American History Hit - What Caused the Civil War? | Slavery

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

What were the deep origins and root causes of the Civil War? In the first of four episodes we chart how the North and South became bitterly divided over slavery. Don is joined by Professor Chandra Manning, author of 'What This Cruel War was Over' to discuss how slavery led to the American Civil War.Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Picture this. A letter home from a soldier serving in the Civil War. A few meager sheets of paper, creased carefully in the middle, covered in looping handwriting that would look astonishing to us today,

but not so much then when excellent penmanship was still commonplace. The letter sits in a mailbag with dozens of others, written in the camp the night before. This one is a husband's reply to his wife's earlier letter, one pleading with him to come home to be where he is needed most, with her and their new baby. In these folded pages, the soldier tries to explain why he cannot, why he is fighting this long, bloody war, and whether the letter was written by a union soldier or a Confederate one hardly matters. The message is likely the same. He is here, he writes, because of one thing above all else, one towering issue that must be settled once and for all. The issue of slavery.

Good day, American history hitters. Here in the laziest days of summer, perhaps we found you on a sandy beach or on a raft in a pool. Wherever you are, I'm Don Wildman. Very glad you're listening. The lead-up to the American Civil War is a detective story, following the clues of antebellum politics and policy. Today is the first of a short series of episodes exploring the road to the Civil War. Why any war begins will always be a complicated question, but with the American Civil War, it comes down to slavery, although you'll certainly find plenty who've argued otherwise

and persist in doing so today. So that's where we start with this series, the painfully fundamental issue of enslavement. Listen to this statistic. By the time of the start of the Civil War, in the South, We had upwards of three and a half million souls in bondage. That's in a total population of just over nine million. That's 40% of the population in the South were enslaved. And a million more up north and elsewhere who had no direct experience of slavery were

poised to march into battle over it. My guest today is Professor Chandra Manning, an historian at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of what this cruel war was over, which examines the letters of Union and Confederate soldiers. exploring what it was they understood they were fighting over. Hello, Dr. Manning. Welcome and thanks for being here. Good morning. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

Much appreciated. Why don't we start with the institution itself? What was it like to be enslaved in the years especially leading up to the Civil War as fighting loomed? Pressure must have been growing more intense for those who were under enslavement. Yes, slavery is one of those funny institutions that consistently challenges our face that things get better over time automatically, because that's not what happened with U.S. slavery. And I think we have a tendency to think what slavery is this very simple thing. And so to say the Civil War was over slavery is an oversimplification. But in fact, slavery itself is a very complicated institution and a very complicated problem. However, to be held in bondage as an enslaved person was in some ways not very

complicated at all. It was to live one's life in a constant state of war. it was to live one's life constantly having your own person stolen from you. And as you point out, this was true for three and a half million people in the states of the Confederacy and half a million more in states that remained in the Union. There were 680,000 enslaved people in the first federal census in 1790. There were four million in 1860. So this was a growing institution. Yeah. And what it meant to be trapped in.

in that institution. We can talk about what that meant in a material level, and we can also talk about what that meant for one's social bonds. We're calling it an institution. It's also an industry. It's a phenomenal wealth-producing industry throughout the South. And it is so much a part of life. We have the luxury of speaking glibly about it. This has been going on for hundreds of years at this point. It is a fact of life that this underclass exists and they serve the upper class or however you want to call it. And this generational aspect of it, I think, is lost on a lot of people today, how psychologically that would affect people, never mind the threat of violence and all the rest of it that we see, you know, portrayed in movies and so forth. It's the psychological

and emotional aspect of life where it's just the understood thing that you are born into this and you will never be otherwise. It's an extraordinary sociological fact of the South at this time. Well, a couple of things that you said, I think, really need underscoring. And one is source of wealth for the United States, sure, but also for the entire United States. It is the single greatest source of wealth for the United States. And slavery is the reason why the United States becomes an economic powerhouse. There is no way to separate the United States rises in economic superpower from the

institution of slavery. I mean, I think of the great resources of wood and all the, you know, tremendous stuff that's coming out of the United States at that point. How is it that slavery would be that? Well, in a very basic way, the cash value. of enslaved people, that number is higher than the cash value of any other asset in the United States with the possible exception of land. And it depends on what land you're counting, whether that's true or not. The cash value of enslaved people is higher than every product

made, every other asset owned. So straight up cash value. That's one. Yes, really. Second, enslaved people are working in every possible imaginable industry from the docks to the iron producing works. They're working there. So they work in every potential industry, every industry you can think of. They're helping to power with their labor. But 75 percent of them, 75 percent of enslaved people between 1830 and 1860 are working as agricultural laborers. They're working as field hands. And most of those, the plurality, at least of those, are growing cotton. And cotton outstripped all other U.S. exports combined. So there is no way to pick apart any single U.S. industry and say that that one was somehow separate from enslavement.

