Posted by Amy Chua p 10

> When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a
> market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is
> backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The
> first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant
> minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by
> forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is
> violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the
> market-dominant minority itself.

I previously wrote that the first two forms of backlash are awakening
or mid-cycle reactions and the third is a crisis period backlash. If
Chua had understood the generational paradigm, then throughout the
book, as she discussed the fault lines in country after country, she
could have related the backlashes to the countries' position on the
generational timeline.

The current discussion of the causes of the Civil War, and the causes
of wars in market-dominant minority societies adds to all this.

In a market-dominant minority culture, we can assume that the
majority will be exhibiting a backlash on a more or less continual
basis, typically mid-cycle riots, demonstrations and low-level
violence. The third type of backlash occurs only in generational
crisis periods, and part of what happens at that time is that the
minority begins to feel visceral fear of those same riots and
demonstrations that hadn't caused much concern in the awakening and
unraveling periods.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I have always had a hard time figuring out how you go from slavery to
the civil war. Consider the following:

(*) President Lincoln had no intention of trying to end slavery any
time soon.

True. Slavery was not the Union's casus bellum, at least not at first. The Union was fighting to end secession. The reason why slavery was the cause of the war, was that it was the reason for secession.

It turns out he had a plan for the Federal government to
provide monetary compensation to the Southern states for ending
slavery within 30 years. But that can't possibly be the reason why
the South started the Civil War; that would be like someone starting
a war today because of something that might (or might not) happen in
2030. It just doesn't make sense.

It was nothing that Lincoln planned for the south that provoked secession. It was what he planned for the west that was the problem. The slaveholding states feared loss of control in the Senate through the addition of new non-slaveholding states, each of which would have two new (probably abolitionist or at least slavery-unfriendly) Senators. Also, the mere fact that a Republican, even so moderate a Republican as Lincoln, had been elected president provoked outrage, because there were many other Republicans who weren't moderate in the least.

(*) "Slavery" is a perfectly plausible cause of war, and indeed many
wars have been fought over such a cause -- but in those cases it was
the slaves who rose up against their masters. Nothing like that
appears to have happened in the Civil War.

You cannot look to ancient history as a guide here. The end of slavery, first in America's northern states and later in the south, was a product of the Industrial Revolution. No state of the ancient world ever rejected slavery internally, because no state of the ancient world experienced an industrial revolution; that was a product of modern times. It was unprecedented, and produced unprecedented results.

(*) Every war has a "political" cause, and that cause is often just a
pretext. Hitler took over the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia
supposedly because of the number of Germans living there, when the
"real" cause was the acquisition of the Czech armament works.

In the first place, it is important not to evaluate Hitler's motives based upon what yours would have been in his place. Given what he believed, it is very likely that uniting the German people, including those living in Czechoslovakia, under his rule, was at least as important to him as acquiring the Czech armament works. It is not as if Germany didn't have sophisticated arms factories of its own.

In the second place, you cannot really make such a neat and tidy distinction between political and economic motivations for war. Economic ends ARE political ends in themselves, and also means to further other political ends.

Same caveats apply to Saddam.

(*) I don't see pure "politics" as being the cause of any war, or at
least any crisis war. In particular, no one goes to war because they
feel sorry for someone else, whether it's someone else's slaves.

This has been dealt with. Slavery was the cause of the Civil War, NOT because it was the Union's casus bellum, but because it was the South's reason for secession. The above paragraph is therefore irrelevant.

When I look for the cause of a war, I look for something deeper. I
want to know the visceral reason why someone decided to pick up a gun
or caused someone else to pick up a gun in order to kill someone
else.

In looking for the cause of a war, especially a crisis war, I look
for "visceral fear and fury": Fear over threats to one's life, threats
to one's way of life, threats to the existence of one's nation or
identity group, and fury at those who are blamed for those threats.

Of course. And that is exactly what was going on. The South feared for its way of life and its (or its wealthy planter class') lucrative livelihood. This provoked the "visceral fear and fury" which led to secession. Secession, in turn, provoked the "visceral fear and fury" in the remaining United States which led to civil war.

With regard to slavery, South Carolina's argument was that the North
was violating the commitments which led the Constitution to be
adopted. But South Carolina had long considered the North to be
violating that same Constitution in other areas.

