Necessary Conditions for War

In this essay I address the immense popular enthusiasm that characterized the South’s reaction to secession and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. This powerful phenomenon, I argue, was a crucial component of the war’s origins; it did not cause the conflict, but it created an atmosphere in which dissent was virtually unheard of, without which the war could not have begun as it did. Typically, textbook-style explanations of the Civil War’s causes – such as that put forward by Irwin Unger in his comprehensive work These United States – tend to trace the political origins of conflict, elucidate the nuanced positions of key Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans, and cite debates from Congress over slavery legislation.

Without a doubt, this version of history describes an essential component in the outbreak of the Civil War. At the same time, though, explanations of this kind often fail to emphasize the role of average individuals, whose opinions become lost in the sea of grand political events, surfacing only briefly on election days. To pay attention to the opinions prevalent in the communities that would go to war, as opposed to the views of their political leaders, is to consider the war from an entirely different angle, allowing us to look beyond the immediate sparks that caused the war, and instead study the nature of the powder that was ignited.

The state of Virginia was a veritable arsenal of this powder. By focussing on one particular Virginian county, Augusta, I seek to account for the almost instant popularity of the war by appealing to several mutually reinforcing factors: the county’s stake in slavery ensured the general alignment of its politically-minded citizens, such that the concept of states’ rights became a rallying cry in the community’s political sphere; the bulk of the county’s population was unified by an unsophisticated urge to defend family and community from perceived Northern aggression; nationalism and patriotism were potent ideals that fuelled war enthusiasm, powerful enough to command loyalty yet sufficiently localized to be transposed intact from the American nation to the Confederacy; well-known myths of the relatively recent American Revolution blended seamlessly with strong religious sentiment and feelings of moral superiority, contributing to a prevailing sense of purpose and understanding of the roles that each individual would fill; and, finally, widely accepted gender stereotypes helped to solidify these roles, guiding young men to the recruiting stations.

Though Virginia’s Augusta County was home to many staunch critics of secession before the war, pro-Unionist sentiment evaporated almost overnight after hostilities commenced at Fort Sumter on April 12th, 1861. Historian Edward Ayers exclaims that Virginia’s decision to secede from the Union on April 17th “came with stunning rapidity, given all the months, all the years of talk and vacillation that had come before.”