beardedwisdom

Returning to the work of Edward Rugemer, I looked at a review essay that Rugemer wrote concerning a two volume work that discusses the causation of the Civil War, which is John Ashworth’s Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume I, Commerce and Compromise, 1820–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Volume 2, The Coming of the Civil War, 1850–1861 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).  Ashworth’s work is an exhaustive examination of the political ideologies present in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, and Rugemer notes that this examination has great explanatory power for the origins of the Civil War.  Volume 1 starts with the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Taylor of Caroline and ends with the Compromise of 1850.  Volume 2 picks up where the first volume ends and extends the discussion to secession in 1861.  Rugemer praises Ashworth for the scale and scope of his work, saying that Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic is one of the most comprehensive studies of Civil War causation ever produced because it looks at both events in the North and South, and it discusses political developments with great detail.  “The structure of the book embodies Ashworth’s central argument: the coming of the Civil War is best understood as the clash of two antagonistic ideologies, proslavery and antislavery, that had been generated by the opposed labor systems that developed South and North of Mason and Dixon’s line, namely, slavery and wage-labor. Proslavery and antislavery were the ideologies of the ascendant political parties of the late 1850s, the Democrats with their base of support increasingly limited to the South, and the Republicans of the North.”[1] In this sense, Ashworth agrees with fundamentalists who argue that the issue of slavery and the essential differences between the North and South led to the conflict.  There was no avoiding the Civil War. “Ashworth consistently develops the position that impersonal forces are far more important than individual action in explaining historical change. Even in a period for which the archival record is rich with the details of individuals’ thoughts, lives, and even personalities, Ashworth believes that such archival evidence is not relevant to an explanation of political change. Political decisions, he argues, are ‘structurally generated’ (II, pp. 7, 637).”[2] (By “structurally generated,” Ashworth simply means the decisions influenced by political, social, and economic forces that structured American society during the period in question.)  For Ashworth, removing the human element eliminates the possibility that the outcome could have been much different with a different set of political decisions or human actions.

There is a major flaw, however, in the two volumes.  According to Rugemer, Ashworth’s treatment of antislavery sentiment in the two volumes is wrong, and hence Ashworth’s explanation for the coming of the Civil War is not entirely accurate.  Ashworth claims that abolitionism and the spread of antislavery opinion in the North were responses to the expansion of the wage labor system, essentially claiming that the maturation of capitalism created the antislavery movement.  But as Rugemer notes, the chronology of the expansion of the wage labor system does not align with that of the antislavery movement.  Ashworth dismissed external, international agitation that stirred up abolitionists in the United States apart from any notion of wage labor as well, further weakening his claim.  The author also completely ignores religion’s role in the antislavery movement, which is an egregious oversight according to Rugemer.  Despite this major flaw in the treatment of antislavery, and subsequently the antislavery movement’s role in bringing about the war, Rugemer believes that Ashworth’s work is still valuable in its explication of the origins of the Civil War; no other work tackles the subject with such breadth and detail.  Historians must be careful, however, with works that stress the mono-causal nature of the coming of the Civil War because events of such magnitude can rarely, if ever, be reduced to a single explanation.

From Ashworth’s and Rugemer’s work, I have found that I should look at these works: Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999); William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (2007); James L. Huston, Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War (2002); and Joel H. Silbey, Storm Over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (2006); as well as Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (1980); Nelson Lankford, Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 (2007); and Will Kaufman, The Civil War in American Culture (2006).

As per the previous post, Gary Kornblith is engaging the ideas of Charles A. and Mary Beard concerning the causation of the Civil War.  Beard, in his work The Rise of American Civilization, argues that the Civil War was a “Second American Revolution,” taking what he saw as the principles of the Founding Fathers and applying them nearly a century later.[1] He argued, with his historian wife, Mary, that the Northern capitalists were merely agitating Southern planters for economic gain; the Beards saw King Cotton in the South as akin to the British monarch George III, and they believed that the North was simply trying to overthrow the dominant power that was interfering with American liberty.  The industrialists to the north and farmers to the west overthrew King Cotton, much like the American patriots overthrew their British oppressor during the American Revolution.  For the Beards, this war between the agricultural South and industrial North continued beyond the Civil War, finally ending with the North spreading industrialization (gradually) in the South, lessening the economic divide between the two regions.  The authors said that the antebellum United States was in an “Agricultural Age,” whereas post-war America was in an “Industrial Age.”

As far as the Beards were concerned, the Civil War was the culmination of a socio-economic process that began just before the turn of the nineteenth century, with the period from the inauguration of Andrew Jackson to the election of Abraham Lincoln of particular interest because of the increasing economic, or industrial, disparity between North and South.  Interestingly, the Beards fall within both the “fundamentalist” and “revisionist” camps.  They stress the basic differences between the two regions (one holding slaves and the other not, and one agricultural and the other industrial), much like the fundamentalists’ argue.  However, the authors also share similarities with the revisionists, for they both stress the various economic factors leading to the Civil War, rather than just attributing the war to slavery and the deep divide created over that institution.  The Beards do seem to think that the Civil War was inevitable, or at least extremely likely to occur, because of industrialization in the North.  This would place them closer to the fundamentalist camp.  This makes the Beards’ work a curious choice for Kornblith’s foundation of his counterfactual scenario for a different outcome for the Civil War.  Kornblith attempts to show that one different presidential election outcome could have prevented the Civil War, an idea very different from that of a fundamentalist.  For Kornblith, the Civil War was very preventable, given just a few different circumstances and chain of events in antebellum American politics.  As Kornblith recognizes, however, The Rise of American Civilization is perhaps the seminal work from which all other debates about the causation of the Civil War should begin.