Of course, and all of these areas were related. South Carolina was still an agrarian civilization. The north had become industrialized. Government policies increasingly came to favor the new industrial civilization over the old, agrarian, Classical Paradigm civilization of the south. This applies to tarriffs, public works, taxation, all kinds of things. But more than any other single factor, it applies to slavery. Because the other things were nuisances compared to the threat of losing literally billions of dollars in property.

High tarriffs on farm equipment raised the prices of that equipment and hurt the planters' profits. Tax spending on public works that favored industry meant that the planters' taxes were being used to do things that benefited a rival elite. Sure, all this was resented. But the end of slavery would have completely ruined them. That is what they feared. That is what caused the "visceral fear and rage" we should look for. The rest was merely an annoyance.

The result of all this is that it's clear to me that BOTH slavery and
economic issues were "causes" of the Civil War.

That is like saying that BOTH hunger and bodily needs compelled me to eat breakfast this morning. Hunger IS a bodily need. Slavery WAS an economic issue. At least, to the south it was. And it was the south that acted on it, not the north.

So I've come to agree that slavery was "the cause" of the Civil War,
but not slavery in the political sense. It was slavery in the form
of a visceral fear and fury of servile insurrection.

That fear was certainly present. But it cannot be separated from the fear of economic ruin that the end of slavery threatened, before it threatened massacre, and even whether or not it did.

Dear Brian,

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

> But the end of slavery would have completely ruined them. That is
> what they feared. That is what caused the "visceral fear and rage"
> we should look for. The rest was merely an annoyance.

I just can't see how this was possible. I'm not aware of any non-war
scenario to end slavery any earlier than 1880 or 1890. The South
would not incite war in 1860 for something that might happen
in 1880 or 1890, any more than we would incite war with China today
because of something they might do in 2024 or 2034. It just doesn't
make sense.

I don't even believe that the South feared that an end of slavery
would bring economic ruin. People don't think that way, as I've
learned in the last two years since I've been telling people that the
generational dynamics paradigm implies / proves that we're entering a
new 1930s style Great Depression. I know from personal experience
that people don't want to listen to something like that, and
certainly people in 1860 would not incite a war because something
MIGHT happen in 1890 that MIGHT cause financial ruin. It's just not
possible.

People do not look ahead 20-30 years. They couldn't, even if they
wanted to. Most people live week to week, using each week's paycheck
to solve that week's problems.

If the South incited war through secession in 1860, then it must have
been because they were afraid of something happening in 1860, not
something that might happen in 1890.

The fear of servile insurrection was evidently quite real to 1860
Southerners, just as the fear of new terrorist attacks is quite real
to today's Americans. And just as we blame Islamist warriors for
funding and causing terrorist attacks, the South blamed the North for
aiding and inciting servile insurrection. And just as we invaded
Afghanistan and Iraq for fear of new terrorist attacks, the South
incited war in 1860 because of a fear of servile insurrection --
possibly killing tens of thousands of slaveowners and their families.
The fear of servile insurrection is the only factor I know of that
would have caused the South to incite war in 1860 or 61.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I just can't see how this was possible. I'm not aware of any non-war
scenario to end slavery any earlier than 1880 or 1890. The South
would not incite war in 1860 for something that might happen
in 1880 or 1890, any more than we would incite war with China today
because of something they might do in 2024 or 2034. It just doesn't
make sense.

The South did not deliberately incite war. The South seceded from the Union. That is not the same thing, or at least not automatically. Even if the South understood that some conflict might occur over secession, and even though they fired the first shot, neither they nor the North had any idea of the conflagration that was coming. I'm sure if they had known, they'd have reconsidered secession and, in the end, worked for the gradual emancipation of the slaves as preferable to anything sudden or forced. But you can say the same thing about a lot of mistakes in history: "If only they had known!"

I don't even believe that the South feared that an end of slavery
would bring economic ruin. People don't think that way, as I've
learned in the last two years since I've been telling people that the
generational dynamics paradigm implies / proves that we're entering a
new 1930s style Great Depression.

Oh, forsooth.

John, just because something is convincing to you, doesn't make it convincing to other people. You may have "been telling people" that, but you certainly haven't proven anything of the sort, and frankly, although an economic downturn is definitely in the works, I don't believe that a replay of the Depression is even possible, given the measures put in place at the end of that one. Now, something else just as bad, which we haven't prepared for, e.g. the economic effects of a disastrous ecological collision -- sure.

The point here is that there are other possible explanations for why people don't believe you, than the one you seem to think obvious.

