how did slavery cause the civil war essay

Slavery and the Civil War Essay

Theme essays. diversity, extra credit option. reconstruction, works cited.

During the period of 1820-1860, the life of white and black people in the South depended on developing the Institute of slavery which shaped not only social but also economic life of the region. The Institute of slavery was primarily for the Southern states, and this feature helped to distinguish the South from the other regions of the USA.

Slavery played the key role in shaping the economic and social life of the South because it influenced the trade and economic relations in the region as well as the social and class structure representing slave owners, white farmers without slaves, and slaves as the main labor force in the region.

The development of the South during the period of 1820-1860 was based on growing cotton intensively. To guarantee the enormous exports of cotton, it was necessary to rely on slaves as the main cheap or almost free workforce. The farmers of the South grew different crops, but the economic success was associated with the farms of those planters who lived in the regions with fertile soil and focused on growing cotton basing on slavery.

Thus, the prosperity of this or that white farmer and planter depended on using slaves in his farm or plantation. Slaves working for planters took the lowest social positions as well as free slaves living in cities whose economic situation was also problematic. The white population of the South was divided into slave owners and yeoman farmers who had no slaves.

Thus, having no opportunities to use the advantages of slavery, yeoman farmers relied on their families’ powers, and they were poorer in comparison with planters (Picture 1). However, not all the planters were equally successful in their economic situation. Many planters owned only a few slaves, and they also had to work at their plantations or perform definite duties.

Slaves were also different in their status because of the functions performed. From this point, the social stratification was necessary not only for dividing the Southern population into black slaves and white owners but also to demonstrate the differences within these two main classes (Davidson et al.).

As a result, different social classes had various cultures. It is important to note that slaves were more common features in spite of their status in families, and they were united regarding the culture which was reflected in their religion, vision, and songs. The difference in the social status of the white population was more obvious, and the single common feature was the prejudice and discrimination against slaves.

Picture 1. Yeoman Farmer’s House

The Civil War became the real challenge for the USA because it changed all the structures and institutions of the country reforming the aspects of the political, economic, and social life. Furthermore, the Civil War brought significant losses and sufferings for both the representatives of the Northern and Southern armies.

It is important to note that the situation of the Union in the war was more advantageous in comparison with the position of the Confederacy during the prolonged period of the war actions.

As a result, the South suffered from more significant economic and social changes as well as from extreme losses in the war in comparison with the North’s costs. Thus, the main impact of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery which changed the economic and social structures of the South and contributed to shifting the focus on the role of federal government.

The Civil War resulted in abolishing slavery and preserving the political unity of the country. Nevertheless, these positive outcomes were achieved at the expense of significant losses in the number of population and in promoting more sufferings for ordinary people. A lot of the Confederacy’s soldiers died at the battlefields, suffering from extreme wounds and the lack of food because of the problems with weapon and food provision.

During the war, the Union focused on abolishing slaves who were proclaimed free. Thus, former slaves from the Southern states were inclined to find jobs in the North or join the Union army.

As a result, the army of the Confederacy also began to suffer from the lack of forces (Davidson et al.). Moreover, the situation was problematic off the battlefield because all the issues of food provision and work at plantations and farms challenged women living in the Southern states.

The forces of the Union army were more balanced, and their losses were less significant than in the Southern states. Furthermore, the end of the war did not change the structure of the social life in the North significantly. The impact of the war was more important for the Southerners who had to build their economic and social life without references to slavery.

The next important change was the alternations in the social role of women. Many women had to work at farms in the South and to perform as nurses in the North (Picture 2). The vision of the women’s role in the society was changed in a way.

However, in spite of the fact that the population of the South had to rebuild the social structure and adapt to the new social and economic realities, the whole economic situation was changed for better with references to intensifying the international trade. Furthermore, the abolishment of slavery was oriented to the social and democratic progress in the country.

Picture 2. “Our Women and the War”. Harper’s Weekly, 1862

Diversity is one of the main characteristic features of the American nation from the early periods of its formation. The American nation cannot be discussed as a stable one because the formation of the nation depends on the active migration processes intensifying the general diversity. As a result, the American nation is characterized by the richness of cultures, values, and lifestyles.

This richness is also typical for the early period of the American history when the country’s population was diverse in relation to ethnicity, cultures, religion, and social status. From this point, diversity directly shaped the American nation because the country’s population never was identical.

The Americans respected diversity if the question was associated with the problem of first migrations and the Americans’ difference from the English population. To win independence, it was necessary to admit the difference from the English people, but diversity was also the trigger for conflicts between the Americans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen as well as Indian tribes.

The ethic diversity was not respected by the first Americans. The further importations of slaves to America worsened the situation, and ethnic diversity increased, involving cultural and social diversity.

Diversity was respected only with references to the negative consequences of slave importation. Thus, the Southerners focused on using black slaves for development of their plantations (Davidson et al.). From this point, white planers concentrated on the difference of blacks and used it for discrimination.

Furthermore, slavery also provoked the cultural and lifestyle diversity between the South and the North of the country which resulted in the Civil War because of impossibility to share different values typical for the Southerners and Northerners. Moreover, the diversity in lifestyles of the Southerners was deeper because it depended on the fact of having or not slaves.

