Hello! I am new to this sub. I find history really interesting, but feel like sometimes the intriguing aspects of history get lost in the education and academic system.
I have heard for a few years now that there was more to the American civil war (Union vs Confederacy) than just pro-slavery vs pro-abolition. When I try and look this up on google, I tend to find links that say "No, ____is wrong, slavery was in fact the only major issue" or I just find vague few sentence responses on an opinion article that state that agricultural commodities and manufacturing was also a major influence. I figured this would be the perfect sub to do so. I'm not a scholar in this area and would really like to learn more about behind-the-scenes that lead to the outbreak of the American Civil War and if it, in fact, true that there is more to the ACW than just slavery itself.
Thank you!
This is exactly the sub for this kind of thing. Welcome. :)
Slavery was, in fact, the issue. Unless we read the other things often cited superficially, to the point of basically not reading them at all, they are all directly and clearly concerning slavery. (They also tend to evaporate, when not simply invented whole cloth by latter-day apologists, the moment slavery isn't at issue.) Nor does the history of sectional tension support any other thesis nearly so completely or convincingly. In the end, you still end up with a division of the slave states and the free states. If the matter under contention was not slavery, then that alignment is wildly improbable. Neither the free nor slave states are so uniform that you would expect it them to line up so consistently otherwise.
Note, however, that while the cause of the Confederacy is slavery's preservation and advance, it's not necessarily so that this motivated a majority (or even close to one) of Americans committed to ending the slaveholder's insurrection. As is usually the case in the nineteenth century, the South has considerably more sectional cohesion around proslavery politics than the North does around antislavery.
That said, this is my area study. I wrote a brief summary of past posts on the subject a few days back which I'll rerun here:
The short version is that there are two sovereign rights of the states which the slave states where keen on: 1) The absolute right to hold slaves in perpetuity themselves. 2) The right to suppress any antislavery movements or legislation that come out of the free states, generally through the force of the federal government. I've written about this from a few different angles before, so I'll take this chance to offer up my stuff as a companion to Zhukov's mega-post.
This is a high-level consideration of what state's rights theoretically means and the South's track record with it.
This discusses state's rights rhetoric during the Nullification Crisis, which is often cited as a case of "pure" state's rights unconnected with slavery despite being driven entirely by slavery. More on Nullification here.
This looks at the Confederate Constitution from a state's rights perspective, finding that in the ultimate moment the white Sough forged for itself an ironcland commitment to coercing slavery into states and territories should the need ever arise.
This has the usual quotations from the secessionists themselves on their motives.
My podcast episode also involves this heavily, albeit for a prior sectional clash. (The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.) The forthcoming second part connects the wrangling described therein more explicitly with Secession Winter.
And I would be remiss not to further point you to /u/georgy_k_zhukov 's justly classic post on the subject. We also have a FAQ section on it.
My study covers the whole antebellum, right back to the constitutional convention. I'm very happy to share more and go deep if you'd like.