CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ
Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your
interpretation of the documents and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High scores
will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside
knowledge of the period.
1. In 1913 historian James Ford Rhodes asserted that the American Civil War can be attributed to a “single
cause, slavery.” Assess the validity of his interpretation. What caused the Civil War?
Use the documents and your knowledge of the period from 1830 to 1861 to answer the question.
DOCUMENT A
Source: South Carolina Threatens Secession, Daily National Intelligencer, December 7, 1832
The separation of South Carolina would inevitably produce a general dissolution of the Union, and, as a
necessary consequence, the protecting system, with all its pecuniary bounties to the Northern states, and its
pecuniary burdens upon the Southern states, would be utterly overthrown and demolished, involving the
ruin of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the manufacturing states….
With them, it is a question merely of pecuniary interest, connected with no shadow of right, and involving
no principle of liberty. With us, it is a question involving our most sacred rights—those very rights which
our common ancestors left to us as a common inheritance, purchased by their common toils, and
consecrated by their blood. It is a question of liberty on the one hand, and slavery on the other.
If we submit to this system of unconstitutional oppression, we shall voluntarily sink into slavery, and
transmit the ignominious inheritance to our children.
DOCUMENT B
Source: Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia, speech on the House floor, December 13, 1849
I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God,
that if by your legislation you [Northerners] seek to drive us from the territories of California and New
Mexico, purchased by common blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this
District [of Columbia], thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the states of this
Confederacy, I am for disunion. And if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my
convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation.
DOCUMENT C
DOCUMENT D
Source: John C. Calhoun, last speech in the Senate, read on March 4, 1850
I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented
by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion….
To this question there can be but one answer,--that the immediate cause is the almost universal discontent
which pervades all the States composing the Southern section of the Union…. What has caused this widely
diffused and almost universal discontent?…
One of the causes is, undoubtedly, to be traced to the long-continued agitation of the slave question on the
part of the North, and the many aggressions which they have made on the rights of the South during the
time…
There is another lying back of it—with which this is intimately connected—that may be regarded as the
great and primary cause. This is to be found in the fact that the equilibrium between the two sections, in
the Government as it stood when the constitution was ratified and the Government put in action, has been
destroyed. At that time there was nearly a perfect equilibrium between the two, which afforded a means of
each to protect itself against the aggression of the other; but as it now stands, one section has the exclusive
power of controlling the Government, which leaves the other without any adequate means of protecting
itself against its encroachment and oppression…
DOCUMENT E
Source: Daniel Webster, speech in the Senate, March 7, 1850
Then, Sir, there are the Abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have
very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years
have produced nothing good or valuable…. I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of
these societies, but I am not blind to the consequences of their proceedings. I cannot but see what mischiefs
their interference with the South has produced…. These Abolition societies commenced their course of
action in 1835. It is said, I do not know how true it may be, that they sent incendiary publications into the
slave States; at any rate, they attempted to arouse, and did arouse, a very strong feeling; in other words,
they created great agitation in the North against Southern slavery….
Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The
dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion!… There can be no such thing as peaceable
secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility.
DOCUMENT F
Source: Theodor Kauffman, Effects of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850
DOCUMENT G
Source: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852
Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his
greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion. But like some ferocious
beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to
immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.
“Well, here’s a pious dog, at least, let down among us sinners!—a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to
us sinners about our sins! Powerful holy crittur, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so
pious—didn’t you never hear, out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey your masters’? An’t I yer master? Didn’t I
pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine,
now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; “tell me!”
In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and
triumph through Tom’s soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while the
tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed,
“No! no! no! my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and
paid for by One that is able to keep it. No matter, no matter, you can’t harm me!”
“I can’t!” said Legree, with a sneer; “we’ll see—we’ll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a
breakin’ in as he won’t get over this month!”
The two gigantic Negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish exultation in their faces, might have
formed no unapt personification of powers and darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension,
and all rose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from the place.
DOCUMENT H
Source: Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” May 19-20, 1856.