Great religious diversity was also typical for the nation. White population followed different branches of Christianity relating to their roots, and black people developed their own religious movements contributing to diversifying the religious life of the Americans (Davidson et al.).

Thus, the aspects of diversity are reflected in each sphere of the first Americans’ life with references to differences in ethnicities, followed religions, cultures, values, lifestyles, and social patterns. This diversity also provoked a lot of conflicts in the history of the nation.

The role of women in the American society changed depending on the most important political and social changes. The periods of reforms and transformations also promoted the changes in the social positions of women. The most notable changes are typical for the period of the Jacksonian era and for the Civil War period.

The changes in the role of women are closely connected with the development of women’s movements during the 1850s and with the focus on women’s powers off the battlefield during the Civil War period.

During the Jacksonian era, women began to play significant roles in the religious and social life of the country. Having rather limited rights, women could realize their potentials only in relation to families and church work. That is why, many women paid much attention to their church duties and responsibilities.

Later, the church work was expanded, and women began to organize special religious groups in order to contribute to reforming definite aspects of the Church’s progress. Women also were the main members of the prayer meetings, and much attention was drawn to the charity activities and assistance to hospitals (Davidson et al.).

Women also played the significant role in the development of revivalism as the characteristic feature of the period. Moreover, the active church work and the focus on forming organizations was the first step to the progress of the women’s rights movements.

It is important to note that the participation of women in the social life was rather limited during a long period of time that is why membership and belonging to different church organizations as well as development of women’s rights movements contributed to increasing the role of women within the society. Proclaiming the necessity of abolishment, socially active women also concentrated on the idea of suffrage which was achieved later.

The period of the 1850s is closely connected with the growth of the women’s rights movements because it was the period of stating to the democratic rights and freedoms within the society (Davidson et al.). The next important event is the Civil War. The war influenced the position of the Southern white and black women significantly, revealing their powers and ability to overcome a lot of challenges.

The end of the Civil War provided women with the opportunity to achieve all the proclaimed ideals of the women’s rights movements along with changing the position of male and female slaves in the American society.

The development of the American nation is based on pursuing certain ideals and following definite values. The main values which are greatly important for the Americans are associated with the notions which had the significant meaning during the periods of migration and creating the independent state. The two main values are opportunity and equality.

These values are also fixed in the Constitution of the country in order to emphasize their extreme meaning for the whole nation.

Opportunity and equality are the values which are shaped with references to the economic and social ideals because all the Americans are equal, and each American should have the opportunity to achieve the individual goal. Nevertheless, in spite of the proclaimed ideals, the above-mentioned values were discussed during a long period of time only with references to the white population of the country.

The other values typical for the Americans are also based not on the religious, moral or cultural ideals but on the social aspects. During the Jacksonian era, the Americans focused on such values as the democratic society. Following the ideals of rights and freedoms, the American population intended to realize them completely within the developed democratic society (Davidson et al.).

Moreover, these ideals were correlated with such values as equality and opportunity. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that for many Americans the notions of democratic society, opportunity, and equality were directly connected with the economic growth. That is why, during long periods of time Americans concentrated on achieving freedoms along with pursuing the economic prosperity.

Thus, it is possible to determine such key values which regulate the social attitudes and inclinations of the Americans as equality and opportunity, freedoms and rights. In spite of the fact the USA was the country with the determined role of religion in the society, moral and religious aspects were not proclaimed as the basic values of the nation because of the prolonged focus of the Americans on their independence and prosperity.

From this point, opportunity, equality, freedoms, and rights are discussed as more significant values for the developed nation than the religious principles. The creation of the state independent from the influence of the British Empire resulted in determining the associated values and ideals which were pursued by the Americans during prolonged periods of the nation’s development.

The period of Reconstruction was oriented to adapting African Americans to the realities of the free social life and to rebuilding the economic structure of the South. The end of the Civil War guaranteed the abolishment of slavery, but the question of black people’s equality to the whites was rather controversial.

That is why, the period of Reconstruction was rather complex and had two opposite outcomes for the African Americans’ further life in the society and for the general economic progress of the states. Reconstruction was successful in providing such opportunities for African Americans as education and a choice to live in any region or to select the employer.

However, Reconstruction can also be discussed as a failure because the issues of racism were not overcome during the period, and the era of slavery was changed with the era of strict social segregation leading to significant discrimination of black people.

The positive changes in the life of African Americans after the Civil War were connected with receiving more opportunities for the social progress. Thus, many public schools were opened for the black population in order to increase the level of literacy (Picture 3). Furthermore, the impossibility to support the Southerners’ plantations without the free work of slaves led to changing the economic focus.

Thus, industrialization of the region could contribute to creating more workplaces for African Americans (Davidson et al.). Moreover, the racial and social equality should also be supported with references to providing more political rights for African Americans.

Reconstruction was the period of observing many black politicians at the American political arena. The question of blacks’ suffrage became one of the most discussed issues. From this point, during the period of Reconstruction African Americans did first steps on the path of equality.

