Slavery and the Road to the American Civil War

Introduction

The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 made the United States officially independent from Britain. This treaty, however, left the question of slavery unresolved, and it would remain so until after the Civil War. That war, which was the defining feature of 19th-century American history, would have repercussions that continue in the country to this day. The peculiar institution of slavery was therefore the most critical issue in the United States throughout the 19th century and would come to define the young nation. Leaving the slavery issue unresolved at the time of independence would prove to be a destructive and critical error.

Attempts to Reconcile the Slavery Issue

Beginning in 1787, the first attempts were made to reconcile the issue of slavery. Northern states had already abolished the practice, while southern states remained slave states and were steadfastly opposed to any effort to abolish slavery in their jurisdictions. In 1787, it was proposed at the Constitutional Convention that the population of slaves would count as three-fifths of a white person. This was relevant because the delegates were seeking to establish proportional representation in government and needed to define the population. The South had sought the three-fifths rule partly for taxation purposes, as taxes owed to the central government would be dependent on a state's population. Some argued that only free people should count in a population. With slaves counted, slave states would have more seats in the House of Representatives and greater representation in the Electoral College (Laws.com, 2015). Thus, while this was not an attempt to deal with the issue directly, there was some pressure on southern states to abolish slavery in order to gain more power at the federal level. The compromise allowed them a portion of that power without requiring abolition, and it established that Black Americans were legally inferior — a principle that would be reflected in several future laws.

In 1820, there was further need to preserve the balance of power between slave states and free states. The Missouri Compromise brought Missouri into the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Slavery was then prohibited in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory, other than in Missouri (Library of Congress, 2015). This compromise demonstrated that slavery was a defining issue dividing the country, and that high-level compromise was necessary to keep the union together.

A further crisis occurred in 1850, and another compromise was needed. California sought to enter the union as a free state, which would upset the balance between free and slave states. Once again, the country was divided in a way that could not easily be resolved — slave states insisted on maintaining equal power in government. Amendments were made to the Fugitive Slave Act, the slave trade in Washington, D.C. was abolished, and California was admitted to the union as part of this agreement. The Compromise of 1850 showed that the North held more power at this point, yet still needed to negotiate with the South to maintain the stability of the union.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed white settlers to determine whether their territories would be slave states or not. One outcome was that partisans on both sides flooded into Kansas to vote on whether the territory would enter the union as a slave state — the issue was powerful enough to spur such mass mobilization and continued to divide the country. The Kansas campaigning turned violent, and this period is sometimes regarded as a prelude to the Civil War, representing an unusual instance of widespread organized violence over the issue of slavery (Library of Congress, 2015, 2).

The Dred Scott case was a landmark ruling before the U.S. Supreme Court, decided in 1857. Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he and his family had lived in states where slavery was illegal. His bid was denied, and he was thus denied his freedom. The decision contributed significantly to the acrimonious climate brewing between slave states and free states, and is typically viewed as an antecedent to the Civil War.

Compatibility with Economic and Political Systems

America's economic system and slavery were never going to be compatible. The U.S. economic system is predicated on freedom, a concept entirely incompatible with slavery at any level. When people cannot make their own choices, economic inefficiency typically follows, because individuals are not performing the work for which they are best suited. Slavery was equally incompatible with the political system, as the Civil War demonstrated. There were tensions from the nation's founding, and successive generations failed to resolve them. Constant compromise would have been required to maintain the balance between slave and free states in the Electoral College and in the House of Representatives. Moreover, this was a fundamental issue on which no compromise could be reasonable or sustainable. That proved to be the case: the compromises put in place were ultimately unsustainable and unable to prevent war.

Conclusion

The repercussions of slavery would hold well beyond the Civil War. Slavery was replaced by a different economic system that rendered Southern Black Americans poor, followed by Jim Crow laws. It took several more decades to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and to end formal segregation. Even so, the effects of slavery persist today — in racism, in African-American poverty and social structures, and in the political divide between the North and South that continues to shape American governance.

References

Foner, E. (1974). The causes of the American Civil War: Recent interpretations and new directions. Civil War History, 20(3), 197–214.

Laws.com (2015). What was the three-fifths compromise? Laws.com. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://constitution.laws.com/three-fifths-compromise

Library of Congress (2015). Primary documents in American history. Library of Congress. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Missouri.html

Library of Congress (2015, 2). Kansas-Nebraska Act. Library of Congress. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/kansas.html

Trueman, C. (2015). Causes of the American Civil War. The History Learning Site. Retrieved November 11, 2015, from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-american-civil-war/causes-of-the-american-civil-war/