On August 21, 1863 William C. Quantrill and a band of 450 proslavery yahoos raided Lawrence, Kansas and butchered 182 individuals, including children.
Quantrill and his men staged numerous raids into Kansas during the early part of the Civil War. He was quickly labeled an outlaw by the Union for his attacks on pro Union forces. He was involved in several skirmishes with Jayhawkers (pro Union guerilla bands) and eventually was made a Captain in the Confederate Army. His attitude towards his role in the Civil War drastically changed in 1862 when the Commander of the Department of Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck ordered that guerrillas such as Quantrill and his men would be treated as robbers and murderers, not normal prisoners of war. Before this proclamation, Quantrill acted as if he were a normal soldier adhering to principals of accepting enemy surrender. After this, he gave an order to give 'no quarter'.
Well, of course, he was a criminal and this 'excuse' is pitiful.
On August 21, 1863, Quantrill led his band of about 450 men into Lawrence, Kansas. They attacked this pro Union stronghold killing over 150 men, few of them offering resistance. In addition, Quantrill's Raiders burned and looted the town. In the North, this event became known as the Lawrence Massacre and was vilified as one of the worst events of the Civil War.
We are often wooed by historical images of southern gentleman joining in defense of the South against the tyrannical aggression of the militant Yankees. But Quantrill an his thugs may ring truer not only of the typical southern attitude of the time, (outside of certain genteel quarters of Old Virginia) but the reactionism of this band of thugs also resonates with what we still see today, in decreasing frequency (owing to dilution of the south with new people and sometimes new ideas) in the obnoxious southern racism wrapped in a pseudo-patriotic Southern Flag.
The Civil War was fought to end slavery. And in some people's mind the war is still on.
Politics
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Likely the primary reason for the Civil War was the Southern States sucession from the Union. This doesn't mean that slavery wasn't a major issue.
Posted by: Joel | August 21, 2008 6:09 PM
Why stop there Joel? Why not say the primary reason for the Civil War was the attack on Fort Sumter?
Posted by: The Science Pundit | August 21, 2008 6:51 PM
I just heard the famous presidential historian on NPR (yesterday) reaffirming our national belief that the CW was about slavery, at least according to those fighting it. Such as Abe Lincoln .
Posted by: the other joel | August 21, 2008 6:55 PM
Tensions leading to the Civil War were for multiple reasons, slavery exacerbating most of them. There is typically a racist undertone beneath the banner of states rights, but saying we fought it to end slavery is too simple of an argument for a disgraceful period in our history and such a bloody war and resolution.
It's also argued that Lincoln initiating the draft was a good thing, because without it, slavery would not have ended. Yet tens if not hundreds of thousands of drafted people on both sides, under the threat of imprisonment, died. The abolition of slavery was great, but it doesn't mean it justified the butchery of other innocent people who were effectively enslaved.
"The South will rise again" mantra is ignorant, and slavery was a contributing, if not major source to the economic and geopolitical tensions. But those tensions were not as simple as "slavery is wrong, and we're thinking of abolishing it." They were more along the line of "as our nation expands west into new territories, if those states are slave states, slaves will take many of the labor opportunities we anticipate and would like for ourselves. Therefore we should limit slavery not because blacks are equal human beings -- they are not -- nor should we limit it because we find it a deplorable institution; we should limit slavery because they will be competition for our labor."
Slavery was a large reason for tensions leading to the secession of the South; it was not the reason for the Civil War. The war was to preserve the Union. The emancipation proclamation allowed southern states to rejoin the union and keep their slaves, but the threat was if they did not rejoin the union within 6 months, then the Union would free the slaves and take control of all economy in any territory they occupied.
So "states rights" = "right to slavery" given the larger context, but the war was violent and bloody and represents a dark point in history and shouldn't be portrayed as the noble North vs the slave-driving South. It's a stain on the entire country, not just south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Posted by: Jonsi | August 21, 2008 7:26 PM
There were atrocities on both sides during the Civil war, the Lawrence Massacre just happens to be more well-known. Quantrill's raiders were largely motivated by the Union sacking of Osceola, Missouri in September, 1861. Nine men were murdered and Union troops pillaged and burned the town. After the Lawrence Massacre, the Union army implemented General Order 11 which led to four counties in western Missouri with hundreds of farmers being uprooted and their farms burned. Any farmer who resisted was shot.
There were no good guys back then.
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | August 21, 2008 8:13 PM
There was no singular cause of the Civil War. In my mind the two most prominent were slavery and federalism.
Posted by: Ben Abbott | August 21, 2008 8:33 PM
The civil war was fought to end slavery. And it did. Why is this even a question?