Nevertheless, Reconstruction was also a great failure. The South remained unchanged in relation to the social relations between the whites and blacks. After the Civil War, segregation was intensified. The economic and social pressure as well as discrimination against the blacks was based on the developed concept of racism (Davidson et al.).

The Southerners preserved the prejudiced attitude toward the blacks, and prejudice and discrimination became the main challenge for African Americans in all the spheres of the life.

In spite of definite successes of Reconstruction, African Americans suffered from the results of segregation and discrimination, and they were prevented from changing their economic and social status.

Picture 3. Public Schools

Davidson, James, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark Lytle, and Michael Stoff. US: A Narrative History . USA: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print.

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• How Did Reconstruction Change the United States After the Civil War?
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• Reconstruction in the US: Failures and Successes
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• Reconstruction: Presidents Lincoln and Johnson
• The American Reconstruction: Failures and Significance
• American History: Reconstruction
• Slavery in the Southern Colonies
• American Reconstruction Period
• American History: Reconstruction, 1865 -1877
• The Los Angeles Zoot-Suit Riots and Its Effects
• History of American Foreign Policy
• Literary Works' Views on Slavery in the United States
• The Main Persons in Native American History
• "From Migrant to Acadian: A North American Border People, 1604–1755" by Naomi Griffiths

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Was the Civil War Fought Over Slavery?

Two scholars debate this question.

Written by: (Claim A) Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University; (Claim B) John C. Waugh, Independent Historian

Suggested sequencing.

• Use this Point-Counterpoint to have students analyze the argument over what caused the Civil War.

Issue on the Table

Did the Civil War have many causes, including sectional differences over politics, economic issues, culture, and slavery, or was the Civil War fundamentally caused by sectional differences over slavery and its westward expansion?

Instructions

Read the two arguments in response to the question, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then, complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholars but are illustrative of larger historical debates.

It would be foolish to claim that the Civil War had little to do with slavery. In many ways, slavery was the fundamental difference between North and South, and many sectional divisions were at least partially rooted in the presence of slavery in the South and its expansion elsewhere. Yet slavery itself did not cause the Civil War. After all, slavery was a national, not southern, institution until the early nineteenth century, and the Founders had been able to form a nation despite differences over slavery. In fact, the growth of the New England textile industry owed much to the profitability of plantation cotton grown in the South. Moreover, if the Civil War was fought over slavery, why did Abraham Lincoln and a majority of Union policymakers drag their feet until 1862 when it came to striking at the “peculiar institution?” Why, indeed, were white politicians able to reach a series of compromises over slavery and its expansion westward for the first seven decades of the new republic before that process collapsed in the 1850s?

Other issues also divided white northerners from white southerners and gave rise to the emergence of sectional identities whose roots can be traced back to the colonial period. By the early nineteenth century, the American economy north of the Potomac and Ohio Rivers was already diverging from that found south of those rivers. In the North, manufacturing, and eventually industrialization, evolved at a much faster pace than in the South, forging a diverse economic order, while slavery (although not racism) faded away, despite remaining profitable for those few slaveholders who unsuccessfully battled gradual abolition in the North. Meanwhile, plantation slavery dominated the southern economy, although its influence in the Upper South weakened over time and Appalachia remained resistant to its impact. But emerging northern industries required protection from foreign rivals, fostering a system of tariffs; relying as they did on marketing their cotton abroad, most southerners protested what they claimed was economic favoritism. Both sides looked to the federal government to favor their economic interests: the same southerners who protested government action to protect northern manufacturing did not oppose the use of military force to secure more land for slaveholders, whether through the removal of American Indian tribes or operations against foreign foes.

Slavery also was ever present in political debate, although those debates did not always touch on slavery directly. The Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution, increasing the representation of slave states in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College, was only one reason why southerners dominated the presidency and the Supreme Court through the 1850s. Even as northern population growth ensured that northerners would eventually come to control Congress, the presence of a two-party system in which each party was divided by section encouraged building alliances across the Mason-Dixon line. Only when these alliances collapsed in the 1850s, and then only in part because of slavery, did politics become truly sectionalized. The sectional debates over slavery and its expansion rarely touched on the morality of slavery, and even those northern politicians who held that slavery was an immoral institution, including Abraham Lincoln, recognized that it enjoyed constitutional protection. Abolition remained a minority movement among northern whites and it was not until 1860 that an avowedly antislavery (and, more importantly, anti-Southern) political party won the White House. That year’s Republican platform also spoke of the need to protect free labor and offered an ambitious vision of economic development fostered by the federal government.

Although they shared much in common, including an acceptance of white superiority and black inferiority, most white northerners and southerners tended to view themselves as different people, defined by sectional traits and stereotypes. White southerners saw their lifestyle as more refined and leisurely (in part because of the use of enslaved people), whereas northerners saw themselves as industrious, hard-working, innovative, and practical—traits southerners saw as evidence that northerners were greedy, mean-spirited, and prized money above all. White southerners, particularly among the elite, viewed themselves as athletic men and refined women as well as fighters ready to stand up for their rights, and they expected northerners to quake at the very idea of a war, whereas their counterparts saw their foes as hot-headed, irrational, and violent. Of course, such stereotypes distorted a far more complex and diverse reality; yet they persisted through the war itself.

