I wonder sometimes if slavery and racism played a role as to why the Civil War was fought. On the other hand, could another issue be at work? The issue I am referring to is class. The vast majority of blacks were slaves, who were not considered citizens on the land they worked. Would the laws promoting segregation have taken place even if the South won the Civil War? What if the South won the war? Will slavery in turn, die out eventually?
The war was most certainly not fought only on the issue of slavery. There were a lot of reasons, slavery being one of the smallest. The issue of tariffs, distribution of federal spending, state's rights, and general culture divide all played roles. I recommend you check out this excerpt from Robert Stiles' book entitled
Four years under Marsh Roberts. Mr. Stiles was born in the south (Kentucky) and his family moved to Virginia and New York before settling in Connecticut. He attended Yale College and graduated in 1859. Once the war started, he left his home and moved back down to Virginia to serve in the Confederate army.
What now of the essential spirit of these young volunteers? Why did they volunteer? For what did they give their lives? We can never appreciate the story of their deeds as soldiers until we answer this question correctly.
Surely it was not for slavery they fought. The great majority of them had never owned a slave and had little or no interest in the institution. My own father, for example, had freed his slaves long years before; that is, all save one, who would not be "emancipated," our dear "Mammy," who clung to us when we moved to the North and never recognized any change in her condition or her relations to us. The great conflict will never be properly comprehended by the man who looks upon it as a war for the preservation of slavery.
Nor was it, so far as Virginia was concerned, a war in support of the right of secession or the Southern interpretation of the Constitution. Virginia did not favor this interpretation; at least, she did not favor the exercise of the right of secession. Up to President Lincoln's call for troops she refused to secede. She changed her position under the distinct threat of invasion. This was the turning point. The Whig party, the anti-secession party of Virginia, became the war party of Virginia upon this issue. As John B. Baldwin, the great Whig and Union leader, said, speaking of the effect of Lincoln's call for troops, "We have no Union men in Virginia now." The change of front was instantaneous, it was intuitive. Jubal Early was the type of his party — up to the proclamation, the most extreme anti-secessionist and anti-war man in the Virginia Convention; after the proclamation, the most enthusiastic man in the Commonwealth in advocacy of the war and personal service in it.
But coming closer down, let us see how the logic of these events wrought itself out among my comrades of the Howitzer Company. We will take as a type in this instance the case of a brilliantly endowed youth of excellent family in Richmond, who, like the guide who piloted us to the battery upon the field of Manassas, became one of my closest and dearest friends, but unlike him and most unhappily for his family and his comrades, sealed his fate and his devotion with his life at Gettysburg.
He was a student at the University of Virginia in the spring of 1861, and perhaps the most extreme and uncompromising "Union man" among all the young men gathered there. Indeed, so exaggerated were his anti-secession views and so bold and aggressive was he in advocacy of them, that he became very unpopular, and his friends feared serious trouble and even bloody collision. The morning President Lincoln's proclamation appeared he had gone downtown on personal business before breakfast, and while there happened to glance at a paper. He returned at once to the University, but not to breakfast; spoke not a word to any human being, packed his trunk with his belongings, left a note for the chairman of the faculty explaining his conduct, boarded the first train for Richmond and joined a military company, before going to his father's house or taking so much as a morsel of food.
What was the overwhelming force which thus in a moment transformed this splendid youth? Was it not the God-implanted instinct which impels a man to defend his own hearth-stone?
There were 896 students at Harvard in 1861, there were 604 at the University of Virginia. Why was it that but 73 out of the 896 joined the first army that invaded the South, while largely over half of the 604 volunteered to meet the invaders? It was manifestly this instinct of defense of home which gave to the Confederate service, from 1861 to 1865, more than 2,000 men of our University, of whom it buried in soldiers' graves more than 400; while but 1,040 Harvard men served in the armies and navies of the United States during the four years of the war, and of these only 155 lost their lives in the service.
Here, then, we have the essential, the distinctive spirit of the Southern volunteer. As he hastened to the front in the spring of 1861, he felt: "With me is Right, before me is Duty, behind me is Home."
Regarding whether or not slavery would have eventually ended had the south won, there is no doubt in my mind. Slavery would have come to an end in a more natural and steady way than what was done by the north.