Gary J. Kornblith, also engaging the debate concerning the origins of the Civil War, notes that there are parallels between the origins of the American Revolution and the Civil War.  “Although the ultimate results of the military conflicts differed greatly, the patterns of events leading to war seem remarkably similar.”  “Faced with armed insurrection, the central government raised a huge military force to suppress the rebels, and a long and brutal war ensued.”[1] The author lays out the differences (and agreements) between “fundamentalists” and “revisionists” in Civil War historiography.  Fundamentalists stress the inherent differences between the North and the South, claiming that the institution of slavery caused a deep rift that could only be solved through war.  Revisionists argue that the Civil War was not inevitable but rather caused by a series of events that were influenced by a variety of factors, making the war somewhat of an accident.  Kornblith, on the other hand, argues that historians should revisit the causation of the Civil War with the model of the American Revolution in mind.

To do this, Kornblith offers a counterfactual scenario for the years leading up to the Civil War, beginning with the close presidential election of 1844.  The author has Henry Clay defeating James K. Polk for the presidency, an event that would have caused Texas to remain an independent state and preventing the Mexican-American War.  The Mexican-American War is important because it helped prepare the United States for military conflict, as well as placing the idea of war firmly in the American mind in the years leading up to the Civil War.  In addition, “by avoiding war with Mexico, Henry Clay would have freed himself to focus on the economic policies dearest to his vision of an American system: maintaining a protective tariff, promoting internal improvements, and reestablishing a national bank.”[2] Kornblith contends that this would have pushed the issue of slavery to the background, for Congress would be deadlocked over economic issues instead.  Under a Clay administration in Washington, a sectional system would have survived much longer (even with the division over slavery), according to the author.  Further, he argues that slavery could have been abolished through non-violent means under his counterfactual scenario; he gives the eradication of slavery in Brazil as an example of peaceful national emancipation.  Kornblith acknowledges that the abolition of slavery in the South without force would likely have taken many decades and perhaps persisted well into the twentieth century.

From his counterfactual scenario, Kornblith concludes that the Mexican-American War was “a necessary, in not sufficient, cause of the Civil War that broke out in 1861, and that the Civil War was a necessary, if not sufficient cause of American abolition in the nineteenth century.”[3] Here he brings the comparison of the American Revolution back into the discussion, claiming that the period between the French and Indian War and American Revolution in the British Empire was very similar to the period between the Mexican-American War and Civil War in the American “Empire.”  Perceived heavy-handedness from distant ruling elites over local economies, politics, and social systems (London to the American colonies and Washington to the American South) drove the oppressed to revolt or secede, according to Kornblith.  It is an interesting, but loose, comparison, claiming that the Civil War was something of a second American Revolution.

The author’s counterfactual exercise is problematic for its many inferences about the potential course of American history, but he recognizes the limitations of his own method.  Instead, Kornblith hoped to illuminate both the disagreements and agreements of fundamentalists and revisionists in an attempt to show that the outbreak of the Civil War could have happened much later than 1861, or not at all.

On page 8 of The Problem of Emancipation, Rugemer references Edward Ayers, the historian who advanced the idea that the origin of the Civil War could be described as a “deep contingency.”  In his book, What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History, Ayers lays out in a series of essays what he means by deep contingency.  After an initial autobiographical essay about his own upbringing in the South, Ayers illuminates the uniqueness of the region and the deep complexity of Southern history, including slavery.  The complexity of the region meant that there was not any great, universal enthusiasm for secession, and there was little rhetoric for war that directly cited the threat of ending of slavery.  According to Ayers, one of the dominant beliefs among historians for the cause of the Civil War was the South’s fear over the economy and growing industrialism.  This belief was in opposition to the traditional narrative that the Confederacy went to war over the issue of slavery primarily, the former making the Civil War avoidable and the latter inevitable.  PBS specials and works of popular history have portrayed the Civil War as unavoidable yet ultimately good for the nation.  Ayers argues that the views of both sides swing too far to the extremes, and that historians should adopt a new theory based on each side.  From this, Ayers calls for deep contingency, claiming that the Civil War was very likely to happen but for numerous reasons.  The question of whether or not the Civil War was inevitable is not as important as the reasons that led to the war.

Rugemer uses the idea of deep contingency throughout The Problem of Emancipation, for there were a number of influences that led to a very likely war.  He expands the work of Ayers, however, to shift the focus to largely Caribbean and Atlantic ideas and influences, rather than domestic ones.  A key element of the “deep” part of contingency must lie abroad, according to Rugemer.  Breaking down those foreign reasons, the first part of Rugemer’s book examines rebellions in the West Indies and their portrayal in the American media.  Slaveholding Americans believed that abolitionist activity directly led to slave revolts, as evidenced in the Caribbean.  The second part of the book focuses on the effect of British abolition on the issue of slavery in America.  The emancipation of the British Caribbean greatly influenced both American abolitionists and slaveholders, each using the British example for their own cause.  Abolitionists pointed to the relative social and political stability in the West Indies as proof that the eradication of slavery was a good and safe thing to do.  Slaveholders argued that emancipation would aid a supposed British conspiracy to split the United States, a view that Southern intellectuals articulated after West Indian emancipation.

The complex international influences and ideas circulating in the antebellum United States serve to reinforce the deep contingency theory by adding the Atlantic element.  “This book explores this notion of ‘deep contingency’ by focusing not only on the long-term development of American ideas about emancipation in the Caribbean but also on how those ideas intersected with some of the key events in the coming of the Civil War.” (p.8)  On this point, Rugemer does well.