Civil War Slavery, the Territories,

Civil War

Slavery, the Territories, and the United States Civil War

The United States Civil War is often oversimplified as a war about slavery, fought between the abolitionist North and the slave-owning South. Not only is this perspective highly oversimplified, it is in many ways simply untrue. It is quite true that the issue of slavery was a major component of the political disagreement that sparked the Civil War, but the specific role that slavery played in the development of the bloodiest war in American history was much more complex than it often seems. The Dred Scott decision, and the fallout that occurred most memorably through the Lincoln-Douglas debates, outlined in broad strokes the opposed ideologies of many above and below the Mason-Dixon line, setting the stage for increased political conflict that eventually built up to the secession of the Southern states the Civil War.

The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was the primary instigating cause of the deepening crisis in the halls of the federal government and in the mindset of the public, both North and South, regarding the slavery issue (McPherson 2000). In a complex and far-reaching ruing, the Supreme Court decided in the Dred Scott case that slave ownership fell under the federal protection that no state could deny someone their personal property without due process. This meant according to some, that the territories that did not yet have statehood would have to be pro-slavery, while others simply abhorred the decision on face value and saw it as an attenpt to make slavery nationally protected (Hickman 2009). This was at the heart of the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas; Lincoln warned against the type of appeasement offered by Douglas, who argued that individual states has a protected right to allow -- or disallow -- slavery, basically attempting to maintain the status quo (Hickman 2009). This was known as the Freeport doctrine, and it eventually made Douglas unpopular with almost everyone.

Though it was not the sole cause of the United States Civil War, the issue of slavery in the territories and in the country as a whole was a major component of the political and social crisis that occurred leading up to and during the war. The Freeport doctrine proposed by Stephen Douglas proved itself untenable; slavery would either become nationally allowed or nationally banned, and it was largely along these lines that the Civil War was fought. The debates between Douglas and Lincoln laid out some of the basic ideologies competing in the North at the time; the level of disagreement found there certainly did not forecast friendly relations with an even more violently pro-slavery South, bearing a very strict-constructionist view of the Dred Scott decision as well. It took a massive loss of life to finally settle the issue.

The War in the West

Just as the causes of the Civil War are not entirely simple or straightforward, the progress of the war was anything but linear. Despite an ultimate Union victory, the Confederacy managed several periods of advancement into Union territories, and they were even more effective at maintaining a hold on their home territories. Thus, the war progressed and regressed in fits and starts at ties, and victories in one region could easily be offset by losses in another. There were several major theaters of the Civil War, and different issues and strategies led to different developments of the war in these theaters at different periods in the war. In the Western theater in the first half of 1862, the Union made a relatively rapid progression into Confederate territory against an under-funded and under-manned enemy army.

By the end of January, the Union had taken most of Kentucky in the battles of Middle Creek and Mill Springs (Concord 2008). This allowed for a Union push into Tennessee, where they began attempts to open the Mississippi River to Union supply lines while removing stretches of the river from Confederate use (McPherson 200o; Concord 2008). The victories for the Union and losses for the Confederacy were compounded by the strategic importance of many of the battle locations of this period, specifically for their relation to the Mississippi River. The Confederacy was already facing a shortage of men and supplies, and hampering their ability to use the Mississippi made the matter worse at each successive battle. The Union, meanwhile, was strengthened by growing resources and reinforcements as their progress grew, allowing them to overwhelm the Confederate army at several key points (Concord 2009).