The cause of the Civil War can be simplified to that one word.
The South had the resources (and the manpower, however vile the application was) to produce it…
The North had the industrial means to refine it into the end products and the financial infrastructure to export it…
Was the Civil War about slavery?
Sure… because that is what started the whole life cycle of the resource .
Was the Civil War about states’ rights?
Sure… because the right to treat humans as a means of production was bad (the North was not without sin in this aspect either).
Was the Civil War about a lost cause?
Sure… for all parties involved at the time and ever since then as it’s legacy continued in the decades after and over the century and a half(ish) since it ended…
It remains the rallying cry for both sides, whether they realize it or not… and will divide this house once again over the same stupidity.
It happened. I’m not going to say “get over it.” Rather, I will say “learn from it and be better.”
Because what is at stake is EVERYTHING… and there won’t be a nation to left to give people the right to bitch about statues or what one person said or did not say was the cause for the final Civil War. We can be better than this, but do we truly want to?
I wrote this not too long ago to fill a void I forgot had existed in these posts since one day in 2018, when my 13-year-old son had asked to stop to take a look at a cotton field after checking out the Madras Maiden when it stopped for tours and Living History flights.
As I mulled over the soft tuft of material he had brought over, the realization that the entire conflict – from 12Apr1861 to 26May1865 – might possibly be distilled to that one thing.
I am not a fan of the aggressive and accelerated rate of the dumbing-down process of history; I have maintained that at length in many posts here… here… here… and here. However, to interpret history often means that it must be pre-digested responsibly and accordingly due to the… sensitivities… of many folks’ systems. In this case, it fits: collectively, we have lost the ability to sit and read one 1000+ page book, let alone the sheer volumes of literature discussing the conditions, execution, and repercussions of that 4-year conflict; likewise, we have also lost the ability to understand that the perspective of one does not make for an absolute truth of any event in history.
Sometimes – more often than not – we seem to have irrevocably lost the ability to discuss and disagree on pretty much anything…
So we Tweet.
We share memes.
We post cartoons which resonate with us in the hopes that the light-hearted observation we share will nudge someone into asking any question – preferably “Why does this make so much sense?”
For those in the back: history is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from… and those who do study history (might) be doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.
I wrote the first part about the causes of the Civil War with one person in mind – a reader who has come to be considered a true friend and a reliable sounding board for concerns and hopes for not just our kids, but for everyone’s kids. Part of me hopes that Dave Bowman will be triggered into one of his epic rants, but a bigger part of me hopes that voices like ours – either through excellent podcasts or sporadic blog posts – will cause more folks to slow down to curiously regard the signposts that are all neon-ified by the road we are all careening down.
My son continues to provide inspiration. In 2021, I wrote “Haze on the Horizon” as we drove back from Athens, Tennessee. I close with a quote which fits both my reaction to a campaign statement echoing on social media today as well as my concerns for how perilous a partial understanding of the importance of history is to today and tomorrow:
History is like those hills – to the dangerously naïve folks who like to wield their limited understanding of the past with casual comparisons, it’s just vaguely defined shapes on the horizon; nothing to worry about.
To those who have an idea about the branches, rocks, and whatnot which constitutes those looming shapes, however, it is something which might reflexively result in a glance at the velocity towards those distant hills and the overall situation of the moment: attitude, altitude, weight, and ability to maneuver.
Worry comes from noting that we are accelerating towards a very solid reality with a rapidly diminishing timeframe where corrections can be made to prevent what is sure to happen.
We know those branches, we know those rocks, and we are very familiar with the whatnot from previous investigations… it’s just a matter of getting the attention of everyone else on the plane; to get them to stop squabbling and realize that it won’t matter who was at fault when everyone is scattered across the terrain.
Pay attention.
milsurpwriter 
Okay… but what today is the equivalent resource of cotton? I suppose – in an odd way – it could be military production, which might be a reason for making it so diverse around the nation, but reality is that’s less about avoiding conflict and more about getting Congressman Dutchwaffle re-elected.
In fact, the MORAL arguments over slavery (used to produce the cotton) were – in my humble opinion – more influential in the cause of the war. If not cotton, then perhaps tobacco, or corn, or gold or some other commodity would have sufficed to absorb the labor of the enslaved?
But the moral argument would have remained. While today there seems to not be such a resource argument (despite the best efforts of the socialists), there remains the moral argument(s).
Let us consider this statement: “I believe that slavery is so odious that nothing can uphold it except positive law, and that all such law violates inalienable rights, and ought to be immediately abrogated.” (Salmon P. Chase, The Liberty Man’s Creed – 1844)
The issue for the abolitionist in 1844 was the slave, not the cotton. He presumed that the elimination of slavery would not equal the loss of the commodity the slave produced. (Although this opens a lot of further discussion about the post-war economic issues, vis-a-vis the Black Codes). But he understood that ending slavery was a moral issue that was poisoning the soul; of the Constitution and the American.
Today, is there a resource that fits that moral objection? Possibly oil? But the moral arguments remain. Change the sentence about to read: “I believe that abortion is so odious that nothing can uphold it except positive law, and that all such law violates inalienable rights, and ought to be immediately abrogated,” and see what debates will ignite…
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