The Civil War by James I. Robertson, Jr.

Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis, first-and only-President of the Confederacy, faced the task of shaping a new nation while waging a defensive war. (Collections of the Library of Congress)

Shooting began because men grew tired of shouting. For forty years, Northerns and Southerners argued with increasing vehemence over such issues as slavery, state rights, the conflicting goals of a dynamic, industrializing North and a static agricultural South, and the falling from political power of the South that had since colonial days provided the national leadership. By the 1850's compromise, the necessary ingredient to American life, had vanished. Emotion replaced thought; sharp disagreements produced heat; and heat generated fire.

Historians still debate which spark actually produced the explosion. The oldest explanation for the coming of war is the "conspiracy thesis": an Abolitionist Conspiracy in the North, callous to the constituional designs of the Founding Fathers and interested only in its unrealistic goals, was arrayed against a Slave Power Conspiracy in the South,

diabolically resolved to spread slavery throughout the land until it enslaved all peoples, white, and black. by the turn of the century however, such historians as James Ford Rhodes had simplified the cause of the Civil War to a single ingredient: Slavery.

The 20th century has produced a rash of differing interpretations. Charles A. Beard regarded the war as a "second American Revolution" provoked by economic differences between North and South. Many Southern-based historians see the war as a climax to arguments over the supremacy of state rights. Others feel that "Southern nationalism" created a desire to preserve at all costs the South's way of life. Recent writers, such as James G. Randall, take a more psychological approach. To them the war came from the fanaticism of a group of hotheads on each side. The great mass of Americans succumbed to radicalism and therefore exhibited the traits of "a blundering generation." Such writers point to modern-day events in America as historical parallels to the coming of the Civil War.

Whatever the cause of war, the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States shattered the Union. Southerners were unwilling to live under a Republican administration dedicated to antislavery principles. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina officially severed its ties with the Union.

In turn, the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas quickly followed suit. A provisional capital was established at Montgomery, Alabama, and the newly elected Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, proclaimed to the world: "All we ask is to be left alone."

First state to secede from the Union was South Carolina. This placard appeared on December 20, 1860, on the streets of Charlston.