Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
While the mid-19th century saw revolution and war in Europe, civil war in China and uprisings in India among other conflicts, America was also to have its own catastrophe, which stemmed from a clash between an increasingly industrialised North and a cotton and slave-dependent South.
In Europe, more efficient machines had led to growing demand for both raw and finished cotton – demand that the markets struggled to fulfil. Sensing huge profits, a large number of plantations in the deep South began to focus on cotton. Yet, while the cotton gin had solved the major problem of separating cotton from its sticky seeds, the cotton still needed to be picked. Basic maths by the plantation owners showed them that the more pickers they had, the more land they could harvest, and the richer they would become. As a result, demand for slaves, which had seen a decline in the late 18th century, skyrocketed. The slave population in America almost doubled between 1810 and 1830 and by the 1850s slaves made up approximately half the population of the four main cotton states.
By 1840, the United States produced more cotton than any country in the world, and the value of cotton exports exceeded the value of all other American exports combined, effectively financing America's early development. Cotton planters became some of the richest men in America. What they did not foresee, however, was that the emphasis on cotton and slavery in the South had led to a dangerous dependence on a one-crop economy and did little to incentivise diversification. The opposite was true of the North (where the climate would not support cotton), which had become increasingly industrialised and therefore less dependent on slaves. As slavery became less and less acceptable globally, the South became more isolated, both nationally and internationally.
The slave trade with Africa had been abolished by the United Kingdom in 180794 and by the USA in 1808. Despite this, existing slaves had not actually been not freed and an internal slave trade had developed within the states where slavery was prevalent; the ban on the importation of slaves had only increased their price. The election of Abraham Lincoln over a pro-slavery contender to the presidency of the USA in November 1860 was the last straw for the South. While the large majority of Northerners were indifferent to the issue of slavery – the emancipation movement was a vocal but distinct minority – it was enough of an issue in the south to cause major amounts of angst. Led by South Carolina, seven states left the Union and in February 1861, a month before Lincoln gave his inauguration speech, the Confederate States of America were formed, with Jefferson Davis as their president.
When Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Union stronghold on an island in the harbour of Charleston in South Carolina in April 1861, Lincoln had no choice but to go to war. He was determined to do everything in his power to prevent the country being split asunder. This held far more importance to him than the issue of slavery. Lincoln even wrote a famous letter in which he stated that he would keep slavery if it would end the war. Slavery was far from the only issue that got him elected in the North and most northerners who fought for the Union fought for preserving the Union, not freeing the saves. Conversely, the large majority of Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders and had little interest in preserving slavery. They most likely fought because they viewed the Union armies as invaders. In many ways the Civil War was a battle of elites for economic power. Eleven southern states eventually joined the Confederacy, splitting the United States in two.
The North was in a stronger position from the start. It had a larger army as well as at least twice the population. It was also more industrialised, which meant it could produce more war materials, and had a better transport infrastructure, which meant it was easier for it to resupply its troops. The North also controlled the Nay, which proved significant in blockading the South and preventing aid and supplies from arriving from Europe. Despite this, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee led the South to a number of initial victories, even invading the North in 1862 and 1863.
However, Lee’s advance ended in July of the same year at the bloody three-day battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was here, several months later, at the dedication of a new cemetery to honour the fallen, that Lincoln made his famous ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’ Gettysburg address, which is regarded as one of the most famous speeches in American history. Ulysses S. Grant, the Union’s most senior general, who went on to become the eighteenth US president, took command of the Union forces nine months after Gettysburg and waged a total war against the South until it was brought to its knees. The war officially ended on 9th April 1865 when Lee surrendered to Grant. Lincoln was assassinated five days later, at the age of 56, by a Southern sympathiser.
The Civil War was the most catastrophic event in American history; more than 600,000 Americans died, the majority through disease, a greater number than those who have died in all other American wars combined, and more than the American losses in both the First and Second World Wars. Hundreds of thousands were also wounded. The South was destroyed and the period of reconstruction that followed lasted over ten years. The economic devastation lasted much longer, well into the 20th century. The war did, however, end the debate over slavery.