Southern Slaveholders And The American Civil War

The American Civil War (1861-1865) is a war over the fate of the Federal Union and southern slavery. The object of this study is southern slaveholders. To explain the causes of their determinations of secession, their war effort, and failures, this study concentrates on slaveholders'situations and actions before and during the war. In the prewar time, southern slaveholders were the direct beneficiary of slavery. They had a favorable economic environment, but they met with more and more serious political challenges from the north. The rise of the Republican party during the late 1850s, particularly Lincoln's win in the 1860 president election, caused a strong crisis sense in slaveholders'mind. They thought slavery hade faced with deadly challenges from the North. To avoid the destruction of their peculiar instituttion, they chose secession. The Federal government resolutely refused disunion. Supported by the North, the Federal Government adopted military action to repress"rebels", so the Civil War came. The south had a weaker war resource base, and its society had its internal contradictions and conflicts between slaveholders and slaves and nonslaveholding Whites, these disadvantages limited its war strength buildup. To organize a big force, the Southern Confederate Government adopted conscription, even decided to arm slaves to fight for slavery. In raising money it mainly depended on issuing treasury notes, thus led to inflation and stimulated price increase. To get war materials, it established new institutes and factories, implemented encouraging measures to promote war materials production. By impressments it gathered up food and supplies from local families. Although the Southern confederate government made great efforts, it had not organized a force strong enough to protect its territory from invasion. And its war effort disturbed its society. Most of the Civil War battles happened in the south. In the wartime, under the strikes of both the Union and the Confederate war efforts and slave's self-emancipation efforts, slavery went to destruction. In the war disturbance, most slaveholding families had war-related sufferings. Finally, overexhausted by the war, slaveholders lost both their war capabilities and war will. So, the Southern Confederate troops surrendered, the Southern Confederacy was destroyed, the Union won the war. In this experience, with the purpose of protecting slavery, slaveholders made the choice of secession and making war effort, ironically, the war destroyed slavery and caused great harms and hurts to slaveholding families. Southern slaveholders was the maker of the Civil War, ironically, they became the greatest victims of this war disaster.