Civil War as a Second American Revolution: A Comparison

Introduction: Civil War and Revolution Compared

During the Revolutionary War, loyalist leaders such as Benjamin Franklin's son, Governor William Franklin, warned of "all the horrors of a Civil War" when advising his constituents to remain loyal to the Crown.¹ The American Revolution and the Revolutionary War were therefore self-consciously understood as a type of civil war. Furthermore, when the Civil War of the 1860s broke out within the United States, similar language was used to describe the Southern secessionists as had been used to describe the American Revolutionaries rebelling against the Crown. In President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, he affirms the will to respond "in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion."² Yet did the Civil War produce, as McPherson claims, a "Second American Revolution," creating changes that were both more dramatic and more radical than those that took place a century earlier? Indeed, for the freed slaves, the Civil War was without a doubt more revolutionary and radical than the American Revolution had been.

Jefferson, Slavery, and the Roots of Conflict

The seeds for a grander social, political, and cultural revolution than that which took place in the 1770s had been laid through intellectual debate in the United States. Centuries earlier, Thomas Jefferson urged the nation to conduct soul-searching regarding the practice of slavery, urging masters to voluntarily cease the practice of slave labor. Jefferson argued that slave ownership was unethical and that social norms in the United States needed to change. He also warned against the use of military measures to retain slave labor, and urged American slave owners to emancipate their slaves and welcome a new social order based on equity: "I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."³

Jefferson understood the need to abolish slavery out of an ethical imperative and foresaw the problem of normalizing race relations. Yet when the Constitutional Congress met, the matter of slavery was left unresolved. Few politicians were as astute as Jefferson in recognizing the need to resolve the issue before it festered into civil war. Perhaps even Jefferson did not foresee that an actual war would be fought, spilling the blood of tens of thousands, before the South would willingly change its social order.

The American Revolution's Limited Social Change

The American Revolution was therefore tame in comparison to the Civil War. The principles upon which the Americans fought were principles shared in common with the British. Both the colonists and the loyalists sought economic prosperity, and both believed in the same general form of democratic government in which only white males deserved the right to vote. For a time in Britain and in the colonies, only white males who owned property were considered eligible to vote — but this difference was far less significant than the divide between the North and the South during the Civil War.

Before, during, and after the American Revolution, organizations like the American Anti-Slavery Society hoped to form a more perfect union that recognized that "slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God."⁴ However, the issue of slavery remained essentially unresolved due to the large number of people who supported the institution. Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade was banned, slavery itself was not, because too many people benefitted from it. The issues of slavery and women's rights were both deferred and ignored when framing the Constitution of the United States.

As the abolition movement grew stronger, the South foresaw the radical shift in public opinion regarding slavery. The South then faced two choices: either respond as Jefferson had suggested — gaining the consent of the masters in emancipating the slaves — or declare an independent Confederacy of Slave States. The South chose the latter, prompting the North to initiate the fighting. Rather than allowing the South to secede unopposed and simply become a trading partner with a slave-owning nation, Lincoln and the North chose to fight in order to abolish the slave trade entirely in North America.

Conclusion: The Civil War's Radical Legacy

In the Gettysburg Address, marking a turning point of the Civil War, Lincoln refers to the birth of a new nation and "a new birth of freedom" for America.⁵ Lincoln not only held together the nation, but helped to abolish the institution of slavery and began the slow process of erasing racism from the global consciousness. Whereas the old social order had consisted of physical, psychological, political, and economic oppression, the new social order demanded greater civic responsibility from its citizens. Citizens were held accountable for their ethical beliefs as the theme of equality became more meaningful in America. The passage of the 19th Amendment stands as a testament to the radically new social norms governing American society. Women's suffrage can be viewed as a direct extension of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to Black men.

Although the seeds for deeper revolution had already been planted prior to the American Revolution, that revolution resulted in only minor social and political changes — it was simply about establishing a new nation exempt from Crown taxation. The Civil War, on the other hand, resulted in major social and political transformation. Slavery was abolished, meaning the destruction of an entrenched social order in the American South: what many Southerners called their "way of life." A way of life that was oppressive and contrary to American values had persisted for several centuries, and the Civil War brought it to an end — a far more remarkable achievement than what took place on July 4, 1776.