Civil War
Road to the Civil War: Why fight?
• Compromise--division of powers, senate vs. house of
republicans, etc. is built into the Constitution.
• Encourages differences of opinion into the political
arena and it has largely been a success.
• How does this work with slavery as time goes on and
what went wrong?
• The Constitution and politicians wrestled with
the slavery question for decades prior to the
Civil War.
– 3/5ths Compromise-count each slave as 3/5ths of
a person for determining representation.
– End of slave trade in 1810- made some think
further compromise was not necessary, expected
system of slavery to end on its own.
– As new states were admitted the question of slave
or free became an issue
• 1820 Missouri Compromise
– In 1819, there were 11 slave states and 11 free
states
– Missouri admitted as slave state balanced by
Maine as a free state.
– Established precedent of states being admitted in
pairs
– By 1850 15 free states and 15 slave states
Further compromise
• Controversy of land acquired when land was
ceded from Mexico because much of this land
was suitable for cotton.
• Compromise of 1850 and Kansas –Nebraska
Act of 1854
– California admitted as free state
– Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska organized as
territories with question of slave vs free to be
decided at statehood.
• Violence in Kansas over question
What Changes?
• Abolitionist movement in North gains strength
– Recent immigrants do not feel strongly about
slavery either for or against
– Farmers in Northwest concerned about
competition from slave agriculture, no longer
identify with southern planters
• No evidence that this concern was justified
Election of 1860
• Abraham Lincoln is the Republican Candidate
– Platform is to limit slavery to existing slave states
• Democratic Party splits
– Stephen Douglas is the northern Democratic
Party Candidate
– John Breckinridge is the Southern Democratic
Party Candidate
• John Bell is Constitutional Union Party
Candidates
Results of Election of 1860
Presidential Election 1860. Red shows states
won by Lincoln, green by Breckinridge, orange
by Bell, and blue by Douglas
After Lincoln election, southern states succeed from the Union
The end of slavery the one big issue where the
U.S. constitution failed.
• Capital Value of Slaves in 1860 was $2.7 Billion.
– Clearly, the end of slavery would have a profound and significant
effect on the average white southerner’s welfare.
• Southerners were not going to agree to any system of
voluntary emancipation that did not compensate them
for the value of their slaves.
• Northerners would have had to impose very large tax
increases to pay for voluntary emancipation.
• Abolitionist movement in the North was strongly
committed to the end of slavery
– Most committed to equal rights
• Average Northerner was not strongly committed to the end of
slavery and was not committed to equal rights
• In the period prior to the Civil War,
abolitionists mounted a public relations
campaign against slavery.
– Similar to the anti-smoking campaign going
on today.
– They argued that “the end justifies the
means.”
– Not clear anyone anticipated the high cost
• Civil War Lasts from 1861-1865
• In spite of the much larger population and
industrial capacity of the North, the South
dominates at the beginning of the War
How Many People Died in Civil War?
Total Deaths
Total Deaths Battle Deaths
Civil War (Union)
364,511
140,414
Civil War (Confederacy)
258,000
Spanish American War
2,446
385
WWI
116,516
53,402
WW2
405,399
291,557
Korean Conflict
54,246
33,629
Vietnam (American)
56,886
46,498
Vietnam (North Vietnamese)
660,000
Vietnames (South Vietnamese)
220,357
6-Day War (Israel)
1,000
6-Day War (Egypt, Jordan,
Syria)
18,000
Other Deaths
224,097
2,061
63,114
113,842
20,617
10,388
Wounds Not Mortal
281,881
199,515
1,662
204,002
640,846
103,284
153,000
If you were a draft age male what were your chances
of being killed or wounded?
Deaths and Wounds as a Percent of Male Population
Civil War
Spanish American War
WWI
WW2
Korean Conflict
Vietnam (U. S.)
Vietnam (Vietnamese)
6-Day War (Israel)
6-Day War (Egypt, Jordan,
Syria)
Percent of Male
15-24 Population
Killed or
Percent of Male Wounded (17%
Population Killed
of population
Population
or Wounded
male, 15-24)
31,443,321
7.02%
41.30%
50,000,000
0.02%
0.10%
92,228,496
0.70%
4.09%
132,164,569
1.58%
9.31%
151,325,798
0.21%
1.22%
203,302,031
0.21%
1.21%
39,463,910
4.46%
26.24%
2,746,898
0.07%
0.43%
38,662,000
0.09%
0.55%
Monetary Cost of Civil War
• Estimated cost of the Civil War was $6.6 billion dollars.
– About half of this government expenditure.
– The rest includes loss of physical capital, loss of life
• Total cost of $206 for each American in 1861 or almost twice
the amount consumed by the average American in 1860, i.e. 2
years wages.
– $6.6 billion was enough to buy the freedom of all the
slaves at market prices, provide them with 40 acres and a
mule, and still leave $3.5 billion to pay for reparations to
blacks for the lost pay under slavery.
The Great Tragedy of the Civil War.
• Why was the Civil War so costly to fight—both in lives and
material?
– Motivation.
– Balance of Forces.
– Technology and Tactics.
Explaining the Lethality of Civil War.
• 2 Factors led the Civil War to be very lethal.
– Evenly matched opponents-same culture, tactics, weapons, etc.
• Balance of forces-equally divide country, same culture, tactics,
technology and will to fight-leads to long and bloody conflict.
• Tactics.
– Generals trained at the same military academies.
– Many of them knew each other personally.
More Technology
– Improvements in Logistics
• Railroads and canal system allowed the
concentration of large groups of armed men in the
field for extended periods of time.
• Telegraph
– Changes in the technology of warfare.
• increased rate of fire of rifles
• Artillery
Technology and Tactics
• The Civil War was a case where the
technology of warfare had advanced while the
tactics employed by generals had not
adjusted.
• The result was a very high level of lethality.
The Conundrum of the Civil War.—Why did
Northerners fight CW?
• Main Beneficiary of Slavery White Northern consumers.
– Why the second half of Fogel’s Without Consent or
Contract (The Ideological and Political Battle Against
Slavery) is about the battle to end slavery.
• Slavery the low cost method of producing cotton.
• Consumers who bought cotton textiles enjoyed the
benefits of slavery in terms of lower cotton prices.
“The Great Moral Crusade.”
• Northerners subjected themselves to huge cost to
end slavery which did not directly benefit them.
• Moral explanations of the end of slavery.
Fogel concludes that whites were not pursuing their
narrowly defined self interest (money income) in
ending slavery but instead were motivated mainly by
moral factors.
– Why half of his book, Without Consent or
Contract, is entitled “The Ideological and
Political Campaign Against Slavery.”
Turning Point of US Economic History?
• Was the Civil War the turning point of US
Economic History? If so why?
– Not much evidence to support in GDP or GDP per
capita growth statistics
– Civil War does not stimulate the US economy
• Data does not support Beard-Hacker thesis
– The Southern economy does grow more slowly
than the Northern economy after the war.