Civil War 1861

The American Civil War of 1861-1865 had several causes.  The privilege to vote at that time was reserved for free men. The founders preferred voters to be literate, bible-reading property owners.

 

The Industrial Revolution was underway and the US economy was changing. The labor required came from European immigrants to build infrastructure. Factories employed everybody including children.

 

In the Northeastern cities, business owners were leveraging capital with technological advances. Goods were becoming mass-produced to reduce costs. Northeastern cities were becoming manufacturing centers.

 

The South remained agrarian and labor intensive. Wealthy property owners bought slaves and formed plantations. The majority of smaller family-owned farms had family members working the farm.

 

State politics was dominated by wealthy owners in the North and South. State laws supported the goals of these wealthy owners. The slaves were not only the primary labor source for wealthy owners in the South, but they were also valued as part of their net worth and were bought and sold to ensure investment and cash-flow.

 

The fact that the founders had declared that “all men are created equal” created a problem. It was indisputably true. The founders correctly based the US economy on freedom, the free market and property rights. That was also indisputably correct.  When given a choice between principle and money, they chose money.

 

Wealthy Southern slave owners were in denial. Freeing the slaves would have removed the value of these slaves from their balance sheets and decimated the source of their wealth.  They were in no mood to contemplate that. Tariffs on southern agriculture were a major source of US government funding, so plantation owners believed they had enough leverage to do what they wanted.

 

Farm mechanization was decades away from enabling large farmers to reduce their labor needs. The wealthy plantation owners controlled the State legislatures and these legislatures voted to secede from the union. If secession had been voted on by the voters, it would likely have failed. Most voters in the Southern States at that time were not wealthy.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader