Greed and Grievance in the US Civil War

Howdy partners,

This topic might be a bit serious for this forum, but I want literary/creative views in with the historical research, so I'm posting it here rather than the history forum.

In my researches for a new story I've been digging into the thinking behind the US civil war (and the Liberian civil war and many others, but I'm focusing on the US civil war here). Sure, it was about slavery and cotton gins and states rights, and abolitionism and Lincoln becoming president. But a lot of the rebel soldiers never owned a slave and probably couldn't afford one. The rebel states' total GDP was only a quarter of that of the state of New York. Lincoln was implacably against the rebels' right to secede, but his policy on slavery was permissive, even though he hated slavery himself.

So, it begs a lot of questions:

1. What did the Rebels think they could achieve?
2. Why did they fire the first official shots?
3. To what extent was it genuine grievance vs. opportunism motivating the rank-and-file rebel soldiers? How did that compare to the motives of the commanders and the rebel politicians?
4. The Yankees had a genuine grievance over slavery, but was there any sense in which opportunism motivated them too?
5. When war broke out, nobody expected the number of casualties it would eventually cause -- they were in denial about it. Why the denial, and why did they continue as the death toll mounted?
6. Militarily we know what ended the war. But what ended it politically? Economically? Psychologically?
7. The last Civil War veteran died in 1956 -- so the impacts of the civil war are still in the living memory of US citizens. While it's hard to imagine such a thing ever recurring (and I certainly don't want it to), what would it take economically, psychologically, politically to happen again?

While references are welcome, creative opinions are too. My story is unlikely to be set in the 19th century US, but it is likely to draw on some insights from the US civil war period.

Puma said:

Look at the economic motivations for the war - and foreign interests in the economics. That will start to give you a better perspective for your questions.

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I'm very interested in the economics, but from my researches to date foreign interests seemed limited. Europe's interest in cotton, say, seemed to play very little part in cause or development.

To my eyes, this contrasts markedly with many recent civil wars, in which foreign economic interests can play a huge role in arming and fomenting conflict, and using national instability to gain economic advantage. Do you have a different view?

Thanks indeed Puma.

Puma said:

Hi RD - BTW - I'm a regular on the historic forums - you can run, but you can't hide

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I like historians, by the way. I'm a history-geek myself. But because I plan to write a work of fiction in a fictional setting, I just didn't want scholastic pedantry.

The entire Gale article is very good - with a lot of detailed information on the causes leading up to the Civil War - worth looking at. On line at http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400170.html

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Yes, it sure was! Here's me trying to answer my own questions now, with its aid. Comments and guidance are welcome.

1. What did the Rebels think they could achieve? They needed recognition for their independence -- not simply for their sovereign rights, but for their rights to expand into other as-yet unclaimed territories. To assert those rights they needed a standing army and a demonstration of the will to use it.
2. Why did they fire the first official shots? See above.
3. To what extent was it genuine grievance vs. opportunism motivating the rank-and-file rebel soldiers? How did that compare to the motives of the commanders and the rebel politicians? I'm still not sure, but I don't think rank-and-file Confederate soldiers had a material grievance at the beginning of the war (though they had plenty by the end of it).
   I guess that their initial motives were a mixture of ideology and opportunism. The older states had stagnant agrarian economies. Families were large, properties were limited and there was new terrain to be conequered. Age of Heroism anyone?
4. The Yankees had a genuine grievance over slavery, but was there any sense in which opportunism motivated them too? Perhaps their own expansionary ambitions. Perhaps strategic economic concerns too.
5. When war broke out, nobody expected the number of casualties it would eventually cause -- they were in denial about it. Why the denial, and why did they continue as the death toll mounted? Because it was about economic strategy and it was an attempt to divorce, not a negotiation.
6. Militarily we know what ended the war. But what ended it politically? Economically? Psychologically? My subsequent research indicates that the Union wrecked the Confederate economy while its own remained largely intact. It was more than just killing the soldiers and liberating slaves -- they burned properties, ravaged livestock and crops for food and denied the Confederate army the supplies they needed for logistical support. Between the wrecked economy and the deaths of whole townships of young men there may have been plenty more will to fight but there was no more capacity.
7. The last Civil War veteran died in 1956 -- so the impacts of the civil war are still in the living memory of US citizens. While it's hard to imagine such a thing ever recurring (and I certainly don't want it to), what would it take economically, psychologically, politically to happen again? The same preconditions, if they recurred -- two remote, primary-industry economies pulling in two different directions. Except that the US is now an industrial/services economy rather than a primary economy, and it's a much smaller world so it's unlikey to see such a recurrence.