All of them are dependent upon them. What I hope listeners will take away from this episode is a clearer understanding of what it was like in the everyday life for an everyday enslaved person. So let's talk about that for a minute. The stereotypical image, of course, comes from the Gone with the Winds and so forth with, you know, people walking around and sort of, doing their jobs. There are so many different versions of slavery at this time, right? I mean, the typical enslaver was not a plantation. It was somebody owns sort of one or two people, right? Right. One of the funny things about slavery is that the typical enslaver did not own the typical enslaved person. The typical enslaver, you're right, owned one or two or, you know, fewer than five

enslaved people. And so to be held in enslavement in that kind of condition is different than it is to be enslaved on a large plantation. The typical slave, in fact, was owned on a large plantation, just the numerical majority. So you're right, there are a wide variety of experiences, but there are some commonalities. One is certainly material hardship, and this we can tell from things like planters account books that in some regions enslaved people receive an adequate number of calories per day, but usually in a very monotonous diet. So various forms of poor nutrition, palagra, and things like that, are very common. So physical health is damaged by slavery. And we have a couple of measures that help us say, we're not just making this up. This is true. And one is average height. It's not like tall people are healthier than short people. But if you look across demography, higher average height translates to better nutrition and better health. And you can take any demographic group that you'd like in the Antebellum, United States. lowest average height is enslaved people. And the other thing we can look at is the crude death rate, which is highest for enslaved people of any other group. Life expectancies are shorter for enslaved people. So on that very physical day-to-day level, to be an enslaved person is to live without one's really most basic physical needs met. It is also to live under the constant control and subjection of another person who is, is exerting total control over you. There is no way to exert total control over somebody to

completely subject them to your will without using violence or the threat of violence. So the other aspect of being enslaved is to live constantly with either the experience or the threat of violence. Exactly. I mean, and that's the trauma of it. Never mind the direct violence, which obviously happened. It's the indirect violence, almost that must inform most of life in those days of that sense of threat and that sense of doom. It's a rock you can't get out from under. Obviously, you're not meant to get out from under that. I'm curious, was there a sense available at this time about free blacks in the South? How many existed into that? Does that exist at all or not? Yes, there are thriving free black communities in the South. It's harder and harder for there to be one from the 1830s onward as states begin to

pass laws requiring any manumitted slave. Anybody who leaves slavery is supposed to leave the state or be re-enslaved. And so it's becoming harder to be a free black person in the South. Nonetheless, there are thriving free black communities in the South. In any of the cities in particular, Baltimore, for example, has a thriving free black community as is Charleston and certainly as does Washington, D.C. And those free black communities also live in the constant threat of violence, the constant threat of kidnapping and re-enslavement. They also live under the threat of what will happen to their loved ones since many families, many free black families, cross over really into enslaved families as well. You know, you might have relatives who are both. So one's own family

is often under threat. What I would like to stress here is that those free black communities are a major culturally vibrant sources of resilience. These are communities that under daunting circumstances are building lives, our building families, are building institutions. are building community for each other. And so your point earlier about enslavement is this rock that you can't get out from under and you're not meant to. That's true. And yet people kept their spirit and yet people kept their will. And yet they kept the desire to resist and fight the institution.

And there were a number of sources of that inner strength. One of them, I think, is the free black community. Yeah, well, that's the fragility of the system. I mean, you have all sorts of factors at work in this dynamic. Obviously, as we approached the Civil War times in the 1850s for sure, there's an enormous amount of pressure coming from the abolitionist movement up north. But I guess that had found its way through the free black community and down south, too. How would they know what the possibilities were? And did they understand at all that this war and this political situation existed, that it was a firebox, that everything could change in the foreseeable future?

The original form of opposition to slavery, the first abolitionists are enslaved. people. Those are the people who, before anybody else, oppose this institution and do so with their lives and with their wills and their very bodies. And that is where opposition to slavery is first coming from, is the enslaved people and the free black community. So the notion that enslaved people just quietly put up with being enslaved or were somehow, you know, resigned to their fate, I think that's a story that enslavers wanted to believe, but it's not a story that accorded with actual enslaved people's experiences. And so, yeah, there was these violent uprisings that occur most, the one that really most terrified enslavers was actually the hasten revolution

way back in the 1790s. So there is always that specter of violent uprising. And sometimes I'm asked, well, why didn't that happen more often? If slavery was really so terrible, I would never have submitted. I would have just fought back. Well, one of the weapons that enslavers have is a threat not just of violence, but the threat to members of one's family, the threat of sale. And in fact, the ever-prisoned threat of sale as a mechanism of breaking up families is, I would argue one of the single most pertinent answers to your early question about what was it like to be enslaved. It's to live with the knowledge that anybody could tear your family up at any moment. That wasn't irregular. If we look just at the Upper South, just of Virginia, supposedly the more moderated version of

slavery. One out of every three marriages, enslaved marriages, was broken by sale. Now, could slaves legally marry? No, not in a way that was recognized by the state, but relationships that the enslaved and the enslavers themselves recognized. One out of three of those is broken up by sale. And if we look at children, one out of every two, 50 percent of every child in the Upper South, under the age of 15, had lost at least one parent to sail. So the ever-present threat of losing one's family helps explain a lot about why don't we see more uprisings. Because what happens? What are your chances in an uprising?

Where is all the power? Who has the firepower? Who has the power of local and national government on their side and slavers do? What we see instead, though, is an array of day-to-day forms of resistance to slavery. break a tool that slows down production, slow down your labor. Now, that one's risky because that one will probably result in the whipping, but it will be to you and not your family. You can develop your own faith, your own religious practice separate from that of the enslaver. And that cultivation of a very rich culture, I think, is something that we need to see as, in fact, a form of rejection of slavery. And that, I think, that is the beating heart. of where abolitionism comes from. Shifting a bit towards the political situation, it's really important. We've already mentioned the North benefited enormously from the industry of slavery.

