For Civil-War Scholars, a Settled Question That Will Never Die: What Caused the War?

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What caused the Civil War? Historians thumbing through state declarations of secession, statements in newspapers, and other primary sources have largely come to one conclusion: Slavery played the central role in sparking a war that killed more than 600,000 people.

The answer is clear. The documents prove it. So why do people always ask historians like Eric Foner such a basic, and settled, question?

Mr. Foner, a historian at Columbia University and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, has plenty of experience talking to the public about the Civil War. He’s a frequent lecturer who has been on quite a few book tours, where he invites questions. In those question-and-answer sessions, he’s often sensed a reluctance on the part of the questioner to put slavery at the center of the story of the war’s emergence — a sentiment echoed by John Kelly, White House chief of staff, who said in a recent interview that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War.”

“Nobody is saying there’s only one single cause of the Civil War,” Mr. Foner said. But historical documents — state declarations of secession, for instance — make an overwhelming case for the centrality of slavery. “What I find interesting is that people sometimes seem to take it as a personal affront, or a personal rebuke, to say slavery was the cause of the Civil War. … They seem to take it personally.”

Maybe it’s because people tend to merge two questions together: The question of what caused a war and why people fought in the war. They are not the same question, Mr. Foner said. Soldiers considered enlisting patriotic, he said, while the cause of the war was determined by the government. Most rank-and-file members of the Confederate Army were not slave owners, but people in the Confederate government were, Mr. Foner said.

But teaching opportunities can only do so much. Chandra Manning, a historian at Georgetown University, said people’s notions about what caused the war do not bend, no matter what historians do, say, or how patiently they invite the public to examine evidence. Those tactics do not work.

“What makes talking about why the Civil War happened different and harder than many other topics is it almost never starts with a question,” she said. “It starts with somebody who already thinks they have an answer and who isn’t terribly interested in finding an answer, and who is only interested in insisting on the answer they already have.”

Ms. Manning hears “answers” like this during her book talks and sometimes even at the grocery store. It ultimately narrows the conversational path. It’s even a tough nut to crack with her students, Manning said, who are often more open to learning than is the general public.

It’s hard to grasp the centrality of the institution of slavery to Confederate states, she said, which is why people often believe there must have been other reasons for war. “When we just try to pretend that the war was about what we wish it was about, we don’t get anywhere,” she said.

Edna Medford, a historian at Howard University, said she also receives more comments than questions while traveling the country to lecture, comments in which people claim the war was about states’ rights and “heritage.”

“If you want to accept it that way, then that’s fine, but it’s not anything that’s innocent. It’s based on a heinous institution that was sanctioned by both the state and the federal government,” she said.

She also has to speak to the public differently than she does to her students. She dispels the myths of the causes of the Civil War immediately during question-and-answer periods, and states outright that the war was about the expansion of slavery.

“It’s very difficult for many people to accept that because to accept that interpretation of the Civil War means you have to see America in a light that’s different than most people are willing to accept,” she said. It forces people to acknowledge that while America at the time idealized “freedom,” in 1860, almost four million people were enslaved.

So she tries to stick to the facts when talking to the public. “You don’t have to believe what I’m saying. Go do the research for yourself and see what the people of that time were saying about this,” she said. If she’s wrong, people have to prove it.

“A lot of attitudes we have are developed out of ignorance, of not knowing what the truth is, of not knowing our own history,” she said. “And if we paid more attention to our past, then perhaps we could better understand our own times.”