To be sure, the presence of slavery in one part of the country and its absence elsewhere shaped these debates, sometimes in fundamental ways. But, although secessionist advocates freely admitted that their primary goal in seeking southern independence was to defend slavery as an institution and as a labor system, northerners who went to war in 1861 did so to preserve the Union their fathers had forged against a reckless attempt to destroy it. As President Lincoln wrote in 1862, “My paramount object in this struggle  is  to save the Union, and is  not  either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing  any  slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing  all  the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

Decades of resentment over political domination, disregard for northern economic interests, and southerners’ smug sense of superiority did as much to spark conflict as did any debate over slavery, and even those debates concerned the impact of a slavery-dominated society, economy, and political order upon the lives and futures of northern whites.

The question of whether the Civil War was fought over slavery has set northerner against southerner and historian against historian since the whole catastrophe began. It hangs in the air still, an ever-floating controversy. But it is very difficult to make a valid case—as many southerners tried to do, and still try to do, along with several historians—that sectional differences over slavery and its threatened expansion into the western territories were not the fundamental cause, the bedrock cause, of the Civil War. Let us examine several different arguments that are usually put forth and see what they tell us about slavery as a cause.

Perhaps the most common cause of the war argued by southerners is that the North was threatening states’ rights. In those times, in many minds, the powers of individual states trumped federal powers, no matter what the U.S. Constitution said. This was the reason that when the war began and people had to decide which side to fight on, southern officers in the U.S. Army and Navy overwhelmingly resigned to fight for their individual states in the Confederacy. But the right most important to the South, most necessary to southern lives, culture, and economy, most threatened, and most important to defend, was the right of the states to protect slavery.

Another argument concerns slavery in the territories. The South ardently desired to expand slavery into the Louisiana Territory in 1803 as well as those territories wrested from Mexico in the Mexican-American War in 1848. The North just as ardently opposed and derailed this expansion. Without question, this is considered one of the tripwires that caused the Civil War. And it was about slavery.

Viral abolitionism in America,  anathema  to the South, awoke in the 1830s, when William Lloyd Garrison established his abolitionist newspaper,  The Liberator , in Boston. Centered in New England, Philadelphia, and New York, abolitionists had steadily grown in numbers and influence over the next three decades. By 1860, abolition was seen by southerners as a monstrous threat, because what abolitionists wanted to abolish was slavery.

The Compromise of 1850, which tightened the Fugitive Slave Law, obligated those in the North to return fugitive slaves to their masters in the South. Despite stiff penalties, some northerners defied the law, creating a relay system, the Underground Railroad, to pass runaway slaves from house to house to freedom in Canada. This  blatant defiance of law by northerners looked to slaveholders like a reason to secede and, if necessary, go to war. And it had everything to do with slavery.

Northern aggression was to become another strong argument as to why the South seceded and went to war against the North. Indeed, throughout the war, many Southerners called it “the war of Northern aggression,” and some still do. And, in the final two years of the war, a large reason the North was aggressively invading the South was not just to win the war and save the Union, but to blot out slavery.

Finally, another argument often proposed as a cause for war is the election of Abraham Lincoln. By 1860, the southern states believed that if the “black Republican,” Abraham Lincoln, was elected president it would be a sign that they were in mortal danger of invasion and an end to their way of life based on slavery. At the first sign he had been elected, they would secede. South Carolina, the most radical of the southern states, left first, in December 1860, followed by five other Deep South slave states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana) in January 1861, and then Texas in early February.

But Lincoln had no desire to invade the South, and he told them so. His sole objective was to save the Union. In his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, he told the seceded states, “In  your  hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in  mine , is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail  you . You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.” However, the South did not believe him. And so they went to war, not so much as to leave the Union but to save slavery. In late 1862, believing it had become essential to win the war, Lincoln signed an Emancipation Proclamation freeing all the slaves in the Confederate states. The war then became not just a war to save the Union but a war to end slavery.

These six reasons make it clear that whatever the causes were thought to be, they all connected back to slavery. There would not have been a civil war if slavery had not existed.

Historical Reasoning Questions

Use  Handout A: Point-Counterpoint Graphic Organizer  to answer historical reasoning questions about this point-counterpoint.

Primary Sources (Claim A)

“Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 2. General Correspondence. 1858-1864: Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, Friday, August 22, 1862 (Clipping from Aug. 23, 1862 Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, D.C.).” Library of Congress.  https://www.loc.gov/item/mal4233400/

Primary Sources (Claim B)

Lincoln, Abraham. “First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln.” March 4, 1861.  https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp

“Confederate States of America – Mississippi Secession. A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”  https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

Suggested Resources (Claim A)

Levine, Bruce.  Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War . New York: Hill and Wang, 2005.

Suggested Resources (Claim B)

Dew, Charles B.  Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War . Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017.

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In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

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How Did Slavery Cause The Civil War in America

• Categories: American Civil War Slavery

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 654 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Historical context of slavery in america, abolitionism and activism, the road to civil war.