So, barring any alternative suggestions here are some new questions:

1. How did the economies of the South fare 10 years after cessation of the war? 30 years? 50 years? How do they stand today?
2. How did the economy of the North fare? How did it manage with the huge influx of unskilled emancipated labour? How did resident unskilled-labour populations like the Irish fare? How has that shaped Northern society today?
3. The US civil was is remarkable in several respects. One is the way that the nation continued to function with its constitution strained but intact. What enabled this to occur? Where else has this happened? Why have so many other nations been unable to achieve this?
4. Another is the way that the nation was able to reconcile afterwards. While the speeches of leaders are often seen as emblematic of that reconciliation, what was its economic basis?
5. To what extent were modern US tribal identities (e.g. Northerners, Southerners, State and home-town identities) shaped by the civil war? To what extent were they unchanged by it?
6. In terms of causes, conduct and effects, which other civil war most closely resembles the US civil war? Why?

alleycat said:

I'm not sure where your reference to "opportunism" comes from (I didn't follow any link posted), but the average Confederate soldier (as well as many Union soldiers) were as poor as dirt and there weren't any personal advantages to be achieved by fighting in such a war.

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Thanks Alleycat. Just to take a step back to explain a bit about what I'm doing and why...

The theories of cause in civil war tend to run to 'grievance' theories and 'greed' theories. 'Greed' here means pursuit of economic or social benefit, while 'grievance' is generally about trying to redress some economic or social inequity. Even the stronger grievance theories tend to acknowledge the importance of greed, while the stronger greed theories tend to acknowledge the importance of grievance. To write a credible story of tribalism and civil war I feel that I need to understand greed and grievance, using whatever historical examples I can readily find. Hence my foray here.

Civil war myths tend to favour grievance (and the heroism that redresses it) because it makes for better copy. In partisan accounts, myth tends to lay grievance all on the home side and greed all on the enemy side -- but I don't readily accept that. Even the heart-eating Liberian cannibal child-soldiers could produce a grievance story to justify their fighting. Once civil war has begun, it seems that everyone has a grievance story to tell.

I want to explore the possibility of greed and grievance motivating both sides at different times -- not necessarily to say that it was there, but to explore how it might have been there. It's certainly there in the civil war in Liberia, say and I believe I can find it in the Spanish civil war too.

The article that Puma kindly linked is very useful to me because it has a bit of both -- Southern grievance in the form of tariffs imposed by the largely Northern-dominated govenrment, and Southern greed in the form of anger over controls affecting the South's economic and geographical expansion. Reciprocally, the Republican government of the day arguably had grievances over how the South would ignore lawful orders when it suited them and (potentially, but I've yet to explore or develop them) greed reasons to want to hold the Union together.

I understand 'poor as dirt'. I also understand that patriotic affiliation was often to home-state and homeland (Lee for instance, was offered the Union army but declined to fight against his Southern home state) so a homeland grievance (real or perceived) might be enough to motivate Southern kids to enlist. But let's say that this wasn't the sole reason. Suppose that there was a desire for economic benefit too. What evidence might support that?

With fixed technology, agrarian economies tend to plateau when they run out of land, and as population increases they tend to stagnate. In fact there's a statistical correlation between primary industry economies and the likelihood of civil war in the first place (service economies are the least likely to wage civil war).

So let's say that three or five sons all working Dad's Southern farm are restless. They want a future of their own; there's no jobs to be had... They might take up army life for the travel, the adventure and possible economic opportunities someplace else. (I recall a record of one Confederate soldier before the war saying that the uniform he'd been issued was the best coat he'd ever owned.)