I want to identify the moment, Chandra, when slavery becomes the point of the wedge. I mean, there are other issues involved here, of course, but the slavery really becomes the point of that sword that really divides and creates the civil war. there is such a chronology to this issue as the nation divides further and further over the idea of abolition. A couple major events that are really important and interesting when I was prepping for this. I was surprised at my own reaction. Louisiana Purchase of 1803. So celebrate it.

We take it for granted as this great milestone moment in American history, and of course it is. But an aspect of this really is amazing. I mean, it really begins the process of expanding enslavement. West, because we now have a West, eventually bringing on the Missouri compromise. So you can kind of look at the way that the whole issue is broken up into these eras. You know, Louisiana purchased to 1820 compromised. Next 20 years, abolition movement rises. There's bloody Kansas. More and more unrest. That eventually leads to what's called the crisis decade, which is 1850 to 1860. When did the balance tip in terms of it becoming about slavery? You're asking a really, really important

question, Don. At the time of the American Revolution, slavery has already been around for centuries, and so has opposition to it. But neither slavery itself nor opposition to it are confined to one region or the other. Slavery is in all of the 13 colonies that become the first states have slavery, as do all the colonies in the British Empire that do not become part of the United States. And there's opposition everywhere. So slavery is old, abolition is old, but it lining up as this sectional divide, you're very right to say that does not go back to the beginning. That gets created over time. And at the time of the Constitutional Convention, there's really quite widespread consensus that slavery is clearly not compatible with the Declaration of Independence, with the ideals on

which we have just told the world we abase our right to exist. And it also feels in 1787 like a problem. We really don't know how to solve yet. We're going to kick the can down the road. But it's almost everybody who wants that can kick down the road. It's almost everybody who assumes it's going to go away eventually. We just aren't sure how yet. And I think you're exactly right to point to the Louisiana purchase as the moment when the conviction that it'll go away and should go away eventually starts to waver because the Louisiana purchase does open up this wide swath of land where that most profitable of crops, cotton, can grow. So the incentive. to keep it once. I think it's important to say that land could have been used for other things, too.

The simple fact of the Louisiana purchase doesn't make the slave complex an inevitability. A series of decisions, conscious decisions, empower enslavers to take slavery west. But the Louisiana purchase does begin to chip away at the shared conviction that it ought to go away eventually. And particularly to chip away at that shared conviction in the states we think of as the south more than the north. If I'm a businessman who's, you know, growing cotton in the late 1700s and I'm thinking how am I going to expand my operation because what's happening is foreign markets are opening up. This vast industrialism is happening in England specifically, and they want more cotton. And the more I can give them, the more money I'm going to make.

But I only have so much land, you know, and that land starts to wear out because the modern practices of agriculture are bleeding it dry of nitrogen. So we're not getting such great props. anymore. When the Louisiana purchase comes along, that businessman is thinking expansion, fantastic. I get more land, cheap, just get more slaves. I'm okay. And that's really what's going on here. Right, exactly. And you're also right to point to this is always an international phenomenon, too. There is never a moment in which the United States is not tied into international markets. It is international before it's national. And that is particularly true for what become the slave states of the South, because what they're rowing are always world market.

facing commodity crops. They're food importers. They're not little farms feeding themselves. They're food importers and they're staple crop exporters. They're always tied in to these international markets. So industrialization, getting kicked off in Great Britain to create this even larger market per cotton. And then you're also right to point out to cotton exhausts soil at a rate of roughly 4% a year. And so if 4% of your soil is going out of cultivation every year, there is no model that works without expansion. And so the Louisiana purchases is critical. in that regard. But I don't think everyone in 1803 quite realized that it was a turning point just yet. And the reason why I don't think so is because you named the Missouri crisis as sort of the bookend of this era. And I would agree with you there. The Missouri crisis begins in 1819. And by that time, the state of Maine has been ready to come into the union. Everyone knows the state of Maine has split off from Massachusetts and is ready to come into the union. And that it's entrance into the union as Maine and not just. as part of Massachusetts, that should be a non-of-it. That should be unremarkable. But when has also

transpired is that this new territory, Missouri, in what came from the Louisiana purchase, that's also ready to come into the union. And as it does, a senator from New York, James Talmadge, he still thinks that this early consensus among all of us that slavery ought to go away eventually holds. He still thinks that's the case. There are parts of the Louisiana purchase where the slave population is large, that are heavily dependent. on slavery. But in 1819, Missouri is not one of them. Slavery is there that had come with the territory forever, but it's not as integral as it is in some other parts of the Louisiana purchase and the numbers are smaller. And so Talmadge actually thinks that, well, this, this is the easy way to do what we all

agree we need to do anyway, right? And that is to find a way to get rid of this institution eventually. So he proposes the Talmadge Amendment, which says that to come into the union as a state, Missouri will come in with slavery now, but gradual emancipation will be a condition of statehood. Nobody alive right now is going to ever be free, but children born after statehood will be freed when they hit adulthood. That's the basic trajectory that he is proposing. He thinks this is moderate. He thinks this ought to be quite consensus. There might be a few objectors, but by and large, he doesn't think he's throwing a firebomb into anything. As it turns out, he was. And so the entrance of Missouri is held up in Congress, and therefore so is the entrance of Maine as a retaliatory measure. And