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Teaching Slavery as the Cause of the Civil War

Posted: 10/27/11

BY: Andrew L. Slap

“What caused the Civil War?” Historians have killed forests trying to answer this deceptively simple question. In a recent essay in The Journal of the Civil War Era , Frank Towers discusses changing interpretations over the last 150 years, finding that starting in the 1960s historians “foregrounded slavery as the war’s cause, situated within a global process of modernization.” And while disagreements continue over how and why, most historians now agree that slavery caused the Civil War. Why then do so many outside of academia continue to believe that slavery either had little or nothing to do with the conflict? There are certainly some people who will never accept that slavery was central to the Civil War. Eight years of teaching as a professor in East Tennessee, though, has convinced me that those are the exceptions. I think much of the resistance to accepting slavery as the war’s cause comes from how it is explained to students and the public. For several years now, I have taught institutes on the Civil War for middle and high school teachers in northeast Tennessee as part of a Teaching American History grant. Teaching teachers is quite different than working with college students, as many have master’s degrees and have been teaching American history for decades. They are on the front lines of education and will each educate several thousand students over the course of their careers. In one session, I started with the question, “What caused the Civil War?” The response from most was slavery, but they did not seem entirely convinced or happy about it. The teachers viewed slavery as almost entirely a moral issue, an issue that simultaneously damns the South and completely fails to account for other factors leading to the war. Teachers knew the answer, yes, but they did not know all the complexity behind it. For academic historians, of course, slavery connotes a wide range of social, economic, political, and gender issues. Historians have done sophisticated theoretical work on the role of slavery in southern society, yet none of the teachers were familiar with concepts like Herenvolk democracy, paternalism or bourgeois gender ideology. The teachers were also unfamiliar with reasons non-abolitionists in the North would oppose slavery. None saw slavery “situated within a global context of modernization.” This is not to disparage K-12 teachers—far from it. Most scholars know nothing about teaching students with a fifth grade reading level, dealing with discipline problems or coaching football. Crunched for time, overwhelmed by state standards, and lacking resources, it’s impressive that teachers accomplish all that they do. Popular Civil War works like Ken Burn’s documentary and James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom emphasize slavery as a moral issue, not to mention the textbooks in the public schools. The fact is that when these teachers—and maybe most people—hear that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, it is primarily as a moral issue, uncomplicated by the debates of academic historians. Not only does viewing slavery primarily as a moral issue skew interpretations of Civil War causation, but it also presents a particular challenge in the South. Most of these teachers come from the area and identify themselves as southerners. In perhaps a positive sign of the Lost Cause ideology weakening, all the teachers agree that slavery is bad and that African Americans did not want to be enslaved. The problem is that the teachers understandably feel like their ancestors and their region are being judged and found wanting. It is difficult to teach anyone if they feel judged and defensive. In order to connect with my audience of teachers, I focus on multiple aspects of slavery’s role as a cause of the war. The first was why non-slave owning whites might be interested in protecting slavery. We discussed concepts like Herenvolk democracy (where the use of race enabled non-elite whites to participate in the political process), though not always using the theoretical terms. One particularly effective point was the effect of kin relations. The teachers knew that a minority of whites in the South owned slaves, but once they started to think of extended kin networks that are still so important in East Tennessee they quickly saw how a lot of people had an interest in slavery. The second, and perhaps the most important point, was repeatedly stating that the vast majority of white northerners were racist and not anti-slavery for altruistic motives. I explained that ideas like free soil and the slave power led many northern whites to oppose slavery—or at least its expansion—to protect their own political liberties and economic opportunities. Afterward, many of the teachers came up to me and used almost the exact same words: “I never had slavery explained as a cause of the Civil War like that. It makes a lot of sense.” Another, in one of the anonymous evaluations we collected at the end of the institute, noted that what he or she liked best was learning “Slavery being true cause of the Civil War—information we received were things I didn’t know!” After analyzing new directions in Civil War causation scholarship in his article in The Journal of the Civil War , historian Frank Towers argues that “Debunking neo-Confederate myths of the Lost Cause falsehoods is a shared task of this scholarship, but it goes far beyond reiterating historians’ long running proof for the primacy of slavery in secession.” While Towers is undoubtedly right, it seems problematic that, despite historians’ consistent cries that slavery caused the Civil War, parts of the American public continue to cling to the belief that it did not. Maybe the problem rests not the public, but with academic historians who aren’t doing the right things to reach the public. When I started teaching at East Tennessee State University I could not have convinced the teachers here that slavery caused the Civil War. Through years of talking (and listening!) to teachers, having meals together, and getting to know the region, I have learned how to discuss history in ways that work here. We need more teachers and historians meeting for coffee and discussing deceptively simple questions like “what caused the Civil War.” When historians better know their audience, they—we—will be better able to explain how slavery caused the Civil War in a way that is understandable, and acceptable, to the public.

Andrew L. Slap is an associate professor of history at East Tennessee State University and has been the academic director of a Teaching American History grant since 2005. He is the author of The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republican Movement in the Civil War Era and is currently working on a book about African American communities around Memphis during the nineteenth century.

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What Were the Top 4 Causes of the Civil War?

