Roots of The Civil War

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Roots of The Civil War

How many of us know what the Civil War was really about? We know that it was to free the slaves but it went much deeper. In the first half of the nineteenth century we were not so much one large country as two separate nations. The north was in a industrial revolution. Railroads, steamships, banks and factories were shaping the northern economy. The populations was exploding with European immigrants escaping the famine and political turmoil of Europe. Starting in 1880 a million and a half of Irish came to America in the next several years. Most of them settled in the North where they were segregated in sprawling slums and tenements dependent on companies that oppressed them. They dutifully joined the political machine and became canon fodder for the North.

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The South had remained a farming, slave based nation. The basics of it’s wealth was cotton produced to be shipped to textile factories of Great Britain. The slaves produced the cotton, as well as rice, tobacco, rice and corn. Importation of slaves had been outlawed since 1807 but the slave population continued to grow at a huge rate. Although overseas slave trade wasn’t allowed, trading slaves between the states was an active business. Nearly 700,000 slaves were counted in the census of 1790. That number had grown to 3.5 million in the census of 1860. The general population of the South grew far more slowly and absorbed few immigrants. There was plenty of room to plant cotton and plenty of slaves to grow and pick it.

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The United States was now two countries and two cultures. They were destined for a collision. The least complicated explanation for the Civil War is that nobody wants to be told what to do and how to live their lives. This resistance to being ruled by someone else had been ingrained into the American character since before the American Revolution. Slaves were the Southern Plantations livelihood and a smoldering fire that blazed into the Civil War. It divided family and friends and lasted four years. Thousands of lives were lost. No other period of history has been written about more often and every year more books are added. How and if the Civil War could have been prevented still troubles Americans today.

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