It's not hard to make a case that before the Civil War began, 'Fighting the Yankees' was an excuse for poor farmers to enlist. The reason could well have been poverty and unemployment. But whether that's entirely true is less important to me than whether it could have been true. Greed under guise of grievance makes some psychological sense to me. It's the sort of thing to raise paradoxes that make for interesting fiction.

If you need a reference work that is both accurate and understandable, I'd suggest something by Bruce Catton, perhaps Reflections on the Civil War.

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Thanks indeed!

MaryMumsy said:

When I lived in GA in the late fifties/early sixties, it was still referred to as 'The War of Northern Aggression'.

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It's hard to think of a civil war where any side couldn't describe it as the war of the other guys' aggression. I was shocked to read that in 1999, of the 27 armed conflicts around the world, 25 took place within national boundaries. All war generates grievance but it's extremely hard in civil war to even work out what sort of fighting is reasonable. Because none of it really is.

When another nation invades your homeland, it's easy to say: you have no right to be here. When group A of a nation attacks group B in any part of that nation it's immediately outrageous, grievance-worthy, regardless of who provoked the attack. And it's especially grievance-worthy if the attack takes place close to where B calls home.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my first post I realise that although it's 150 years ago, the life-span of participants made many of them part of the living memory of people who are alive today. My interest isn't to comment or critique on what those people believe or hold dear, but rather to look at it from a distance -- try to make some sort of humanitarian sense of it by connecting it with similar experiences elsewhere.

frimble3 said:

The big westward expansion happened after the Civil War. New farmlands opened up for those people who had had no prospects before the war, and for those whose prospects were destroyed by the war. And, in a war that pitted brother against brother, you could up sticks and never see your enemies (or your victims) again. I suspect that it's a lot easier, emotionally, to build a new town or farm, than it is to sit in the wreckage of the old, contemplating what was once there.

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Interesting. Thanks. From a US embassy web-site:

In the first quarter of the 19th century, the frontier was pushed beyond the Mississippi River. In 1803, President Jefferson negotiated the purchase of Louisiana with the French. From 1816 to 1821, six new states were created -- Indiana, Illinois. Maine, Mississippi, Alabama and Missouri. In 1865 the frontier line generally followed the western limits of the states bordering the Mississippi River, bulging outward to include the eastern sections of Kansas and Nebraska. A mere quarter-century later, virtually all this country had been carved into states and territories. Western expansion led to increasing conflicts with the Indians of the West.

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A nice animated image of the changing North American political divisions appears here.

I think of the people in Rwanda, having to return home to live among the neighbours who so recently were trying to hack them to death. 'Reconciliation Committee' or not, a hard prospect to face.

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For comparison, the French civil war of the 16th century (a Catholic vs Protestant war backed by Spain and England) spanned 36 years on and off, and ended in the Edict of Nantes, which was essentially an edict of tolerance creating one state from two nations. When that edict was revoked a century later, French Protestants pretty much left France.

I think there's something in your view, Frimble. The war can end but I'm not sure that all the grievances can -- except maybe generationally. It might be interesting to look into how much world migration is caused by civil war after the peace.

Puma said:

It took some time, but the rise of the US automotive industry and attendant industries pretty well incorporated the influx of newly available labor. You might want to do some looking at what happened to Detroit between the end of the Civil War and 1950.

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I did, and discovered something odd: while there's a lot of African American political history I could find very little African American economic history. Between 1865 and 1899 when Ford was building his first car-plant in Detroit, how did African Americans employ themselves? I know that some northern African Americans went south to do what I suppose we'd now call community development. Some went West chasing land. There was an ethnic riot in Detroit in 1863, and Irish draft riots in New York in the same year -- both inflamed I understand by the influx of African American labour into low-paid jobs.

Then there's something of a gap.

Authors like Naomi Klein feel that economic history can be far more formative than political history. She argued for instance, that in South Africa, the African National Congress coming into power in 1994 had far less effect on the future of the country than the way that industry and property was (or wasn't) reformed. Dark-skinned unemployment rates are now higher in South Africa than they were under apartheid.