As for whether the South believed slavery would bring economic ruin (to the planter class), if common sense is not enough, I suggest you read some of the writings of the period which assert exactly that. Of course they thought that, and they were right, too!

Dear Brian,

It's hard for me to see how the South could have attacked the Federal
arsenal at Fort Sumter, without expecting at least retaliation, if not
full scale war. Once again, what you're writing doesn't make sense.
The Southerners knew very well that they were risking war. They were
not stupid.

In fact, I just did a little research and found the President Andrew
Jackson threatened war if South Carolina seceded in 1932. Here's the
last paragraph of his proclamation. Read the last sentence:

Originally Posted by Andrew Jackson in 1832

> So obvious are the reasons which forbid this secession, that it
> is necessary only to allude to them. The union was formed for the
> benefit of all. It was produced by mutual sacrifices of interests
> and opinions. can those sacrifices be recalled? Can the states,
> who magnanimously surrendered their title to the territories of
> the west, recall the grant? Will the inhabitants of the inland
> states agree to pay the duties that may be imposed without their
> assent by those on the Atlantic or the Gulf, for their own
> benefit? Shall there be a free port in one state, and onerous
> duties in another. No one believes that any right exists in a
> single state to involve the other in these and countless other
> evils, contrary to the engagements solemnly made. Every one must
> see that the other states, in self-defence, must oppose it at all
> hazards.

So, to claim that the South in 1861 innocently thought that they could
secede without a war is just plain silly.

And I always enjoy seeing someone who can't argue the facts jump into
the cesspool of personal attacks. So if you think that my economics
forecasts are moronic then, fine, I think that your ecological
predictions are moronic. And that's exactly my point, because most
people in 1860 who heard the predictions of doom and gloom that you're
ascribing to them in retrospect would have thought that those
predictions were moronic too -- much too moronic to secede and risk a
war over. Remember, all we're talking about is a Presidential election
in 1860 that might have been reversed in 1864, and no one would risk a
war over that, just because of some wild, fanciful, even moronic
predictions that slavery might end some day decades hence and cause
some financial problems. It just doesn't make sense.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

It's hard for me to see how the South could have attacked the Federal
arsenal at Fort Sumter, without expecting at least retaliation, if not
full scale war.

Neither they, nor the Union, had any idea what "full scale war" would mean. The American Civil War was the very first war ever fought with modern weapons. It was unprecedented, and far, far worse than anyone expected or had ever seen. Its casualties were more like those of World War I than those of the Revolutionary War. At worst, the Confederate States expected something on the scale of the Revolutionary War.

Also, we were talking about secession, not the attack on Sumter. It was not wholly unreasonable for the Southern states to expect to be able to peacefully secede. They saw the garrisoning of Sumter by Lincoln as a sign that their independence wasn't recognized, and rashly attacked. Yes, I'm sure they expected some kind of retaliation. But by then, they had already seceded months prior.

The reason you sometimes think what I'm saying makes no sense is because you dismiss it on the first excuse, however flimsy, and don't take the time to actually think about it in any depth. That won't work.

John, what you're failing to see is that the South seceded over several issues, but the primary ones were related to slavery. Yes, there were economic issues, and the South felt slighted by the feds, but salvery was THE BIG ISSUE.

Let's follow some southern logic here:

The westward expansion threatened the balance between slave states and free states. Without this balance, the South saw the possibility of the rising abolitionist movement in the North getting enough political power to outlaw slavery in the Congress.

The southerners were astute enough to realize that slavery had been outlawed in all of Europe, and that slavery was NOT the way of the future according to the North. So even if the Northerners didn't care to outlaw slavery now, they eventually would.

Also, the time was ripe: the South still had a strong military tradition. Waiting much longer would put more of the Northern industrial might and population on the side of the North.

Why were the Southerners so afraid of outlawing slavery, even through peaceful means???

BECAUSE SLAVES OUTNUMBERED THE MASTERS.

The same reason South Africa was loath to give up apartheid.

If the slaves could outvote (2 to 1? 3 to 1? 5 to 1?) the masters, the former slaves would soon be sherriff, mayor, and governor. Guess who would end up in jail for murders and atrocities committed before the 1860s? Who would get their land confiscated? The masters.

That's why they saw the need to fight. It wasn't mere comfort, it was for what they perceived as their very survival.

Originally Posted by AAA1969

That's why they saw the need to fight. It wasn't mere comfort, it was for what they perceived as their very survival.