Southern states threaten to leave the Union over it. And what do we get? We get the Missouri compromise, which draws this line across the Louisiana purchase. And slavery is not going to go above that line, but it also can't be messed with below that line. In a way, I just want to make this feel very current. What happens at the Missouri compromise over the discussion of slavery and states adjoining the Union, you can almost say the same thing is happening today. And the argument over gerrymandering between Texas and now California says, oh, will you do that? We'll do that. If you want to feel what it felt like at that time, different issues altogether, of course,

it's kind of the same thing. And that's the political picture we're trying to paint here of how this is now coming from this contained idea that slavery will eventually go away to now expansion allows for it to thrive as it's going to move west. suddenly this is becoming a way more hot-button issue politically in this country federally. Well, also sectionally, too, because that is the point, I think, at which the divisions over it start to line up over more geographical lines. Early on, at the time of the revolution, you're going to find as many opponents of slavery and what we now think of as the South as the North. And you're going to find slaves in the North as well as the South.

I really do think it is from Louisiana purchased through the Missouri Compromise. That's the moment at which what was a more geographic. diffuse issue becomes a geographically divisive issue. That's so interesting because we think of it as so much, you know, in the popular consciousness as abolition, as these, you know, determined souls who are going to break this terrible system down, but it's actually driven and you're saying dividing this country in that time frame when it becomes about the Missouri compromise. I'm not sure that there's a straight line from Missouri Compromise to Civil War because

there are other things that could happen in the middle. But I do think that in retrospect, that becomes a point at which what had once been a geographically diffuse issue becomes a geographically defined issue. One side is in the south and one side is in the north. It's energized on both sides. At that point, it becomes energized as an issue on both sides. On both sides. Although I would say probably more on the southern than the northern because northerners wanted to go away, white northerners, to be clear, wanted to go away. But if they were asked, to list the top five things you care about, it wouldn't make the list, not in 1820. In 1820, it's important to note that the Missouri Compromise is regarded as a great victory among pro-slavery thinkers in the South, that this is their great victory. They've gotten concessions here. This line went from, we all agree, it's not going anywhere to look, we're getting half

and we're getting the good half. And that coincides with the rise of a particular strain of thought that shows up in the South and far less in the Norris. And it's this strain of thought that would say that slavery is not just a necessary evil that we don't know what to do about, but it's actually a positive good. And so it's after the Missouri compromise that there's a clear rise in this distinct and on its own term sort of intellectually cohesive body of thought that would define slavery as a positive good, not something we're stuck with, but actually something that is a boon to civilization. It is a boon economically. It is a boon to the enslaved people themselves because it teaches them the ways of Christianity and civilization. It is a boon to non-slaveholding white people because it ensures white equality by guaranteeing that no matter what happens to you in your life, if you're a white person, you're not enslaved and therefore equal to every other white person. And the rise of this sort of pro-slavery thought. coincides with a series of religious revivals, the Second Great Awakening, that sweep both North and South and inspire sort of enthusiastic evangelical religion in both. But there are some differences in how northerners and Southerners both experience and apply this religious revival.

After the break, Chandra and I explore how the Second Great Awakening did so much to drive the North and South further apart, hastening civil war. Welcome back. One of the central forces dividing north and south over the issue of slavery was that of religion. The story really begins with what's called the Second Great Awakening. So let's start there. There's a lot of people who don't understand what Second Great Awakening means here. So the first Great Awakening really has to do with the Puritans runs in the 1700s. It's a period of time. It's always about revivalism. It's always about stirring the individual towards this religious awakening, literally. but it happens in a sort of more spiritual way in the first great awakening.

Second Great Awakening has a lot to do with the pressures of industrialization and what's happening in the United States as far as the secularism of society. There's a drawing away from religion and people going to church because people are starting to make money. It's the mercantile era. And these two periods of time really are gigantic chapters in the religious history of the United States, but it also has a lot to do with the Civil War. So the Second Great Awakening, take me through how that's affecting events.

Sure. The Second Great Awakening is a series of religious revivals that are responding to not so much industrialization yet because major industrialization comes much later, but certainly an expansion of a national market, a move away from a subsistence to a more commercial economy, not just in the coasts, but in most people's individual lives. That upsets old bonds of community. And one response to it is the series of religious revivals. that encourage people to sort of re-examine their own direct and personal relationship with God. And it ends up having quite different effects among many northerners compared to many Southerners. Among white Southerners, the Second Great Awakening really encourages introspection, looking inward, looking at one's own behavior and personal relationship to God. And in particular, it also encourages a return to Scripture, reading it in a new way, a literal, much more literal way. The idea of the Bible meaning exactly

what it says as opposed to being symbolic, that's new in the Second Great Awakening. And so a return to scripture and what it says about one's own heart and one's own behavior is really its big effect among white southerners. Now, if you do read that Bible literally, you'll notice that slavery is in it. And you'll also notice that Jesus never questions it. There's nowhere in the gospel. Jesus questioned slavery. And so to the devout white Southern believer who is really very sincere about their own return to the word of God, well, if Jesus doesn't question it, if God never questions it, who am I to question what must be somehow or other part of God's inscrutable will? And so this notion of slavery as part of God's social order, not just humans, but gods, takes root

among white Southern believers, never black Southern believers, to be clear. They are much more drawn to the book of Exodus, for example. Among white northern believers, something quite different happens. And that is the notion of perfectability, this notion that human beings are created in the image of God, and God is perfect. And that means human beings have the capacity to become perfect, to become more like God, but it takes reform to do it. We're not now. We need to reform ourselves and our society in order to get there. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That means fixing things here and now. And so you see this wave of reform movements in the north, the temperance movement, the women's right movement, and the abolitionist movement. Again, it's first movers and shakers are always enslaved people. But white people start turning to abolitionism.