Posted by: Alice | August 21, 2008 10:16 PM
It's a question because many people believe incorrectly it was entirely about states rights. It's also a question because many people without hesitation say "if it weren't for the draft, we'd never have ended slavery" in justification for "we should have the draft again, because people in our country don't know what it means to serve." It's also a question because most other countries were able to abolish slavery peacefully, often with the government paying slaveowners to liberate them, but in the United States, 620,000 people died. Why such a bloody end? Abolishing slavery was a great thing, but it came at a great cost, too, and with all that blood, you can't just say the ends justified the means, you have to understand what led to the tension and conflict. The confederate soldiers who fought and died, many of them probably didn't give a damn about slavery. Why then did they fight? Perhaps they were fooled by confederate propaganda, but I very much doubt they all fought and died because they wanted to perpetuate slavery, which is what saying "the civil war was fought because of slavery" means. It's much more complex.
Posted by: Jonsi | August 21, 2008 10:54 PM
great points by all. I grew up in Memphis, TN and served as a tour guide on a tour that focused on my home town's Antebellum and Confedrate past -- read slavery, slave economics, slave escape, post-slavery sociology, jim crow and segregation. It's all a bit true, and sad. There were no 'real' heros. Guerilla tactics were employed by both sides. Union officers pilaged the south and ran sacked the great beautiful homes for no other reason than they thought they could. They 'confiscated' livestock and feed and foodstuffs from struggling southern farmers and women left behind. Rape is a sad instrument of war and was used on both sides to attack defenseless women - white and black. There were some union regiments that were said to have salted fields and freshwater streams....effectively killing civilians...That's just evil. I don't care what side you're on and how righteous your cause supposely is.
And now I live in Missouri, home of Grants farm, only to find out that Grant owned slaves and ran a working plantation (his wife's family). He had no qualms with the institution, though the NPS guides would paint the picture that he was a gentleman and not a cruel person, just practical about free labour and inequality of different-looking peoples.
Posted by: DNLee | August 22, 2008 12:04 AM
The whole "preserve the union" / "state's rights" / "slavery" argument is kind of a red herring. They're different aspects of the same thing.
The Civil War began when Lincoln invaded the south in order to preserve the union. The reason the union was in danger of dissolution was because the southern states asserted a right to leave. The reason they wanted to leave was primarily to preserve slavery.
Posted by: Matt Springer | August 22, 2008 12:56 AM
Matt Springer summarizes the case well, but it should be further noted that the South left not for the most part to preserve slavery in the immediate term (some feared the federal government gaining the will and ability to uproot slavery eventually, but few seem to have thought it possible in the short run), but rather to preserve the ability to expand into new slaveholding territories. The slave economy was heavily dependent on aquisition of new lands and the ability to continually ship surplus slaves west and south, and national politics threatened to prevent the admission of new slave states, or at least reduce their number to a trickle.
I find myself particularly amused by those who claim the war was over "state's rights" without acknowledging that the right in question was the right to support slavery. I've yet to find anyone who can give me a good way to complete the sentence, "The southern states left the Union to preserve the right of a state to ______."
None of this, of course, means that Northerners were angels, or that the war was anything other than a horrible war. As has been suggested above, many opposed slavery not out of altruism but over fear of cheap black labor threatening white working class livelihoods. And, in its initial phases, the war really wasn't about ending slavery at all. It was fought to keep the Union intact, and the federal government would have been happy to let slavery persist in a readmitted South well into the course of the war (although plenty of Union soldiers and civilians would have objected). But to suggest that the main reason the South left in the first place was anything other than slavery is to badly misread Southern intentions, which they made no secret of at the time they made their decisions to depart.
Posted by: textivore | August 22, 2008 6:43 AM
It is not correct to say that the US civil war was the only war fought over slavery and that other countries abolished this practice peacefully. Many of the nineteenth century British Campaigns overseas, including their most demanding (of soldiers, etc.) and bloodiest ever prior to WWI, involved slavery or very closely related issues. There were many decades when the word 'slavery' was bandied about in the British press as the primary reason for British investment in military resources in Southern and East Africa during the 19th century. This was not just to make people feel good. Gordon died at Khartoum and more British soldiers died in the Boer War than any previous conflict in UK History over slavery. The Sudanese ware was 100 per cent explicitly about slavery. The South African war was arguably a little more complex because other words were being applied. And ultimately, the British, after winning the war, were weary of long term maintenance of the status quo at great cost, and appeased the Boer governments.
All of these other constructions I'm hearing ... the Civil War was not fought over slavery ... it was fought over A which caused B which was required by C ... oh, and A, B and C were all aspects of the war over slavery. Exactly what sort of bullshit is that? Do you even know what kind of bullshit is that?
I do not care what U.S. Grant did or thought. He was a general, not a policy maker.