I think that's what he said.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

Dear Brian,

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

> But the end of slavery would have completely ruined them. That is
> what they feared. That is what caused the "visceral fear and rage"
> we should look for. The rest was merely an annoyance.

I just can't see how this was possible. I'm not aware of any non-war
scenario to end slavery any earlier than 1880 or 1890. The South
would not incite war in 1860 for something that might happen
in 1880 or 1890, any more than we would incite war with China today
because of something they might do in 2024 or 2034. It just doesn't
make sense.

I think something is worth adding here. It's probably true that if there had been no secession, from a rational POV slavery would have continued in the South for some while. But we need to apply the S&H theory here, IMO, looking at it from the POV of that time.

I think that the Southerners did believe that the northern abolitionists planned to end slavery, by force if necessary, in the immediate future, and that the election of Lincoln was the predicate to that event. They were probably objectively wrong, but it's not that hard to see why they thought it.

For one thing, by the time the Crisis arrived, both sides were dominated by Transcendentals, even though the President was a Compromiser (born 1791, a cusper anyway). Brian Rush has pointed out that nobody argues with a Boomer like another Boomer with different views, and I have no doubt that this would apply even moreso to the Crisis-phase Transcendentals.

Now, I suspect that the Transcendentals on each side sensed the basic fanaticism of their opposite numbers. Human nature tends to focus on the parts of an opposing group that give the most alarm, and the abolitionists, though a small minority in the North, probably looked bigger than they were in the South (just as the North saw the southern plantation aristocracy as being more typical of the whole South than they were).

To make matters worse, Lincoln was a Republican, and it should be kept in mind that the name 'Republican' is short for the originally derogatory 'Black Republican'. Any poltician who did not openly affirm slavery was likely going to have set off trouble from the hypersensitized Southerners by that point, and any Republican was likely to be more than they could accept.

So I think we have to assume that there was a widespread assumption in the South that 'the North was coming', whether they were or not.

Something else to note, though its exact effect can be legitimately debated, is the effect of a cultural facet of the time, the Romantic turn.

People have pointed out that one reason the Civil War Crisis went so horribly wrong was that the Gilded Generation wasn't in position to restrain the Trancendentals when the Compromisers no longer could. But is that really true?

The oldest Gilded was in their early 40s when the Civil War began, and they signed up to fight it in large numbers. They didn't really seem to be inclined to oppose it, and S&H themselves have noted that the Gilded seemed to almost welcome it on some level, it appealed to their own generational fixations on personal honor and individualism.

A dose of Romantic thinking seems to have permeated much of America during that period, especially in the South. The intense fixation on personal honor, the disdain for institutions and routines, almost a wilfull rejection of mundane reality, were indications of it. The passionate 'fire eater' views of people like Ruffin fit into that.

The North was not immune to this, but the practical necessities of industrial society worked against it. The South, especially the Southern aristocratic class, was freer to indulge, and they did. The Confederacy was plagued by a refusal to face reality from beginning to end. All Jefferson Davis' efforts to gain the centralized powers he would need to wage the war were perpetually opposed by notables such as the Governor of Georgia, who was just as prepared to assert States Right's against Richmond as Washington.

People have often wondered why the Southern leadership couldn't see the immense industrial and economic advantages the North held for the coming conflict. Partly, I think they knew about them, but their thinking was sufficiently Romanticized that such mundane realities just didn't figure into their decisions.

I hesitate to cite a fictional example of a real thing, but it's a very familiar one, so I will. Recall the opening scenes of the movie Gone With the Wind. Remember the attitudes the young southern hotheads display at the start, "One Southerner can whip a dozen Yankees!"?

Well, that's fiction, but that attitude was quite real in many quarters, and not just in the South. If the Trancendentals were marked by an overwhelming overconfidence in their ideals, the Gilded seem to have suffered from an overconfidence in themselves.

That is part of what I mean when I say that the entire American Civil War was a result, to a large extent, of literally irrational thinking. Both sides indulged in it (the North was no more rational when they assumed that a single show of force would cow the Southerners, and initial enlistments were for 90 days), but the South was worse.

Six hundred thousand dead was the result.

...and you forget one other part of the Southern rationale for fighting against the stronger North: all they had to do was not lose.

The North, on the other hand, had to win. By win, I mean conquer the entire South. All the South had to do was defend, a much easier military task.