With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina [Butler], who, omnipresent in this debate,
overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a state; and with
incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then
upon her people….
But the Senator touches nothing that he does not disfigure—with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes
of fact…
Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day
of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose—I do not say how
little; but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against
oppression, and in the development of a new science of emigration. Already in Lawrence alone there are
newspapers and schools, including a high school, and throughout this infant territory there is more mature
scholarship far, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Senator that
Kansas, welcomed as a free state, will be a “ministering angel” to the Republic when South Carolina, in the
cloak of darkness which she hugs, “lies howling.”
DOCUMENT I
Source: John L. Magee, “Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler,” 1856
DOCUMENT J
Source: Roger B. Taney, majority decision, Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857
Now … the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to
traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the
United States, in every state that might desire it, for twenty years. And the government in express terms is
pledged to protect it in all future time, if the slave escapes from his owner. This is done in plain
words—too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives
Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection, than
property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of
guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.
Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the Court that the Act of Congress [Missouri Compromise]
which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United
States north of the line [of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude] therein mentioned is not warranted by the
Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his family, were made
free by being carried into this territory; even if they had been carried there by the owner with the intention
of becoming a permanent resident….
Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this Court that it appears by the record before us that the
plaintiff in error [Dred Scott] is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the
Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States for that reason had no jurisdiction in the case,
and could give no judgment in it.
DOCUMENT K
Source: Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided,” delivered at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident
promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to
be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall
rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall
became alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.
DOCUMENT L
Source: James Henry Hammond, speech, March 4, 1858
Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. Every time she has drawn her
sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister
colonies and sister States, who have ever since plundered and calumniated….
No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king….
But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions.
This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and an extent of political freedom,
combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth…. The
South, so far as that is concerned, is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous, but demands to be let alone.
In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a
class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such
a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and
refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government…. Fortunately for the
South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently
qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use
them for our purpose, and call them slaves….
In short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially
slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no
starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either.
Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most
painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in
any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not
think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior
race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in
which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe
can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable,
from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own
race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel
galled by their degradation….
DOCUMENT M
Source: Stephen Douglas, speech delivered at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1858
Thus Mr. Lincoln invites, by his proposition, a war of sections, a war between Illinois and Kentucky, a war
between the free States and the slave States, a war between the North and the South, for the purpose of
exterminating slavery in every Southern State, or planting it in every Northern State….
The difference between Mr. Lincoln and myself upon this point is, that he goes for a combination of the
Northern States, or the organization of a sectional political party in the free States to make war on the
domestic institutions of the Southern States, and to prosecute that war until they shall all be subdued, and
made to conform to such rules as the North shall dictate to them…. I am opposed to that whole system of
sectional agitation, which can produce nothing but strife, but discord, but hostility, and, finally, disunion….
There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished, and that is by leaving a State, according to
the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own
way…. But the moment the Abolition Societies were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent
crusade against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily caused a counter-combination
in the South, and a sectional line was drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation….
Mr. Lincoln is alarmed for fear that, under the Dred Scott decision, slavery will go into all the Territories of
the United States. All I have to say is that, with or without that decision, slavery will go just where the
people want it, and not one inch further. You have had experience upon the subject in the case of
Kansas…. Thus you see that under the principle of popular sovereignty, slavery has been kept out of
Kansas, notwithstanding the fact that for the first three years they had a Legislature in that Territory
favorable to it. I tell you, my friends, it is impossible under our institutions to force slavery on an unwilling
people….
Hence, if the people of a Territory want slavery, they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the
necessary police regulations, patrol laws and slave code; if they do not want it they will withhold that
legislation, and by withholding it, slavery is as dead as if it was prohibited by a congressional prohibition,
especially if, in addition, their legislation is unfriendly, as it would be if they were opposed to it.
DOCUMENT N
Source: Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860
You [Southerners] charge that we [Republicans] stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and
what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!!
John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry
enterprise….
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still
insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it….
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican Party was organized.
What induced the Southampton [Nat Turner’s] insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three
times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the
conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the
United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible….