• M.A., History, University of Florida
• B.A., History, University of Florida

The question “what caused the U.S. Civil War ?” has been debated since the horrific conflict ended in 1865. As with most wars, however, there was no single cause.

Pressing Issues That Led to the Civil War

The Civil War erupted from a variety of long-standing tensions and disagreements about American life and politics. For nearly a century, the people and politicians of the Northern and Southern states had been clashing over the issues that finally led to war: economic interests, cultural values, the power of the federal government to control the states, and, most importantly, slavery in American society.

While some of these differences might have been resolved peacefully through diplomacy, the institution of slavery was not among them.

With a way of life steeped in age-old traditions of white supremacy and a mainly agricultural economy that depended on the labor of enslaved people, the Southern states viewed enslavement as essential to their very survival.

Slavery in the Economy and Society

At the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the enslavement of people not only remained legal in all 13 British American colonies, but it also continued to play a significant role in their economies and societies.

Prior to the American Revolution, the institution of slavery in America had become firmly established as being limited to persons of African ancestry. In this atmosphere, the seeds of white supremacy were sown.

Even when the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, very few Black people and no enslaved people were allowed to vote or own property.

However, a growing movement to abolish slavery had led many Northern states to enact abolitionist laws and abandon enslavement. With an economy based more on industry than agriculture, the North enjoyed a steady flow of European immigrants. As impoverished refugees from the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, many of these new immigrants could be hired as factory workers at low wages, thus reducing the need for enslaved people in the North.

In the Southern states, longer growing seasons and fertile soils had established an economy based on agriculture fueled by sprawling plantations owned by White people that depended on enslaved people to perform a wide range of duties.

When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. At the same time, the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton created an even greater need for enslaved people. The Southern economy became a one-crop economy, depending on cotton and, therefore, on enslaved people.

Though it was often supported throughout the social and economic classes, not every White Southerner enslaved people. The population of the pro-slavery states was around 9.6 million in 1850   and only about 350,000 were enslavers.   This included many of the wealthiest families, a number of whom owned large plantations. At the start of the Civil War, at least 4 million enslaved people   were forced to live and work on the Southern plantations.

In contrast, industry ruled the economy of the North and less emphasis was on agriculture, though even that was more diverse. Many Northern industries were purchasing the South's raw cotton and turning it into finished goods.

This economic disparity also led to irreconcilable differences in societal and political views.

In the North, the influx of immigrants—many from countries that had long since abolished slavery—contributed to a society in which people of different cultures and classes lived and worked together.

The South, however, continued to hold onto a social order based on white supremacy in both private and political life, not unlike that under the rule of racial apartheid that persisted in South Africa for decades .

In both the North and South, these differences influenced views on the powers of the federal government to control the economies and cultures of the states.

States and Federal Rights

Since the time of the American Revolution , two camps emerged when it came to the role of government. Some people argued for greater rights for the states and others argued that the federal government needed to have more control.

The first organized government in the U.S. after the Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. The 13 states formed a loose Confederation with a very weak federal government. However, when problems arose, the weaknesses of the Articles caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create, in secret, the U.S. Constitution .

Strong proponents of states rights like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were not present at this meeting. Many felt that the new Constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. They felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts.

This resulted in the idea of nullification , whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun —who resigned as vice president to represent South Carolina in the Senate—fought vehemently for nullification. When nullification would not work and many of the Southern states felt that they were no longer respected, they moved toward thoughts of secession.

Pro-slavery States and Free States

As America began to expand—first with the lands gained from the Louisiana Purchase and later with the Mexican War —the question arose of whether new states would be pro-slavery states or free states. An attempt was made to ensure that equal numbers of free states and pro-slavery states were admitted to the Union, but over time this proved difficult.

The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820. This established a rule that prohibited enslavement in states from the former Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes, with the exception of Missouri.

During the Mexican War, the debate began about what would happen with the new territories the U.S. expected to gain upon victory. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, which would ban enslavement in the new lands. This was shot down amid much debate.

The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay and others to deal with the balance between pro-slavery states and free states. It was designed to protect both Northern and Southern interests. When California was admitted as a free state, one of the provisions was the Fugitive Slave Act . This held individuals responsible for harboring freedom-seeking enslaved people, even if they were located in free states.

The  Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was another issue that further increased tensions. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free states or pro-slavery states. The real issue occurred in Kansas where pro-slavery Missourians, called "Border Ruffians," began to pour into the state in an attempt to force it toward slavery.

Problems came to a head with a violent clash at Lawrence, Kansas. This caused it to become known as " Bleeding Kansas ." The fight even erupted on the floor of the Senate when anti-slavery proponent Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was beaten on the head by South Carolina Sen. Preston Brooks.

The Abolitionist Movement

Increasingly, Northerners became more polarized against enslavement. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against enslavement and enslavers. Many in the North came to view enslavement as not just socially unjust, but morally wrong.

The abolitionists came with a variety of viewpoints. People such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass wanted immediate freedom for all enslaved people. A group that included Theodore Weld and Arthur Tappan advocated for emancipating enslaved people slowly. Still others, including Abraham Lincoln, simply hoped to keep slavery from expanding.