to be very clear, not everybody, not the majority of them, but there is a clear growth in the number of white abolitionists as an outgrowth of the second great awakening. Now we've added religion into the slavery issue. We've made it geographical with Louisiana Purchase through the Missouri Compromise, but now there is an added dose of religion of morality. It's a lot harder to compromise, to see compromise as a good thing if what you think you're compromising over is as essential as the will and word of. I always feel it's important in this kind of conversation to remind people that the slavery that's spoken of in the Bible has nothing to do with the slavery system that was in the American South at the time. It was a lifelong process. You know, there was no escape from it. Whereas what is spoken of in the Bible is typically that kind of old school, if you will, ancient. You are 100%. No, you are exactly, exactly correct. The permanent, inherited, race-based slavery doesn't exist in world history until we get to the colonial Americas. It goes to. It goes. on in the Bible is much, much different. But if I am just a regular farmer's wife in North Carolina in 1843... You're finding reassurance in that, yeah. Exactly, exactly. I'm not validating the view, but I am trying to suggest that it was a sincere view. I completely understand where you're coming

from. We're talking, you know, in these various chapters in this conversation about an increasing division, obviously leading to the civil war. The divide that's in religion is so fascinating because you have these national religious movements, you know, prior to 1860 for sure. I mean, the Baptists are north and south. And brother against brother is the old adage with the soldiers. The same was true of the religious movements. Suddenly they had to divide and figure out what they were about based on these values that would support their lifestyles, you know, or their outlook on life and existence. In the three major Protestant denominations, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian do all split into northern and southern branches. In the way, wake of the Second Great Awakening and over this particular issue, over the issue of slavery.

And that's, no one at the time thought, well, this is the death knell. But that, I think, is an important moment because those churches, those are national institutions. That's something if I'm a Methodist in Maine and you're a Methodist in Georgia, that's something we have in common, that we don't anymore after the church is split. So the geographical spread of slavery is key. But religion really is a key part of this story, which isn't to say, that religion caused the civil war, but is to say that it is an ingredient that needs to be taken into account to understand how it is that this issue of slavery, which is old and has existed forever without people fighting each other, suddenly becomes something that they think they can't solve another way. And we can't forget the fact that, you know, when the South thinks of an abolition, if that's ever going to happen for them, it's anarchy. You know, the whole social order is turned upside down at that point.

What they have is what their society is based upon this certain order. You know, never mind the free labor. It's the fact that what's next? Women are going to want to vote. You know, the whole thing goes crazy. No, you're exactly right. And you're not important words in anyone's mouth either. The same Bible that has slavery in it, if I'm that same reader and.

North Carolina, well, that's also the Bible that tells me how society should be put together. That tells me what people's role in the family is, and that tells me what people's role in society is. And so if we start questioning one role, well, we've just thrown everything into questions. So abolitionism is more, if I am a typical white southern believer, abolitionism is talking about more than just freeing enslaved people. Abolitionism is talking about questioning the very foundation of social order. And then you're right. What do we have that? We have anarchy. And we would have anarchy in a place where 40% of the population had recently been enslaved. And I can say what I want about, you know, Christianity and slavery being good for

enslaved people. I know in my bones that being enslaved gives them a pretty good reason to be pretty angry at the other 60% of us. So there's a public safety. There's a genuine fear, a visceral fear, about what happens if this controlling mechanism, goes away. And I don't need to own slaves to be scared about that. In the North, there's an enormous amount of racism and hatred towards black people. I'm really curious what drives, if it's possible to talk about briefly, what drives the North towards this idea of the evil of slavery when so many of them felt so racist about things. A critical, critical question. And there's no way to understand the antebellum era or certainly

the coming of the war without asking it. To have growing doubts about the institution of slavery, is not at all to think black people are equal to white people. So it is every part of this conversation is underscored with the reminder that racism is endemic across the antebellum United States, not just in one region or another. And also that to question slavery is not to be calling for racial equality. Those pins need to stay in place. How then, though, do white northerners who, you know, kind of thought it was going to go away, didn't in 1820, not thrilled about it, but low on priority list, how does it rise up their priority list? And there's a pretty clear trajectory how that happened. And some of it has to do with reaction to growing white southern

aggressiveness, really, over slavery, defensive aggressiveness, I guess. As white southerners expect more and more federal support, promotion, involvement with slavery, white northerners start to get little concerned about what this means. So in the 1830s, after the Nat Turner uprising, when white lawmakers in southern states start passing state laws that do things like censor the mail. They say that you can't send anything to the mail that talks about slavery. When a gag rule in Congress, federal Congress, prohibits the very discussion of the topic on the floors of Congress, wait a minute, freedom of the mail, freedom of speech, that's supposed to be getting. guaranteed for everybody. If they're willing to, they're willing to trample on it over this institution of slavery,