They perceived this advantage as being enough to outweigh the advantages of the North.

Dear Brian,

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

> Neither they, nor the Union, had any idea what "full scale war"
> would mean. The American Civil War was the very first war ever
> fought with modern weapons. It was unprecedented, and far, far
> worse than anyone expected or had ever seen. Its casualties were
> more like those of World War I than those of the Revolutionary
> War. At worst, the Confederate States expected something on the
> scale of the Revolutionary War.

I'm not quite sure why this is relevant. OK, they expected something
like the Revolutionary War, where 177 per 100K population were
killed, and they didn't expect the 832 deaths per 100K population
that occurred in the Civil War. But the Revolutionary War was pretty
horrible anyway, and certainly qualifies as a "full scale war."
(Incidentally, World War I was a minor war for America in comparison
to either of them, with 53 deaths per 100K population.)

Everything else I wrote still holds.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

> Also, we were talking about secession, not the attack on Sumter.
> It was not wholly unreasonable for the Southern states to expect
> to be able to peacefully secede. They saw the garrisoning of
> Sumter by Lincoln as a sign that their independence wasn't
> recognized, and rashly attacked. Yes, I'm sure they expected some
> kind of retaliation. But by then, they had already seceded months
> prior.

I tracked down an online book, The Great Conspiracy, by John
Alexander Logan, a detailed history of the Civil War written in the
1880s. It's a good resources because it documents many of the
speeches given and actions taken in the period following Lincoln's
election in November 1860 through Lincoln's inauguration in March
1861. This material will all be found in Volume 2 at
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7134 .

I'll just quote a few snippets here, but I encourage you to read the
entire thing, and you'll get a feeling for the bitterness of the
debate, and the clarity with which everyone was expecting a war.
It's clear that the South wanted to secede peacefully, but it's also
clear that they fully expected a war.

President Buchanan had been very clearly sympathetic to the South,
and had said that the Federal government had no right to stop the
secession by force, but as time went on he felt more forced to defend
the Union.

During this entire period, states were seceding and were seizing one
Federal Fort and Arsenal after another. Buchanan did nothing about
this, hoping against hope that a peaceful agreement could be reached.
His equivocating infuriated everyone.

But Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, was the
line in the sand.

South Carolina had always been the leader in secession, both in 1832
and 1860. On December 29, a delegation from South Carolina arrived in
Washington and demanded that Buchanan remove all Federal troops in
Charleston. On December 30, South Carolina's state militia took over
the Federal arsenal at Charleston.

Much to everyone's surprise, on December 31, Buchanan refused to
remove Federal troops from Charleston, and announced:

Originally Posted by President Buchanan on 31-Dec-1860

> After this information, I have only to add that, whilst it is my
> duty to defend Fort Sumter as a portion of the public property of
> the United States against hostile attacks, from whatever quarter
> they may come, by such means as I may possess for this purpose, I
> do not perceive how such a defense can be construed into a menace
> against the city of Charleston."

Evidently Buchanan's announcement was a surprise to everyone, as was
his sending an unarmed resupply ship to Fort Sumter.

On January 9, South Carolina rebels fired on the resupply ship,
forcing it to return. On January 14, the South Carolina Legislature
resolved "that any attempt by the Federal Government to reinforce Fort
Sumter will be regarded as an act of open hostility, and a Declaration
of War."

On February 6, Buchanan's Secretary of War asserted title to the Fort
and refused to surrender it. He wrote:

Originally Posted by Secretary of War Holt on 6-Feb-1861

> [President Buchanan] has no Constitutional power to cede or
> surrender [Fort Sumter]. ... If, with all the multiplied proofs
> which exist of the President's anxiety for Peace, and of the
> earnestness with which he has pursued it, the authorities of that
> State shall assault Fort Sumter, and peril the lives of the
> handful of brave and loyal men shut up within its walls, and thus
> plunge our Common Country into the horrors of Civil War, then upon
> them and those they represent, must rest the responsibility.

I could quote many more things, but I'll quote just one more, a
statement by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, just before his
February 4 inaugural:

Originally Posted by Confederate President Jefferson Davis before 4-Feb-1861

> It may be, that we will be confronted by War; that the attempt
> will be made to blockade our ports, to starve us out; but they
> (the Union men of the North) know little of the Southern heart, of
> Southern endurance. No amount of privation could force us to
> remain in a Union on unequal terms. England and France would not
> allow our great staple to be dammed up within our present limits;
> the starving thousands in their midst would not allow it. We have
> nothing to apprehend from Blockade. But if they attempt invasion
> by land, we must take the War out of our territory. If War must
> come, it must be upon Northern, and not upon Southern soil. In
> the meantime, if they were prepared to grant us Peace, to
> recognize our equality, all is well.

