What Caused the Civil War?

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What Caused the Civil War? An Online
Professional Development Seminar for North
Carolina Teachers

Made possible by a grant from the Z. Smith
Reynolds Foundation
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Competency Goal 3 Crisis, Civil War, and Reconstruction (1848-1877) - The learner will analyze the issues that led to the Civil War, the effects of the war, and the impact of Reconstruction on the nation.
  Objectives 3.01 Trace the economic, social, and political events from the Mexican War to the outbreak of the Civil War. 3.02 Analyze and assess the causes of the Civil War. 3.03 Identify political and military turning points of the Civil War and assess their significance to the outcome of the conflict. 3.04 Analyze the political, economic, and social impact of Reconstruction on the nation and identify the reasons why Reconstruction came to an end. 3.05 Evaluate the degree to which the Civil War and Reconstruction proved to be a test of the supremacy of the national government.
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• GOALS
• To deepen understanding of the complex mix of
  circumstances that led to the Civil War
• To provide fresh materials and ideas to
  strengthen teaching
• (Feel free to plunder the seminar Power Point.)

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• FRAMING QUESTIONS
• What is most important for our students to
  understand about the causes of the Civil War?
• What are the greatest obstacles to that
  understanding?
• What do we mean when we speak of a cause of the
  Civil War?
• How do we give slavery its due in bringing on the
  Civil War while paying adequate attention to
  other aspects of the conflict, including the
  diversity in both the North and the South?
• American men voted in ways that brought on the
  Civil War. How do we explain their thinking?

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Edward Ayers Trustee, National Humanities
Center President, the University of Richmond 2003
Carnegie Foundation National Professor of the
Year Member, American Academy of Arts and
SciencesThe Promise of the New South Life
After Reconstruction (1993) In the Presence of
Mine Enemies Civil War in the Heart of
America Bancroft Prize and Beveridge
Prize (2003) What Caused the Civil
War Reflections on the South and Southern
History (2006) The Valley of the Shadow Two
Communities in the American Civil War
Award-winning Website

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WHAT CAUSED THE CIVIL WAR? Less about conveying
information More about working through texts and
the challenge of teaching this complex topic
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WHAT CAUSED THE CIVIL WAR? Seminar Strategy To
disassemble the complex events that preceded the
Civil War, analyzing them carefully, viewing them
in their immediate context, and judging their
consequences.   We will keep things concrete and
focus on what people actually said and did.
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• KEY DECISIONS IN 1860 AND 1861
• the election of 1860
• the secession of the first seven states
• the decisions surrounding Fort Sumter in April
  1861
• the secession of four border states and the
  decision of four others to
• stay within the United States.
• Slavery played a different role in each one.

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Edward Ayers, What Caused the Civil War?

The debate and anger that fed into what became
the Civil War containedmodern elements that
would not have existed before the middle ofthe
nineteenth century a struggle over a
hypothetical railroad, a novel written by an
obscure woman, an act of symbolic terrorism, a
media war over a distant territory.
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Frederick Douglass, What to a Slave is the
Fourth of July?, July 5, 1852 What, to the
American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer a
day that reveals to him, more than all other days
in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to
which he is the constant victim. To him, your
celebration is a sham your boasted liberty, an
unholy license your national greatness, swelling
vanity your sounds of rejoicing are empty and
heartless your denunciations of tyrants, brass
fronted impudence your shouts of liberty and
equality, hollow mockery your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your
religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him,
mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which
would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not
a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more
shocking and bloody, than are the people of these
United States, at this very hour.
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Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address, February
27, 1860 Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is
that you will destroy the Government, unless you
be allowed to construe and enforce the
Constitution as you please, on all points in
dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin
in all events.
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Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, March
21, 1861 Our new government is founded upon
exactly the opposite idea its foundations are
laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great
truth that the negro is not equal to the white
man that slaverysubordination to the superior
raceis his natural and normal condition. This,
our new government, is the first, in the history
of the world, based upon this great physical,
philosophical, and moral truth.
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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From Voting America United States Politics,
1840-2008 http//americanpast.richmond.edu/voting
/
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John Hughes of Virginia on Secession, April 17,
1861 Notwithstanding all this, I was willing to
compromise, still to adjust our difficulties,
still to meet them in a spirit of brotherly love
. . . Yet while we showed to Abraham Lincoln
that there was a majority of this Convention who
were determined to preserve this Union while we
were engaged in this good work of seeking to
effect an adjustment, Lincoln . . . adds insult
to injury he makes a requisition upon Gov.
Letcher for Virginias quota of troops to make
war upon the Southern States. When that is the
case, after having done all that, as an honorable
man, I think I can do . . . to adjust these
difficultiesI feel compelled to give my vote in
favor of actiondecisive and immediate action. .
. . A declaration of war upon our people . . .
compels a vote in favor of the ordinance of
Secession.
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Alexander H. H. Stuart, Open-Ended Unionism Sir,
fanaticism is a great evil, and I would avoid
contact with it as I would a plague but business
relations, private interests, social ties, the
ties of brotherhood, the ties of intermarriage
and communication, in every form and shape in
which they can take place, must, to a great
extent, counterbalance this odious fanaticism
and in severing those political ties, I would
seek to withdraw these States from their
allegiance from the Federal governmentI would
seek to induce them to become part and parcel of
our new government. I would seek to have a tier
of friendly States between the slaveholding
States and the States of the extreme North and
North-west.
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(No Transcript)
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WHAT CAUSED THE CIVIL WAR? In sum, the Civil
War arrived as a perfect storm.  Slavery had long
divided the nation, fueling party division,
religious animosity, and distrust of
institutions slavery had also driven the economy
of the entire nation, uniting the country more
than dividing it economically.  The South, by the
standards of the nineteenth century, was a quite
modern nation, confident that it could hold its
own in the world.  White Southerners had
persuaded themselves that slavery was not only
profitable but also morally just. The North was
even more sure that it had found the formula for
peace and progress in the unfettered growth of
ambition, especially for white men, and was
determined to regain control of the political
machinery of the nation it thought had been taken
away unjustly.These societies were on a
collision course some kind of conflict was
likely before too many more years had passed.
 But a particular combination of events between
late 1859 and early 1861, unforeseen and
unpredictable, both political and military,
caused the collision to come just when it did.
 The Civil War was caused in multiple ways at
multiple levelsjust like a storm.
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• USE THE FORUM
• To post your primary document application guides.
• To continue the discussion.
• To post fresh approaches and discussion questions
  that work.
• To report on the effectiveness of the seminar
  text in your classes.

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Final Slide. Thank You