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Archive for February, 2011

Another Reason for the Civil War

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

In his article “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise”, Gary J. Kornblith proposes a different view for the cause of the Civil War than those proposed by fundamentalists and revisionists. While he acknowledges that there were significant differences between the North and the South, he does not consider these as important to the start of the war. His argument revolves on the idea that the Civil War was directly influenced by the outcome and the sentiments from the Mexican American War. He creates a counterfactual scenario in which Henry Clay won the Election of 1844, and therefore changed the chances of the Mexican-American War taking place.

According to Kornblith, had Clay won the election, the war between the United States and Mexico would not have taken place because he considered “annexation and war with Mexico [as] identical” and he was not willing to take the risk of a conflict because of an addition of land. Throughout the article, Kornblith argues that the territory expansion due to the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of land from Mexico because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo caused the issue of slavery to rise again in the minds of both Southerners and Northerners. He argues that if there had not been a war, which there would not have been if Clay had won and kept to his campaign, then the Wilmot Proviso would not have been necessary. If there had not been that expansion of territory, the issue of allowing slaves in the new lands would not have been a problem and therefore the issue of slavery would not have come to the forefront of political discussions in country. He claims that the Wilmot Proviso was a key in the “exacerbation of sectional tensions that culminated in the Civil War.”

Since Kornblith hinges his argument on the counterfactual scenario that Henry Clay won the election of 1844, he goes on to talk about other things under the imagined period.  The author argues that had Clay won the presidency, he would have kept the focus of his term on “maintain the protective tariff, promoting internal improvements, and reestablishing the national bank.” The platform he ran under and the course of his presidency would have stayed away from issues of land acquisitions and therefore the issue of slavery. He also says that divisions within the political parties “seemed to insure the protection of republicanism, of liberty and equality, which was the most fundamental goal of American in both the South and the North.” In other words, he seems to think that the differences in opinion between parties would overcome the sectional differences that fundamentalist claim were the reason for the war.

Kornblith’s argument that the territorial expansion after the Mexican-American War was essential in the prominence of the slavery issue in the time before the outbreak of war makes sense and his explanation of how the election of Henry Clay would have affected the way party politics and sectionalism are feasible. However, I have a difficult time accepting his claims because they are based on the supposition of an event. The fundamentalist and the revisionists formed their arguments on the causes of the civil based on the issues that they, as historians, had confirmed. This gives them certain validity because although the facts are often interpreted differently, they are not guesses or suppositions on past events. While all that Korblith claims could have happened, the reality is that we do not know how Clay would have reacted to the potential annexation of Texas or if he would have kept his presidency focused away from slavery.

Good idea Kornblith, but you went too far

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

In Gary J. Kornblith’s article, “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise,” Kornblith argues against fundamentalist historians who claim that the major economic, social and political differences between the North and the South made the Civil War inevitable. He posits that had Henry Clay defeated James K. Polk in the presidential election of 1844 (an election that was determined by a few thousand votes in New York), the Mexican-American War would not have occurred and thus the sectional debate about whether or not to expand slavery into territories gained by the war would not have occurred. Ultimately this would have prevented hostilities over slavery from becoming intense enough to lead to the development of the Republican Party, Lincoln’s election and then Southern secession. Although it takes a substantial amount of explaining for Kornblith to make his counterfactual situation clear, his ultimate argument is that the Civil War was not, as fundamentalists argue, inevitable (at least at the time that it occurred), but rather it was caused by the Mexican-American war and the conflicts that arose from territorial gains (102).

Kornblith argues that “partisan identities counterbalanced sectional identities” during the late 1840s, and as such, the political crises of the 1850s that resulted in the formation of the Republican Party need not have happened (89). That is, he argues that without a major political crisis, the sectional differences between the North and the South were not a major threat to national unity because within the North and South major political differences existed. However, there ultimately was a crisis in the Second Party System that resulted in major political changes, and Kornblith notes that “the conflicting passions aroused by the [Wilmot] Proviso most definitely proved a threat to the national parties and to the nation itself,” (89). Thus Kornblith blames the controversy over the Wilmot Proviso, a failed piece of legislation that would have banned slavery in territories gained during the Mexican-American War, for the tensions in the US political system that led to the breakdown of the Second Party System.

Additionally, Kornblith argues that without the conflict over the Wilmot Proviso, the Fugitive Slave Law passed in the early 1850s would have been less harsh because “absent other evidence of southern aggression, most northern whites would probably have accepted a moderately strengthened fugitive slave law,” (96). Because the South became particularly jealous of the future of slavery during conflicts over the expansion of slavery, Northerners became concerned over the passion with which Southerners defended slavery and became antagonistic towards slavery and the South.

Kornblith concludes his argument and his “counterfactual thought experiment,” stating, “we can conclude that the Mexican-American was a necessary, if not sufficient, cause of the Civil War” (102). I would tend to agree with him. Ultimately, the political and social crises of the 1850s had their roots in the territories gained during the Mexican-American War. However, Kornblith goes farther and argues that absent the Civil War, “the South’s peculiar institution would almost surely have persisted beyond 1900” (102). This seems to me to be too much of a stretch; he notes that the Wilmot Proviso was the first time that issues of popular sovereignty came into the debate about slavery, and that the Compromise of 1850, which resulted from the Proviso, led to a northern belief in a southern “slave power conspiracy,” (99). Although that may be the case, it is flawed to then believe that these issues would not have occurred under other circumstances. The Mexican-American war led to a substantial increase in US territory, but any slight alteration to the fragile truce the North and the South held over the issue of slavery could have easily resulted in major conflicts that could have led to war or abolition. In that sense, Kornblith’s counterfactual scenario can help us to understand the specific events leading up to the Civil War, but to then make hypotheses about what might have happened instead of the war is to go too far.