It seems to me that economic history is often overlooked in favour of political history (which makes for a much more heroic narrative). It'd be very interesting I think, to construct fiction over layers of political history over economic history. I don't think it would need to be any less heroic, but perhaps it would be a bit richer and less simplistic than the fare we're used to seeing in our national folklores.

60's on the edge of the "divide" - the student body was split almost 50/50 northerners and southerners. And it was a definite split that began with the way we talked and ended with the way we viewed things. There was still a lot of animosity and unreconciled ground. I don't know how much change there's been in the last 50 years, but I suspect some of the old wounds are still open. Puma

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That's sad. Would you say that there was an economic divide as well as a sociopolitical one? Did southern kids have parents in very different jobs to the nothern kids?

Economic divides can feel like chasms. I've crossed several economic gulfs in my life -- from living in an immigrant labour community to living in a blue-collar Australian-born labour community to a middle class student community to a middle-class intellectual community, to an upper middle-class white-collar community (and now I'm hanging in the potpourri of writers ). Each time though it felt like I moved countries. The skills I drew on, the language I used -- each time it changed.

I dunno. I watch shows like Deadwood in which culture, society and economy clash and justice and civil structure get spat out the side as an afterthought and it resonates with me.

frimble3 said:

Are we going to see a generation, in some countries, that have no idea of a settled life to go back to?

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The Australian experience seems to be that they don't. Leaving changes you; temporary accommodation changes you. To leave without really wanting to go you have to become someone different to the person who wanted to stay.

I work in our nation's capital and have a lot of friends who are army brats and diplomatic kids. They have a very different view of home to anyone else I know.

I think that the pioneers in the Western expansion must have felt much of the same. To decide that this place -- where there may be no-one or anyone there may not want you... is home just because you say it is... that's an extraordinarily creative and brave act. They're words which having said, are very hard to unsay. Westerns cover the building of structures -- homes, barns -- to try and capture that, but I think it's much more about what you build in your mind. Not many Westerns ever truly nail it.

frimble3 said:

When I was a girl, I seem to have automatically understood what 'the Old Country' was: different for everybody, but everybody had one, except us, the children of the immigrants.

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The term 'Old Country' used to be very popular in Australia in the mid to late 20th century. Now the term barely appears -- even among immigrants.

I wonder whether globalisation means that people are less attached to country? Is Country becoming (as it seems to be for diplomatic kids and defense brats) merely a base of mobile operations? Does that change the way that Pioneering and Lawmaking myths that underpin so many Westerns need to be developed and marketed?

Puma said:

Want to define "pioneering and lawmaking myths"? And by Westerns, do you mean do you mean traditional westerns set in the US? Puma

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I don't know whether I can define them though they're easy enough to refer to, and yes -- I mean the traditional adventure-in-the-West stories that sit in the core of the genre.

Ah, thanks -- I think I see your worry... you interpreted myth in the historical sense as 'false history'. I meant it in the sociological sense as 'stories capturing revered cultural values'. The stories can be true or false but they're chosen to depict something we desire to enshrine.

I believe that pioneering values remain revered in the US. They reflect and are inspiration for US pride in entrepreneurialism and 'can-do'. In among the lawmaking values I'd put equality and retribution -- two values that have driven every gunfight I've ever read or seen.

Perhaps the Old Country/New Country concerns are linked to that: can-do, entrepreneurialism, equality, retribution and perhaps some other values. This is why I couldn't define the myths -- I think they're something to explore more than prescribe.

Outside the US the myths have resonance too of course -- but we don't use them to define ourselves; rather we use them to reflect on ourselves. Can-do has resonance in Australia; entrepreneurialism less so. Equality has resonance, retribution not so much. [Our creation myths tend to be about resilience, prudence and acceptance and occasional sullen, doomed rebellions. ]

You can see differences between (say) Kurasawa's Seven Samurai and Sturges' adaptation Magnificent Seven. Kurasawa leans far more on honour and sacrifice; Sturges goes for justice and retribution.