A number of events helped fuel the cause for abolition in the 1850s.  Harriet Beecher Stowe  wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin ," a popular novel that opened many eyes to the reality of enslavement. The Dred Scott Case  brought the issues of enslaved peoples' rights, freedom, and citizenship to the Supreme Court.

Additionally, some abolitionists took a less peaceful route to fighting against slavery. John Brown and his family fought on the anti-slavery side of "Bleeding Kansas." They were responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which they killed five settlers who were pro-slavery. Yet, Brown's best-known fight would be his last when the group attacked Harper's Ferry in 1859, a crime for which he would hang.

The Election of Abraham Lincoln

The politics of the day were as stormy as the anti-slavery campaigns. All of the issues of the young nation were dividing the political parties and reshaping the established two-party system of Whigs and Democrats.

The Democratic party was divided between factions in the North and South. At the same time, the conflicts surrounding Kansas and the Compromise of 1850 transformed the Whig party into the Republican party (established in 1854). In the North, this new party was seen as both anti-slavery and for the advancement of the American economy. This included the support of industry and encouraging homesteading while advancing educational opportunities. In the South, Republicans were seen as little more than divisive.

The presidential election of 1860 would be the deciding point for the Union. Abraham Lincoln represented the new Republican Party and Stephen Douglas , the Northern Democrat, was seen as his biggest rival. The Southern Democrats put John C. Breckenridge on the ballot. John C. Bell represented the Constitutional Union Party, a group of conservative Whigs hoping to avoid secession.

The country's divisions were clear on Election Day. Lincoln won the North, Breckenridge the South, and Bell the border states. Douglas won only Missouri and a portion of New Jersey. It was enough for Lincoln to win the popular vote, as well as 180 electoral votes .

Even though things were already near a boiling point after Lincoln was elected, South Carolina issued its "Declaration of the Causes of Secession " on December 24, 1860. They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests.

President James Buchanan's administration did little to quell the tension or stop what would become known as " Secession Winter ." Between Election Day and Lincoln's inauguration in March, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

In the process, the South took control of federal installations, including forts in the region, which would give them a foundation for war. One of the most shocking events occurred when one-quarter of the nation's army surrendered in Texas under the command of General David E. Twigg. Not a single shot was fired in that exchange, but the stage was set for the bloodiest war in American history.

Edited by Robert Longley

DeBow, J.D.B. "Part II: Population." Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census . Washington: Beverley Tucker, 1854. 

De Bow, J.D.B. " Statistical view of the United States in 1850 ." Washington: A.O.P. Nicholson. 

Kennedy, Joseph C.G. Population of the United States 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the 8th Census . Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1864.

• Order of Secession During the American Civil War
• American Civil War: Causes of Conflict
• Slavery in 19th Century America
• The American Civil War and Secession
• The Hoax That a Tariff Provoked the Civil War
• Did Uncle Tom's Cabin Help to Start the Civil War?
• The Road to the Civil War
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
• American History Timeline 1851–1860
• The Missouri Compromise
• The Corwin Amendment, Enslavement, and Abraham Lincoln
• Lecompton Constitution
• U.S. Legislative Compromises Over Enslavement, 1820–1854
• Top 9 Events That Led to the Civil War
• Bleeding Kansas
• The Crittenden Compromise to Prevent the Civil War

A Brief Overview of the American Civil War

The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world.

Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.

The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.

The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Claiming this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day opened fire on the federal garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender. Lincoln called out the militia to suppress this "insurrection." Four more slave states seceded and joined the Confederacy. By the end of 1861 nearly a million armed men confronted each other along a line stretching 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri. Several battles had already taken place--near Manassas Junction in Virginia, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation of the new state of West Virginia, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base for a blockade to shut off the Confederacy's access to the outside world.

But the real fighting began in 1862. Huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines' Mill , Second Manassas , and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland foreshadowed even bigger campaigns and battles in subsequent years, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia. By 1864 the original Northern goal of a limited war to restore the Union had given way to a new strategy of "total war" to destroy the Old South and its basic institution of slavery and to give the restored Union a "new birth of freedom," as President Lincoln put it in his address at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there.

For three long years, from 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia staved off invasions and attacks by the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by a series of ineffective generals until Ulysses S. Grant came to Virginia from the Western theater to become general in chief of all Union armies in 1864. After bloody battles at places with names like The Wilderness , Spotsylvania , Cold Harbor , and Petersburg , Grant finally brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in April 1865. In the meantime Union armies and river fleets in the theater of war comprising the slave states west of the Appalachian Mountain chain won a long series of victories over Confederate armies commanded by hapless or unlucky Confederate generals. In 1864-1865 General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army deep into the Confederate heartland of Georgia and South Carolina, destroying their economic infrastructure while General George Thomas virtually destroyed the Confederacy's Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville . By the spring of 1865 all the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and when Union cavalry captured the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, resistance collapsed and the war ended. The long, painful process of rebuilding a united nation free of slavery began.

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In devane lectures, historian to examine the legacy of slavery and the civil war.

