What was the Civil War About?

Well, duh, slavery!

Of course, there are an awful lot of people who don't believe that.  Just the other day, I saw a teenager in a shirt with a confederate flag on the front and the following on the back: If This Shirt Offends You, You Need a History Lesson.

I'm a liberal, so of course I had to pause and wonder, "Do I need a history lesson?"  

A moment’s reflection led me to conclude that I do, in fact, know more about the causes of the Civil War than a redneck teenager in a rebel pride shirt.

It's always nice to have confirmation, though, and that's where a book review I read today on the
American Heritage website comes in.

The article is a review by Sarah Lawrence professor Fred Smoller of "What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War" by Chandra Manning, who researched the writings of the soldiers who fought in the war to understand just what it was they thought they were fighting about.  

The results are surprising, even to a fairly well educated guy like me.  I'd always assumed that the politics of slavery, expressed sometimes explicitly and sometimes as a subset of "states rights" motivated the leadership on both sides and once the fighting started the north was mobilized by anger at the attack on Fort Sumpter and the south was motivated by the invasion from the north.  (Yes, I know that's pretty facile, but it's better than the shirt slogan!)

But that's not the case.  Manning found that according to their own writing, southern soldiers were overwhelmingly fighting in defense of slavery and out of fear that a huge population of freed slaves might wreak revenge on their oppressors.

On the northern side, she found some ambivalence.  Northern soldiers were often racist, but in general they didn't like slavery as an institution, and Manning found that as the war progressed, their close up encounters with the institution of slavery strengthened their conviction that it was a barbaric practice.

The review is good and short, with more information than I've got here.  Go check it out and get some ammunition in your fight against stupid t-shirts everywhere.  Or make your own shirt that says, "According to Historian Chandra Manning, the Civil War Was About Slavery After All, Punk."