What I want an honest answer to is this question: Why do so many people want so desperately to deny the link between the fight against slavery and the fact of the American Civil War? What do you get out of this denial? What are you trying to avoid?
Posted by: Alice | August 22, 2008 6:56 AM
"What I want an honest answer to is this question: Why do so many people want so desperately to deny the link between the fight against slavery and the fact of the American Civil War? What do you get out of this denial? What are you trying to avoid?"
It's not a matter of avoiding anything. William of Ockham notwithstanding, the simplest explanation isn't always the best one. There were a lot of reasons for the Civil War, it wasn't just about slavery.
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | August 22, 2008 8:22 AM
@Romeo Vitelli
It may not have been the only issue, but it was by a very large margin the majority issue. And I mean a very large margin.
Posted by: Jon | August 22, 2008 8:29 AM
It was about slavery, get over it. As has been stated before, the South attempted to seceed because it wanted to maintain their "state's rights" to own human beings and maintain their antiquated and immoral economy that was completely dependent on owning human beings and using them in forced labor.
I think it's sickening to claim that "both sides were bad", it's like saying there were "no good guys" in WWII. Compared to the southern economic system that southerners fought to protect, General Sherman, for example, was a great American hero who frankly didn't burn enough shit down on his march through the south.
It's like saying the German's who lived next store to concentration camps, who voted hitler into office, who informed on Jews and communists and other undesirables (or who did nothing and just went along) weren't directly culpable for what their country did.
It's also forgotten how strong and powerful the abolitionist movement was in the north (and one reason why I'm deeply proud to have come from central New York state -- an epicenter of abolitionism). The civil war was about slavery and it's grotesque to hear people construct preposterous apologetics to whitewash that fact.
Posted by: Shawn | August 22, 2008 10:30 AM
Slavery was a major issue in overarching theme of state's rights. But it was not the only issue. And the war was not fought to end slavery, initially. Looking at Lincoln's comments and writings, it wasn't about freeing the slaves. This is clear even up to the Emancipation Proclamation. Read it. Notice anything interesting?
The EP did free the slaves - in the rebellious states. But there WERE states that stayed with the Union where slavery was legal. The EP did not free those slaves. That didn't happen until after the war.
If the war was fought to end slavery, why weren't those slaves freed from day 1? Because the war wasn't about freeing the slaves - it was about preserving the union and federal authority.
Posted by: cephyn | August 22, 2008 11:18 AM
I would say the first shot was fired in Kansas, after that Kansas/Nebraska debacle, which meant that the Missouri compromise (I think that is what it was called) was invalid. They tried to solve it by popular sovereignty, which meant people decided whether it would be a slave state or free state. People from all over would try to vote, and dirty tricks enssued. Then there were people who raided towns, causing retaliation. The only one I remember was that religious nut Brown who butchered a bunch of people. So, yeah, Kansas became a blood bath. Then, the seconds shots were fired because the South, after Lincoln was elected, seceded, and the Union tried to keep the military forts in the South. One of the few (perhaps two?) remaining, fort Sumter, got supplies they needed, and the confederates fired. It is not as simple as that, but that is the main part of it.
Then, there is the reason of slavery. Lincoln couldn't just say he wanted to free all slaves. He was in danger of losing the Middle slave states that was so vital for the North, and there were also increasing opposition in the northwest. So, in his proclamation, he only set slaves in the South free.
So, conclusion? I would say slavery is a major part of it, and it overarches over all causes of the war.
Posted by: IBY | August 22, 2008 10:57 PM
In his forward to The Stakes of Power by Roy Nichols, David Donald puts it "...the Civil War was caused by 'a highly complex melange' of 'pride, politics, patience, prudence, pique, petulance, and plotting.'" This text, with along with other materials, showed that the roots of the Civil War were very deep indeed, and the War was probably merely delayed a few decades as sectionalism and interest in political power increased. The Federal government's role in economics was becoming more important, while the South's influence in the government was perceived to be decreasing (hence the debates over slavery in territories that were on their way to statehood. The South's way of life was threatened, and slavery was a very important aspect of that way of life.
Posted by: Mark Duigon | August 23, 2008 9:25 AM
IMO if you're going to say that the war was fought to end slavery, you have to explain why it took Lincoln 3 years to do it in the rebel territory. And even longer in Union territory. To say he went to war but didn't even directly address the main reason for the war is to accuse Lincoln of being gutless and ineffectual. And I don't think that to be true at all.
Posted by: cephyn | August 26, 2008 5:17 PM
Was Lincoln supposed to pass a law ending slavery? Is that your suggestion? That would require overthrowing the constitution, yes?
Posted by: greg laden | August 26, 2008 5:33 PM