There's a lot more stuff there, but it all makes it quite clear that
both sides were expecting a Civil War. And it also makes clear that
attacking Fort Sumter was not just a rash error, but was a calculated
move made in full expectation that it would lead to war.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

> The reason you sometimes think what I'm saying makes no sense is
> because you dismiss it on the first excuse, however flimsy, and
> don't take the time to actually think about it in any depth. That
> won't work.

You seem quite full of yourself, but actually the opposite is true.
As a journalist who's written hundreds of articles, I'm quite
comfortable with the discipline of listening to everyone but then
researching the facts to see who's telling the truth. You can check
the hundreds of postings that I've made in this forum and you'll find
that most of them are based on research I did for my book, or on
research I did for that particular posting. This thread on the
causes of the American Civil War is a good example. It began as a
discussion in another thread and now that I've researched the
subject, I've changed my own position from that earlier discussion,
based on where the facts lead.

That isn't what you do. You seem to fly off with whatever happens to
be in your head at the time. As a result, you make many mistakes;
I've had to correct a couple in this one posting alone. And if
someone doesn't agree with you, then you make a remark like the one
I'm quoting just above.

How do I know that? Because I researched it. I went back
and read ten or fifteen of your recent postings. In other words,
even when I'm dumping on someone, I do some real research first and,
well, you don't.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Everything else I wrote still holds.

John, this is why talking to you is such a pain in the ass. You are prone to make statements like that.

You are not the judge of whether what you wrote still holds; your readers are. What you wrote has been challenged. Defend it. Don't just declare victory and move on. In fact, don't declare victory at all. It's bad form and it's rude. Say what you have to say and let others be the judge of it.

OK, they expected something
like the Revolutionary War, where 177 per 100K population were
killed, and they didn't expect the 832 deaths per 100K population
that occurred in the Civil War.

I said that, at worst, they expected something like that. I doubt they expected even that. Please read Hopeful Cynic's post about the romanticism of the period. I believe he's dead on.

Incidentally, World War I was a minor war for America

I was, of course, referring to World War I as experienced by its main combatants, the Germans, French, British, Russians, and Austrians. When one refers to massive numbers of casualties arising from that war, these are generally the combatants one means. I would have thought that was self-evident.

It's clear that the South wanted to secede peacefully, but it's also
clear that they fully expected a war.

OK, that's possible. Certainly they would have entertained the thought that war could happen, and I never said otherwise. But I still say they had no idea -- they could have no idea -- what war would mean.

The relevance of this point at all to the discussion is whether the threat of economic ruin through emancipation (or of political ruin by the same means, as H.C. observed) was enough to prompt secession in the face of possible war. Had they known what the Civil War would entail, probably not. Since they did not know, and in fact the Transcendentals and Gilded, who were running the show, had no experience of war at all except for the Mexican War, the gain would seem worth the price. Especially when it was still possible to entertain the hope that the price would not be paid.

You seem quite full of yourself

I was merely responding appropriately to your gratuitous insult. If you don't want to hear such "full of myself" statements, discipline your writing better.

And if
someone doesn't agree with you, then you make a remark like the one
I'm quoting just above.

How do I know that? Because I researched it. I went back
and read ten or fifteen of your recent postings.

Even when you do research, often you don't understand what you're reading, and this is a case in point. The only time I "make a remark" like the one you quoted, is when someone pisses me off, and that they never do by "disagreeing." They do it by being personally insulting and rude. As you do, quite often.

Behave yourself better, and we'll get along just fine -- even when we disagree.

Originally Posted by AAA1969

> Let's follow some southern logic here:

> The westward expansion threatened the balance between slave states
> and free states. Without this balance, the South saw the
> possibility of the rising abolitionist movement in the North
> getting enough political power to outlaw slavery in the Congress.

> The southerners were astute enough to realize that slavery had
> been outlawed in all of Europe, and that slavery was NOT the way
> of the future according to the North. So even if the Northerners
> didn't care to outlaw slavery now, they eventually would.

> Also, the time was ripe: the South still had a strong military
> tradition. Waiting much longer would put more of the Northern
> industrial might and population on the side of the North.

