The American Civil War

An Alternative View

Michael T. Griffith

President Abraham Lincoln

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

General George B. McClellan

Jefferson Davis, Confederate President

Fort Sumter, South Carolina

There is a view of the American Civil War that rarely gets a hearing in our day, although it was widely held during the war and for decades afterward. It is the view that the Radical Republicans played a major role in causing the Civil War, and that their treachery delayed the end of the war by at least one year, causing the needless deaths of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers. It is the view that the war could have been avoided if the Radical Republicans had not recklessly stirred up hate and fear. It is the view that a compromise to end secession could have been achieved in the Senate if both the moderate Republicans and the Radical Republicans had not blocked it. It is the view that the bloodless attack on Fort Sumter did not have to lead to war and was not a valid justification for an invasion. And it is the view that Radical Reconstruction was excessively harsh and caused decades of bitterness and violence, an outcome that could have been avoided with the reconstruction plan that Abraham Lincoln had begun to implement before his death.

This is not to say that Southern pro-slavery hardliners did not play a major role in causing secession and the war--they most certainly did--but the Radical Republicans also played a large role in causing those tragic events. The seven Deep South states that seceded and formed the Confederacy had no valid reason to leave the Union, nor did they have any valid reason to refuse to accept the 1860 election results, but the Radical Republicans greatly contributed to the polarized atmosphere that led to those actions.

Before the Civil War began, the majority of Americans favored some kind of compromise on the issue of slavery, including slavery in the territories. The Crittenden Compromise, for example, appears to have been supported by a majority of people in the North and the South (but the Republicans blocked it in the Senate and would not allow a national referendum on the proposal). In the 1860 presidential election, the three candidates who supported a compromise on slavery received 60.1% of the popular vote. The issue of slavery's extension into the territories was largely a phantom, phony issue anyway.

Few history books tell the whole story about how the Radical Republicans prevented an early end to the war, despised Lincoln, opposed his reelection, cheered his death, and abandoned his reasonable and moderate plan for Reconstruction. Indeed, most history books portray the Radical Republicans as enlightened heroes, while painting Northern moderates as misguided, weak, indifferent to the evils of slavery, and unconcerned about civil rights.

Most history books also downplay the fact that in the first wave of secession, the four Upper South states firmly rejected secession, and that Lincoln was more than happy to see them stay in the Union. This is an important point because the first phase of secession was clearly mostly based on slavery. The four Upper South states only decided to secede two to three months after the Confederacy was formed because they did not believe the Union should be maintained by force. After Republicans made it clear that federal troops would invade the Confederate states, the four Upper South states seceded and joined the Confederacy. Thus, four of the 11 Confederate states did not secede over slavery but over the use of force to preserve the Union.

The Republicans should have at least allowed the seven Deep South states to leave in peace. If they had done so, the four Upper South states would have stayed in the Union, and the bloodiest war in U.S. history would have been avoided. With peaceful separation, Southern slavery probably would have ended in the 1870s or 1880s when several other nations abolished slavery and/or the slave trade, if not earlier.

MY ARTICLES

Gideon Wells and the Radical Republicans

The Smearing of General George B. McClellan: A Key to Understanding Civil War History

Choosing War: The Defeat of a Reasonable Compromise Plan That Could Have Preserved the Union without Bloodshed

Proof That the Union Was Supposed to Be Voluntary

The American Revolution and the Right of Peaceful Separation: The Founding Principle of Secession

Answering Some Criticisms of General George B. McClellan

Unwanted Evidence: Evidence That Lincoln Was Killed by a Radical Republican Plot

Black Confederates, Political Correctness, and a Virginia Textbook: Black Soldiers in the Confederate Army

The Tariff and Secession: Statements on the Tariff as a Major Factor in Sectional Strife and Southern Secession

Northern Realities, Southern Secession, and Slavery: Did the Confederacy Deserve to Survive?