huh? Now I'm starting to think maybe, maybe those slaveholding lawmakers need their wings trimmed a little bit. And so a series of things over the course of the 1840s and 1850s start to make white northerners concerned that the persistence of slavery doesn't just endanger and slave people. It actually puts white northern civil liberties at risk. The freedom of male, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Some abolitionist movements groups can't meet. They can't publish in the South. Well, I might not be an abolitionist, but if you can do that to them, maybe you can do that to me. And so the crackdown in the South starts to make white Northerners worried about their own civil rights. And we can't forget the power is in the North. I mean, the population is so much larger

in the North than down South. I mean, and then take away enslaved population. It's five million. versus I think 19 million or something like that up north. It's an enormous difference in terms of population. Population, yeah, but I'm going to push back on the notion that somehow the north is more powerful. The South actually exerts disproportionate power in the federal government all the way until the 1860s. Every three white southerners has the same boating clout as every 10 white northerners. You know, there's a sense of who are these people down south, you know?

And as soon as slavery starts to move and threaten to go west, it's all getting out of hand for that everyday person. And they're starting to think this is different. And I'm saying aside from the race aspect of it. Two other key moments when the disproportionate power of the South within the union is a piece of this puzzle. Because first of all, there's a threats to white civil liberties. But then second of all, it does feel a bit like a minority is controlling this government. And white northerners are right.

They are. White Southerners are overrepresented. They do control the presidency and the Supreme Court and most of the important congressional committees, such as ways and means. Yeah, and why was that? Because the census counted the enslaved people. That's how they had a high enough population to have, you know, more representation than they possibly deserved. So white people get extra, they get extra in Congress thanks to the existence of enslaved people plus the Senate favors. Two senators, no matter what your population is, ends up favoring smaller states that still happens today. So Southerners actually do wield more clout. And white northerners are beginning to notice this. They notice it as well. Westward expansion continues. And as they increasingly feel that white Southerners are winning in the expansion game, that slavery is getting more territory. And with every more territory

it gets, the more representation Southerners will get, the more power they will continue to exert the two-party system splits over this issue in the wake of the Mexican-American War when white Southerners succeed in overthrowing that Missouri compromise and opening all of territories up to the spread of slavery. Again, that feels to white northerners like we're losing out here. White Southerners use that power to pass a number of laws that dramatically expand the power of the federal government in support of slavery. And one of the most sort of emotionally resonant ones for the White Northern voter is the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. That act quite dramatically expands the power of the federal. government over individuals and over the states in support of slaveholders. And what it does is all the way back to the Constitution, the Constitution guarantees to slaveholders that if enslaved people run away, they're not free, they're still your slave. But the Constitution doesn't say how recapture should happen. It just doesn't say. The Act of 1850, however, expands a federal role in the process of the recapture of enslaved people and it makes direct demands of individual white northerners.

So it's, yeah, it absolutely does. It creates this whole new category of federal employee, a commissioner who prior to the act, if I'm an enslaved person and I run away and I'm recaptured, I can ask for a trial and say, no, no, I'm not, I'm not an enslaved person and that should go to a trial and a judge and maybe a jury will decide am I enslaved or not. But the act of 1850 gets rid of that right to a trial and replaces it with this commissioner. And this commissioner is a federal employee who will be paid to determine if I am, in fact, an enslaved person to be recaptured or not. This employee will be paid $5 if he decides no and $10 if he decides yes. So there's a clear, there's a clear incentive. Moreover, northern states are required to help in the process of recapture.

And so are individual northern citizens. If I know that there's, you know, that there's a clear incentive. And I know that there is an enslaved person in my city, I am required to help recapture them. Now, this feels like a tremendous overreach among white northerners into their own civil liberties. And so a number of northern legislatures respond with what they call personal liberty laws. So state laws are passed that say, we can't do anything about slavery in your state, but in my state, we don't use state resources. You're not using our jails. And you can't make my citizens do what they don't want to do. And these laws are passed. They're state laws. So using state rights to actually oppose the actions of slaveholders causes an outcry, I mean an outcry among

white southerners. They howl in protest. Meanwhile, a series of dramatic cases actually happen. Inslaved people who do run, who are recaptured, white northerners try to stop the recapture. And sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don't, but they've become very dramatic incidents and they're part of what inspire the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is a novel by Harriet Beatrice or Stowe. And if you sit down and read it today, first of all, there are tons of racial stereotypes and you sort of have to try and understand its importance in spite of those. This book sold 300,000 copies to put that into perspective. The only thing that's sold more than that in the entomel of United States is the Bible.

You've heard of Thoreau, for example. He might sell 2,000 copies. She's selling 300,000. So this is a publishing sensation. People are reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is about the plight of enslaved people and involves trying to evade slave catchers. And really, for the first time, white people are sympathizing with a black character over a white character.

It gets made into plays. and the play is performed all over the place. And so you have white audiences in northern cities, and cities were far, far more hostile to abolitionism by and large than smaller areas were. So you have northern cities where white people in the audience cheering for a black character over a white character. That's a sensation.

