Chapter Five Social-Property Relations, Class-Conflict and the Origins of the US Civil : Toward a New Social Interpretation

The Civil War in the has been a major topic of historical debate for almost one hundred and fifty years. Three factors have fuelled schol- arly fascination with the causes and consequences of the War. First, the Civil War ‘cuts a bloody gash across the whole record’ of ‘the American . . . genius for compromise and conciliation’.1 The four years of armed conflict undermines claims that US-capitalist has the capacity to peacefully resolve any and all social conflicts. Second, the Civil War marked two major phases in US socio-economic development. Whether described as ‘agrarian’ and ‘industrial’ or ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, there is little debate that that production and exchange in the US was radically transformed after the Civil War. Finally, the abolition of slavery during the War altered the social and economic position of African Americans – the origins, course and outcome of the War was intimately linked to the changing character of race and racism in the US. The existing historical literature on the origins of the Civil War grapples, directly or indirectly, with one central question – why did the existence and

1 Moore 1966, p. 113. 196 • Chapter Five expansion of plantation-slavery become the central and irreconcilable political question in the and 1850s? Put another way, why had political leaders and the social groups they represented been able to reach enduring compromises, create stable national parties which competed for support in both the slave-South and ‘free-labour’ North, and marginalised debate on slavery and its expansion before the mid-1840s? Why did the question of slavery-expansion became irrepressible afterwards, creating regionally based parties, leading to Southern secession and war? Charles and Mary Beard produced the first systematic, synthetic social expla- nation of the US Civil War – an explanation that situates the political conflicts culminating in secession and war in socio-economic processes and forces.2 According to the Beards, the antebellum industrial unleashed a process of economic diversification and growth in the commercial north-east and agrarian north-west, while reinforcing cotton-monoculture and economic stagnation in the plantation-South. The divergent paths of economic develop- ment led to conflicts between north-eastern ‘business’ groups who wanted federally funded transport-construction (‘internal improvements’), a national banking and monetary system, public land-policies that discouraged agrarian expansion, and protective tariffs for US-manufacturers; and Southern plant- ers who opposed all these policies. Caught between Northern business and Southern agriculture were the independent, family-farmers of the north-west, who opposed a protective tariff and national banks, but wanted inexpensive land and federally financed transportation-construction. Prior to the 1840s, the Democratic Party built an agrarian alliance of South- ern planters and north-western farmers against north-eastern businessmen grouped in the National-Republican and Whig Parties. After the annexa- tion of Texas in 1844, the Democratic alliance collapsed as the north-west’s diversified agriculture was integrated into north-eastern commerce and manufacture. The new economic alignment led the slaveholders to oppose the free distribution of public lands to small farmers (Homestead Act) and federal subsidies of road-, canal- and railroad-construction. The new Repub- lican Party of the 1850s brought together north-eastern business and north- western agriculture on a platform of protective tariffs, free Homesteads, a federally subsidised trans-continental railroad and ‘free soil’ – a Congressional

2 Beard and Beard 1927, Chapters 15–18.