Slavery is a common missconception
Short Answer: Economics
Long Answer
(A paper I wrote for my History class)
The civil war took the most American lives out of any war in our country’s history. This war was brought on by many things including slavery, industrialization, politics, and economic factors. The factors all combined to create sectional tensions great that it ripped American apart. The fact is that the civil war was caused by sectional tensions partially created by economic factors such as the effects of the War of 1812, the Panics of 1819, 1837, and 1857 as well as government policies such as protective tariffs, banking and Clay’s American System, in coordination with the growth of the west, the industrialization of the north, and the agricultural development of the south.
The war of 1812 was brought on by American trade policy towards European nations and attempting to protect its rights as a neutral nation. It started in the early 1800s with the impressments of American and attacks on American vessels by the British and French Navy which was a burden to American foreign trade. This lead to a set of embargo and tariffs which prevented and restricted the trade with any foreign nation. The embargo was an instant disaster, especially for southern farmers who depended on foreign markets for trade, but benefitted the industrial north which took the chance to shift their capitol to machine based manufacturing. Eventual this lead to the invasion of America and the War of 1812 which was a major hit to the American economy heavily. Though the war of 1812 sent American into depression for several years it also helped to spur American industry, having been cut off from British manufactures, the mechanical age started by the war brought heavy industry to the north. The events that lead to as well as the War of 1812 were the start of the sectional tensions between the North and South. In the end trade was restored to Europe and the flow of agricultural goods to the war stricken continent became a valuable market.
The panic of 1819 hit the American economy hard, putting economy in a depression for almost six years. This depression was created by the growing European reliance on American farmers during the Napoleonic wars. This sudden rise in the price agricultural goods created sudden boom in the buying and cultivating of new land, most of this land was bought with little or no money down and often no collateral. As the Napoleonic was came to a close and European agriculture began to recover it started to cause a fall in the price of cotton and other American agricultural goods as there was no longer a large European market, this was also in addition to the British textile industry switching to Indian producers for cheaper cotton. All this in turn lead to a collapse of the American agriculture and also meant that the farmers could not pay off the debt. This hit the Midwest and South particularly hard but most of all it greatly slowed the western movement and started to create sectional tension between the East and the West. Several factors that slowed the recovery of the American economy was the lack of a central currency, the individual banks had put out their own currency which became mostly useless and incredibly unstable after the panic began. This instability in the currency meant that no man who holds it in his possession could be safe for a day.The economic depression though it did cause much damage in the south also affected the north quite significantly and only was a cause of mild sectional tension between the north, south, east, and west. In the end The panic of 1819 and the Missouri Compromise revealed the clashing interests that divided the country and created sectional tensions.
It was about this time that Henry Clay developed The American System which pushed for protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a strong national bank in the end seemed to benefit the north greater. His main argument ran along the lines of constitutional equality which defined would not draw resources from one part of the Union, and expend them in the improvements of another part of the union. Given in the form of a key part of Clay’s American system, internal improvements, the amount of local money collected would be returned to that local area and since the amount received in the more industrialized north would be greater then there would be more internal improvement than in the south, which in the end became the case. Clay also promoted protective tariffs that would protect American industry; this did not favor the south because it benefited from cheap European goods and also incited tariffs from European countries which affected the market of southern goods. A key example of this is the Tariff of 1828 also referred to as the Tariff of abominations by southerners abominations because it incited similar tariffs in foreign markets and hurt the southern agriculture as well as increased the price of manufactured goods, basically the fate of the fertile states was be poverty and desolation. Most of the tariffs that the American system proposed would benefit the north and hurt the south and was an adding factor to the sectional tensions between the North, South, and West. The last key part of Clay’s system was a strong national bank which if it had been instituted in the early years of the Nineteenth Century could have prevented several of the panics and depressions that lead to the civil war, in fact American moved away from the idea of a National bank when president Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Bank of the United States and withdrew all of its fund in favor of smaller individual banks. In the end Clay’s American System never really was put into effect before the civil war, though we have since implemented many of its key points into our modern government since the war.
In 1832 president Jackson vetoed Bank of the United States recharter bill and condemned its monopoly on banking. The creation of pet banks and state issued currency caused an instability that had not been foreseen, in response to the rapidly growing inflation Jackson issued Specie Circular. However it had an opposite effect than intended increasing the rate of inflation greatly as well as slowing movement in the west. Panic of 1837 was brought on by the actions of Jackson was caused by a lack of Specie and a surplus of paper money, as well as over extensions on credit and speculation on land in the west. This caused a spiral into depression for six years. President Van Buren made very few efforts to counteract the actions of the depression instead he only protected the federal government’s holdings. The panic slowed growth in the west and caused a growth in sectional tension between the north, west, and south.
The final economic factor to contribute to the sectional tension in America was the Panic of 1857. The panic of 1857 had a short affect on the North and was averted by the incoming flow of California gold. This newfound reliance on western gold caused a shift away from the southern sources which in turn lead to more sectional tension between the north and south. The difference between the panic of 1857 and previous economic problems was that it only greatly affected the North instead of the south and was quickly settled and solved as well as being a minimal additive to the social tension already at hand, this being the Dred Scott case and the Bloody Kansas incident which were much greater contributors to the sectional tension that brought on the civil war.
This was the last major economic factor to contribute to the civil war. In Late 1860 and early 1861 state began to secede from the union and an attack on Fort Sumter began. The civil war had started, caused by social tension spawned by the economic differences created by tariffs, wars, and politics. Though they were not the only factor that lead to the separation of the Union it was one of the key parts, in the end it was a battle that was going to need to be resolved, be it on the battle field or on the floor of our government.