> Why were the Southerners so afraid of outlawing slavery, even
> through peaceful means???

> BECAUSE SLAVES OUTNUMBERED THE MASTERS.

> The same reason South Africa was loath to give up apartheid.

If you go down this logical path, then you need to explain how the
South expected to maintain slavery even if it seceded. If slavery
was not the way of the future in Europe and North America, then could
they really expect to maintain slavery forever as a separate country?

And if the abolitionist movement was gaining strength in the North,
wouldn't it have continued to gain strength after the secession and
continue to agitate in the South against slavery?

Actually, I've never seen of the kind of reasoning that you suggest
in any of the writings by Southerners. Early in the 1800s, both the
North and the South were pretty much in agreement that slavery was a
"necessary evil." As the decades wore on, and the debate became far
more polarized and moralistic, and the abolitionists frequently
invoked God in their arguments against slavery.

For their part, the Southerners also developed a moralistic view in
support of slavery, even while they claimed that Negroes were
subhuman. This was the time following the European "revolution of
1948," when Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto had been published.
Following Marx's reasoning, Southerners argued that slaves were far
better off in what might be called the "communist paradise" of the
South than factory workers were in the North because (1) factory
workers were in fact just as much slaves to their jobs as the Southern
slaves were, but (2) no one had any obligation to care for the factory
workers, while the slaveowners had an obligation to care for the
slaves.

The latter part of this argument became a big problem in the
discussion of gradual removal of slavery. If the slaves were freed,
even gradually, then what would happen to the elderly slaves who had
no way of earning a living and no way of taking care of themselves?
This was a problem that concerned everyone.

This situation is not comparable to the South African situation,
where the blacks were not slaves.

I don't know whether Southern slaves outnumbered their masters or
not, but they certainly didn't outnumber the Southern whites.
According to figures I have:

(*) The North had 22 M people in 23 states and 7 large territories,
of which 4 M were eligible males between the ages of 15 and 40.

(*) The South had 9 M people in 11 states, of which 3.5 M were black
slaves, leaving only 1.14 M elegible males between the ages of 15 and
40.

So there were probably regions where slaves outnumbered whites, but
overall there were many more whites than slaves.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

> That is part of what I mean when I say that the entire American
> Civil War was a result, to a large extent, of literally irrational
> thinking. Both sides indulged in it (the North was no more
> rational when they assumed that a single show of force would cow
> the Southerners, and initial enlistments were for 90 days), but
> the South was worse.

I certainly have to agree with you that there was a lot of
irrationality around at the time, and you can see that just by
looking at what happened after 9/11.

I read articles that indicated that Americans across the country were
traumatized by 9/11. Why would someone living on a farm in Kansas be
traumatized by 9/11? No Islamist is going to fly an airplane into a
farmhouse.

I often think of what it must have been like for the Londoners living
through the German bombings in World War II. (Similarly for the
citizens of Dresden and Tokyo living through Allied bombing.) They
had a 9/11 every day, with buildings crashing down every day. As
terrible as 9/11 was, it was tiny compared to what the Londoners went
through.

So yes, I agree that irrationality must have abounded at that time,
just as it does today.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I read articles that indicated that Americans across the country were
traumatized by 9/11. Why would someone living on a farm in Kansas be
traumatized by 9/11? No Islamist is going to fly an airplane into a
farmhouse.

I read such articles too. But I can tell you that my part of the United States was not particularly traumatized. Concerned, worried, and mad as hell, yes, but not particularly anxious or panicked. I can't speak for the rest of the country, of course, but I suspect that much of the trauma existed more in media perception (being centered to some degree in NYC and high-target-potential LA) than in the population at large.

IMO the ACW was fundamentally a struggle between two ways of organizing a society: rural Aristocracy in the South and industrial Plutocracy in the North. Westward expansion was the main cause of the instabillity and why I think that the Civil War 4T in the US was far more violent then the Nationalist Unification 4T in Europe. If there had neen no frontier there would of been no concern about whether new states would be slave states or free states, and thus Slavery would of slowly died out as the Plutocratic societal structure infaltrated the south peacefully. The civil war was ultimately the result of westward expansion causing a general societal panic that was exacerbated by a large prophet generation infusing righteous moral fervor. As a result of this general societal panic the rural Aristocratic class became very irrational, even more so then the folks in the north. The result was disaster.