The U.S. Civil War: Why They Fought

By Robert Grayson

How did a country once so united split in two? Why did the South feel that the North threatened their traditions and livelihood? Why did the North only want to fight in the South's territory? From the campaign for emancipation to the brutal battlefield, The U.S. Civil War: Why They Fought reveals the motivations behind the U.S. Civil War from all sides. Go beyond names and dates and ask: what were they fight for?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780756552855

Robert Grayson

Robert Grayson is the author of many lively, topical books for young adults. An award-winning former daily newspaper reporter and cable-TV talk show host, Robert also writes magazine articles on arts and entertainment for national publications. He has helped organize, promote and publicize major craft shows in the Northeast, including a Judaica showcase, and is an avid craft collector.

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CHAPTER ONE

DIVIDED Nation

In 1860 the bonds that held the United States together were disintegrating. The country was on the verge of a civil war. Disputes over slavery and states’ rights ripped through the fabric of the nation, threatening to tear it apart. Those issues, which pitted North against South, had gone unresolved since the birth of the nation.

Many people in the South had long believed in the right of states to govern themselves. While many people in the North favored a strong federal government, southerners were wary of the government imposing its will on them. The issue of slavery brought the argument over states’ rights to a boiling point. States in the South allowed slavery, but it was illegal in northern free states. The South felt the federal government, with support from northern legislators, might force antislavery measures on the South.

African-American slaves planted sweet potatoes on a plantation in South Carolina.

By the middle of the 19th century, both sides were prepared to use force to settle their differences. For the South, Abraham Lincoln’s election as president on November 6, 1860, was the last straw. The newly elected president was a northern Republican from Illinois. Lincoln had won the presidency without the support of a single southern state.

Lincoln was against slavery. The Republican Party’s stance on slavery was to confine it to the southern states that already allowed it. But the country was still growing. The party wanted to ban slavery in any new U.S. territories or states. Most northerners worked on small farms without slaves. They feared competing with slave labor if slavery was permitted in new western states.

Southerners saw Lincoln and his Republican Party as a threat to their economy and way of life. The South’s economy relied on slave labor. Enslaved people were most commonly kidnapped in Africa and brought to the United States against their will. These men and women and their descendants were considered the property of slave owners. The majority of slaves on southern plantations harvested crops such as cotton and tobacco from sunup to sunset. In the 19th century, the South produced most of the world’s cotton.

Restricting slavery to states where it was already allowed, southerners reasoned, would eventually lessen the South’s political influence on the nation as a whole. Since no new slave states would join the country, the South would become isolated. Southerners feared that as they lost political power, federal government decisions would go against them. They worried new nationwide laws would undermine their culture. Ultimately, southerners believed, northerners would gain enough influence to end slavery altogether.

Rather than live under what they thought would be a hostile political environment, politicians in South Carolina took action. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina voted to split from the rest of the nation. South Carolina became the first state to secede from theUnion.

South Carolina’s leaders believed strongly in their decision. They were willing to back up their action with military force. One week later, as tensions mounted, a handful of U.S. federal troops left Castle Pinckney, a small fort in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. They had heard that the South Carolina militia was on its way to take over the fort. Rather than engage the South Carolina militiamen and inflame the conflict, the U.S. troops retreated to nearby Fort Sumter. The South Carolina militia then seized the abandoned Castle Pinckney.