John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up
a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves,
with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough that it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy,
corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An
enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to
liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.
DOCUMENT O
Source: Charleston Mercury, September 18, 1860
The leaders and oracles of the most powerful party in the United States [Republicans] have denounced us
as tyrants and unprincipled heathens, through the civilized world. They have preached it from their pulpits.
They have declared it in the halls of Congress and in their newspapers. In their schoolhouses they have
taught their children … to look upon the slaveholder as the special disciple of the devil himself. They have
published books and pamphlets in which the institution of slavery is held up to the world as a blot and a
stain upon the escutcheon of America’s honor as a nation.
They have established abolition societies among them for the purpose of raising funds—first to send troops
to Kansas to cut the throats of all the slaveholders there, and now send emissaries among us to incite our
slaves to rebellion against the authority of their masters, and thereby endangering the lives of our people
and the destruction of our property.
They have brought forth an open and avowed enemy to the most cherished and important institution of the
South, as candidate for election to the Chief Magistracy of this government—the very basis of whose
political principles is an uncompromising hostility to the institution of slavery under all circumstances.
They have virtually repealed the Fugitive Slave Law, and declare their determination not to abide by the
decision of the Supreme Court guaranteeing to us the right to claim our property wherever found in the
United States.
And, in every conceivable way, the whole Northern people, as a mass, have shown a most implacable
hostility to us and our most sacred rights; and this, too, without the slightest provocation on the part of the
South….
Then why should we any longer submit to the galling yoke of our tyrant brother—the usurping,
domineering, abolition North!…
All admit that an ultimate dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and we believe the crisis is not far off.
Then let it come now; the better for the South that it should be today; she cannot afford to wait.
DOCUMENT P
Source: Alexander Stephenson, Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone
rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the
superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of
the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…. All fanaticism springs from an
aberration of the mind—from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking
characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous
premises: so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume
that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white
man….
DOCUMENT Q
Source: S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama, letter to Governor Magoffin of Kentucky, December 27,
1860
I have the honor of placing in your hands herewith, a Commission from the Governor of the State of
Alabama, accrediting me as a Commissioner from that State to the sovereign State of Kentucky, to consult
in reference to the momentous issues now pending between the Northern and Southern States of this
Confederacy….
I therefore submit, for the consideration of Your Excellency, the following propositions, which I hope will
command your assent and approval:
1. The people are the source of all political power; and the primary object of all good Governments is to
protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and whenever any form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the inalienable right, and the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.
2. The equality of all the States of this Confederacy, as well as the equality of rights of all the citizens of
the respective States under the Federal Constitution, is a fundamental principle in the scheme of the Federal
Government. The Union of these States under the Constitution, was formed "to establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to her citizens and their posterity;" and when it is perverted to the destruction of the
equality of the States, or substantially fails to accomplish these ends, it fails to achieve the purposes of its
creation, and ought to be dissolved.
4. … African slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but
forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their
property, worth according to recent estimates, not less than $4,000,000,000; forming, in fact, the basis upon
which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world
with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their
operatives with bread. It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South, that the
Northern States and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war for the last quarter of a
century. An institution with which is bound up, not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people,
but their very existence as a political community. This war has been waged in every way that human
ingenuity, urged on by fanaticism, could suggest….
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern
States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and
Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States….
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own
declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern
sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as
the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making
war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of
that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and
acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality
of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white
and black….
But in the South, where in many places the African race largely predominates, and as a consequence the
two races would be continually pressing together, amalgamation or the extermination of the one or the
other would be inevitable. Can Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God forbid that they
should.
DOCUMENT R
Source: A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of
Mississippi from the Federal Union, January 9, 1861
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the
world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of
commerce of the earth…. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a
blow at commerce and civilization…. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of
abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin….
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution,…
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within
its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot….
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our
midst.
It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a
better….
It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply
flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives….
It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.
It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and
to destroy our social system….
It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and
destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of
choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four
billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every
other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.