That's an event. And it's another piece, I think, to how he gets to this moment where white northerners who are not by and large, you know, rabid abolitionists, They're not that inclined to put their own live and limb on the line for an enslaved person. But it does get them to the point where slavery feels like a threat not just to enslaved people, but it feels like a threat to this union. And it feels like a threat to me, a white northern person.

Because now you're telling me that I have to go help with this recapture. When did the state's rights argument become so prominent? I mean, it's certainly the lost cause takes up. as the primary reason for all of the Civil War later on. I'm talking about the 20th century. Was that discussed in such terms back then, in terms of like this is a state versus a federal crisis? Now, the interesting thing about the state rights explanation of the war is that it's actually a post-war phenomenon, not an antebellum phenomenon. And if you go through antebellum newspapers from the states that will form the Confederacy, it's quite rare for them actually to talk about state rights.

it is much more common for them to talk about southern rights. And they mean a collective southern thing and they mean the federal promotion and protection of slavery. If you want to find state rights in action and the antebellum era, you really do have to look to the northern states. You have to look to Wisconsin. You have to look to Vermont. You have to look to the places that are passing these personal liberty laws. That isn't what Southern lawholders are calling for in 1860. And there's, you know, there's no real reason why you would expect them to. I was raised, you know, schooled in the 60s and 70s. I was raised with that, you know, in the town I grew up in New Jersey, which incidentally was the last northern state to free, you know.

1803, yep. I mean, they're the last ones. And in that state, in the southern part of it, I was schooled and I remember state's rights in 1972 being taught to me as a big reason, if not the reason, why the Civil War was fought. I mean, there was a revisionism all the way through the 20th century that has unfortunately been muscled out of it. After the break, we'll jump to the Civil War itself and ask, what did soldiers on each side believe they were truly fighting for? We've seen how slavery divided the nation, geographically, religiously, socially, becoming an existential threat to both North and South.

Now let's move into the war itself and ask what soldiers in combat believed they were fighting for and dying for. You have, I mentioned in your opening your celebrated book, what this cruel war was over. Focuses on the letters that were written by Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers back home. So it takes a look at both. Let's start with the Confederate soldiers, how they express their feelings. I'm very curious how the average soldier goes out to battle, you know, fighting for this war to preserve this way of life. How much were they expressing feelings themselves in these letters that you use about slavery?

Were they as convinced as we think they were? Well, you know, Confederate soldiers were one of my biggest surprises when I wrote the book that you mentioned, what this cruel war was over, which examines what soldiers thought was going on in the war. And I began that book pretty confident that Confederate soldiers were not going to talk about slavery. I knew from the leaders' perspective that the reasons for taking the states out of the union boiled down to slavery. They tell us that in their declaration of causes. They tell us that in their secession conventions. The leaders are very clear that the reason why these states are leaving the Union is because an anti-slavery president was elected, because abolitionism is growing in the

North, and because northern states are not enforcing the fugitive slave law. They don't mince words. I knew that. But I didn't think, I didn't think, that those official explanations would really resonate with or even appear among most regular enlisted Confederate soldiers. Since, you know, two out of every three families didn't own enslaved people, I thought I would find a very different set of reasons among Confederate soldiers, and I was interested in those reasons. I was interested in how they thought of this new thing called the Confederacy, and I was interested in particularly what they thought connected this new thing to their own home. And that's what I really wanted them to talk about when I headed to the archives to read letters by enlisted soldiers, Union,

and Confederate. And they just surprised me because they weren't talking about what I wanted them to talk about. They definitely were not talking about things like state rights. And they weren't really talking about this thing called the Confederacy. I wanted them to say something like, I see this flag and I think of my farm or my home or my family. And they were not cooperating. And it was driving me nuts. I really wanted them to. And finally, it dawned on me. But wait, they're saying what you didn't think they would say. So why is that? Because they were. They were explaining an individual enlists for any number of reasons. Three million people, three million reasons to enlist. But they were quite consistent in their understanding. of how we got in this fix in the first place. How did this war happen to begin with? And they were consistent in their understanding that we got to this fix because the North threatens slavery. And that is an existential threat to me and my loved ones, even if I don't own slaves.

And you saw that written about in so many words. I did. Yeah. I would think it was about these Yankees coming down. How dare they think that, you know, that sort of old-fashioned view of somebody's coming on your turf. if I'm going to take care of this place. That's how I saw it, would imagine them talking.

But you're saying they were very, they're expressing a more political, more sociological idea in these letters. I would call it a visceral idea. I would call it a visceral idea. The visceral idea was that a threat to this institution is a threat to social order. It is a threat to my loved ones. It is a threat to God's will. It is these Yankees who think they know better than God. We're going to invite the wrath of God. We can't have that. It is often extremely visceral. It is often extremely visceral around issues of race and gender. Over and over, one of the things that I see is the utter conviction that abolitionism has to be stopped or there will be widespread rape and killing of white women by black men over and over and over again. I'll even put some names on that. So this feels like real people to listeners. That's what it's it for me. Because I, because I, because I,

emphasize. This isn't what I thought I was going to find. I took some real convincing on this point. But I'm thinking in particular of this woman named Melinda Street. And she's in Texas and it's 1862 and she's about to give birth and she's terrified. She shouldn't be. Childbirth is the number one killer of women in the 19th century. She's on her own. She's in Texas. She really wants her husband John to come home, you know, marching off to wars to make you a big man. Well, I'll tell you what a man does. A man looks after his family. So, you know, come get back here. And he writes back to her that, uh, He can't. If we were to lie supine and allow ourselves to be ravaged by the abolitionists, he really sees his duty to her, to their unborn child, to the whole society, is to stop this force

