The Road to War

by Chandra M. Manning
A house divided against itself can not stand I believe this government can not endure
permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do
not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided . . . Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and put it in course of ultimate
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
states, old, as well as new.
Abraham Lincolns December 1857 notes for what would become the House Divided
Speech of 1858
For most of the antebellum era, differences between the North and South did not equate
to hostile and insurmountable division between the two sections. Legal slavery existed
only in the southern states, but whites in both sections shared assumptions of white
supremacy, and most of all shared a deep disinclination to discuss the slavery question.
Bitter conflictsabout economic development, political parties, the relative strength of
the state and federal governments, proper roles for men and women, religion, and more
divided Americans, but they divided them along partisan, religious, ethnic, and social
lines, not sectional ones. Residents of Wisconsin and Vermont jealously guarded the
primacy of state over federal law as Mississippians demanded a stronger, more active
federal government. Democrats from Maine to Louisiana railed ferociously against
economic measures like a National Bank, while Whigs throughout the land protested the
actions of the James K. Polk administration in precipitating the Mexican-American War.
Methodists in Georgia felt closer to Methodists in New York than to their Roman Catholic
neighbors. Yet when war came in 1861, it pitted one section against another, and the
chief difference between those two sections was the institution of slavery. How did one
axis of conflictsectional divisiontranscend and eventually overpower the numerous
axes of conflict that dominated much of the antebellum United States?
The two factors that did the most to engender sectional conflict were the booming growth
of slavery itself and territorial expansion. In just two generations, the number of slaves
exploded from 800,000 to 4,000,000. Most worked as agricultural laborers, but slaves
were also profitably employed in factories and mines and could be rented out for various
forms of labor, which made them extremely valuable commodities to their owners. The
enormous prosperity of the southern states depended on enslaved labor, and that
reliance made the dependence of the southern social structure on slavery all the deeper
and more inescapable. The northern economy also benefited from slave-grown staples.
White Americans were too deeply dependent on the institution to want to talk about
slavery.
Territorial expansion forced them to, because it raised the questions of whether slavery
should expand, and what the federal governments role should be. As the 1850s
progressed, white Northerners and Southerners argued over a Fugitive Slave Law, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, and theDred Scott decision. Proslavery forces seemed to be

gaining the upper hand and slaverys spread looked as though it would be almost
impossible to stop. The Republican Party gained quick popularity in the North by touting
the dangers of a Slave Power, intent on spreading slavery and costing white northerners
their own liberties. Illinois Whig Abraham Lincoln was attracted to the Republican Party
because it reflected his own hatred of slavery and bedrock belief in the right of
individuals to rise by dint of their own labor. Lincolns eloquent ability to articulate the
Free Labor ideology of the Republicans soon propelled him to prominence within the
party.
Meanwhile, white southerners demanded greater federal protection for slavery, and
those demands fractured the Democratic Party just in time for the 1860 election.
Southern Democrats insisted on a platform pledged to a federally enforced Slave Code
in all United States territories. Northern Democrats espoused popular sovereignty. The
party split. Fearful that the radical nature of the southern Democrats demands would
rupture the Union, some southern voters supported a new Constitutional Union Party,
which stood for ignoring the slavery issue. The divided electorate virtually assured that
Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for president running on a platform of halting
the westward expansion of slavery, would win. Public meetings throughout the South
warned that if Lincoln won, their state would leave the Union.
When Lincoln won the election of 1860, seven states from the Deep South seceded to
form the Confederate States of America. The slaveholding states of the Upper South
(Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee) and Border States (Delaware,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) opted not to secede, but the Upper South states
passed Coercion Clauses pledging to side with the Confederacy if the federal
government coerced the slaveholding states. As Abraham Lincoln assumed the
presidency, a stand-off was in progress.

Chandra Manning is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University and

author of What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (2007).