that he sure is going to get unleashed on white southern women. I mentioned before the psychology of enslavement, you know, going back generations and centuries, really. I mean, the same is true of the South in terms of their view of their lives. You know, they're stuck in this incredibly insane situation where they think the only way that human society can exist is if you enslave this whole bunch of us. You take that away and everything's going to go haywire. I think it's a very human way to think that the way it is is the only way it could be. I haven't seen it any other way. How can I imagine it any other way? And if I believe what I'm reading about the anarchy in northern cities, for example, or the anarchy of free love, are there these women who want to vote.

If I believe that, if I believe that that is the logical outcome of getting rid of slavery, then I would have a visceral fear of what this, of everything I know and love being under threat. Shonda, tell me you read one Confederate soldier who expressed doubt that this was the right fight to fight. particularly coming into the as it gets as it looks more and more hopeless. One guy that I'm thinking of in particular, his name is Grant Taylor from Alabama. It's the spring of 1865 or maybe it's late 1864, but he's heard rumors that maybe the Confederacy might have to arm black men because they're running out of white soldiers. And that for him is just a no-go. and he has this wonderful letter where he tells his wife, well, the big bugs told us that, I won't get it exactly right, but he definitely says big bugs. And the big bugs told us that we had

to fight this war to save slavery, but if we armed slaves, we've lost it anyway. So in that case, let me go home. And those big bugs can take it. So there's that. But even earlier, what you do see even earlier, is not so much a questioning about the rightness of the fight, but rather of the unevenness of the sacrifice. There is a sense among some non-sleeholders in particular that they are being pressed into service to fight for an institution that they don't want to go away, but they also know they don't benefit from proportionately. And so there's a North Carolina guy whose name is escaping me, but he's a very vivid letter that he writes in which he pretty much says, like, I believe you when you tell me that all of us depend on slavery and I'll fight for it for that

reason, but don't you tell me while you snooze on your feather pillow, Mr. Longinger, that this is one fair or two good for me. So there's definitely a sense that we might need this fight, but it's not being fought fairly and its sacrifices aren't being shared. Yeah, watch out for class consciousness coming right down the pike here. On the other side of it, I think it must be pretty obvious. These northern soldiers have churches, you know, given them, you know, blessing them, the government. They were, they were. They were. fighting for the union, they're preserving the union, all of this must come through their letters. Absolutely. They enlist. No, I would not say that in 1861, when war breaks out, they all dawn

blue to go free the slaves. That is not exactly what happened. What does happen, though, is it in 1861, the union is threatened. This experiment in self-government, started by the founders, is threatened, and it's threatened by people who say they're threatening it in order to preserve slavery. So at first, there's this outrage that you, who are these people who would endanger the best government on God's footstool? That phrase comes up all the time. And so we have to save it. We have to show the world that self-government can work. If we don't, the world will never, ever try it again. That's the strongest emotion by far in 1861. And so it's been quite fashionable for that reason to say, so they're fighting for the union and not about slavery. But the thing is that they're not stupid.

They understand that the reason why this union is imperiled is the issue of slavery. So whether they care about the welfare of slaves or not, they don't want the union in peril. And so they want to get rid of what's imperiling the union. And that's their initial. Like get rid of the catalyst, get rid of the cause. We're going to fight this thing all over again. One soldier uses this great, great analogy of a vigorously growing plant. If you just keep deadheading it, it's just going to come back.

we have to rip it up by the roots. And that's absolutely how they start. Get rid of the cause or else we're going to fight this thing again. But then they see slavery. They see it. And it goes from being this abstraction or something in Mrs. Stowe's book to something they're brought face to face with. And enslaved people, they're brought face to face with.

And for some of them, that simply reinforces their preexisting racism. And people who've spent their entire lives in enslavement don't have the same education level. They don't have the same education level. don't have the same, you know, material conditions. So some just have their own prejudices confirmed when they say enslaved people, but many don't. Many respond to the clear wrong and to the clear harm that enslavement does and talk about how it really is worse than they thought. And it's an evil. And they use that word. It isn't evil. And we don't win a war without God on our side. And God's not going to bless an evil. And so again, there's never a moment where it's all.

about freeing slaves and never about something else. It's always about saving this experiment, this union. But there's a very clear connection in most Union's minds between saving that union and the only way you can do it is to get rid of this precipitating cause and this moral stain that is going to prevent God from giving us victory until we do something about it. All of what we're talking about took a lot longer than the 60 years, but these three eras really act as a structure to see. how slavery moves through this, this institution, the examination of it, the pain of it, primarily one party, but it's all over the place nationally, but it really is the primary

divisive wedge issue that creates this war. Professor Chandra Manning teaches history at Georgetown University in D.C. She is the author of the book we've been talking about in which I highly recommend what this cruel war was over. Soldiers, slavery, and the Civil War published back in 2007 still lives with us. Another book she's written, Troubled Refuge, struggling for Freedom in the Civil War, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals. It was great to talk with you, Shandra. I really appreciate this. This is great. It's been a delight. Thank you so much, Don. I've really enjoyed it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.