David W. Blight

David W. Blight, one of the country’s foremost authorities on slavery and the Civil War, will lead a course exploring the intertwined and lasting legacies of the two as part of an annual Yale lecture series that is open to the public at no charge.

The 2024 DeVane Lectures course, “Can it Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, the Civil War and their Legacies,” is based in part on the Yale and Slavery Research Project, a comprehensive examination of Yale’s historical connections to slavery . Blight led the project, which included faculty, staff, students, and New Haven community members, and is the primary author of “Yale and Slavery: A History” (Yale University Press), a scholarly, peer-reviewed book that presents the project’s research in full. (Key findings and the full book are available  online  for free.)

Registration for the course, which will be offered in the fall, opens April 15.

“ I hope people will take away a deep historical understanding of Yale’s own experience with this problem, and how slavery helped shape this university’s history and many others,” said Blight, Sterling Professor of History and African American Studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). “And that they gain an understanding of how what is arguably the most divisive issue we’ve ever had continues to shape us as a country. We’re close to that kind of divisiveness today.”

Blight is also director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. He has authored numerous books related to slavery and the Civil War, including “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” (Simon & Schuster), the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the once-enslaved 19 th -century orator who became a leader in the abolitionist movement.

Members of the Yale and New Haven communities are invited to attend the lecture series, which will be in-person only, for free. Yale undergraduates may enroll in the course for credit.

The DeVane Lectures series, established in 1969, is named for William Clyde DeVane, dean of Yale College from 1939 to 1963. Last year’s course, “China in Six Keys,” was taught by Jing Tsu, the Jonathan D. Spence Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Literatures and chair of comparative literature in FAS.

Blight’s DeVane course will be divided into three parts. The first will focus on the key elements of the Yale and slavery study, such as the early Yale leaders who owned enslaved people, the labor of enslaved people in constructing Connecticut Hall, and Yale alumni participation in quashing an effort to build the country’s first Black college in New Haven in 1831. It will incorporate documentation housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Sterling Memorial Library, as well as readings from “Yale and Slavery: A History.”

That concludes in 1915 with the dedication of Yale’s sculpted Civil War Memorial on the ground floor of Woolsey Hall. The memorial honors the Yale graduates who died in the war in both the Union and Confederate forces, and makes no mention of slavery, the reason the war was fought.

“ It is the most significant monument to the Confederate ‘Lost Cause’ ideology on northern soil,” Blight said. “How did that happen?”

That question will set the stage for the second part of the course, which will cover the causes of disunion, the fighting of the Civil War, emancipation efforts (which eventually led to passage of the 13 th Amendment abolishing slavery), and the Reconstruction era that followed.

The final third of the course will take up the ways in which the legacies of that era are still with us today, and how they continue to threaten a multi-ethnic democracy. These concluding lectures will address the course’s provocative title, a twist on that of the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel, “It Can’t Happen Here.”  The novel, about the election and totalitarian rule of a fascist president in the U.S., was frequently cited in recent years for its perceived parallels to Donald Trump’s election and the contemporary political landscape.

“ If we’re going to take up a subject with this kind of aftermath, why not understand how it still shapes us?” Blight said. “We’re reliving the issues of Reconstruction almost every day in this country, and not just because of Trumpism. It’s because they’re so unfinished.”

Members of the public must register for the DeVane Lectures on the course website . Registration begins on April 15. The lectures are held in person only. Beginning on August 29, lectures will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:35 a.m.-12:25 p.m. in the O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall in the Yale Science Building, located at 260 Whitney Ave.

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Thirteenth Amendment :

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

During the Federal Convention of 1787, the Constitution’s Framers vigorously debated the role that slavery would play in the newly created United States. 1 Footnote See, e.g. , 2 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 , at 364 – 65 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) (Madison’s notes, Aug. 21, 1787) (recording a debate over banning the importation of slaves); id. at 369–74 (Madison’s notes, Aug. 22, 1787). Conflicts over slavery, which had been practiced in the British colonies of North America for over a century often pitted delegates from southern states that relied heavily on slave labor against northern states whose inhabitants increasingly opposed the practice on moral grounds. 2 Footnote See id. Despite fervent disagreement over the issue of slavery at the Convention, the Constitution’s original text did not specifically refer to slavery. For example, the so-called “Fugitive Slave Clause” did not employ the term “slave” but instead granted the owner of a “person held to service or labor” the right to seize and repossess him in another state, regardless of that state’s laws. 3 Footnote U.S. Const. art. IV, § 2, cl. 3 . See also supra Fugitive Slave Clause: Doctrine and Practice , . Moreover, the Three-Fifths Clause, a cornerstone of the Great Compromise 4 Footnote The delegates to the Federal Convention devised the Great Compromise to address the states’ fear of an imbalance of power in Congress by providing for a bicameral legislature with proportional representation based on a state’s population for one chamber and equal state representation in the other. 1 The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 at 524 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) . See also Max Farrand , The Framing of the Constitution of the United States 104–07 (1913) . among the Founders, counted three-fifths of “all other Persons” —a term that included slaves—for the purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives and levying certain types of taxes. 5 Footnote U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 3 . In addition, Article V, while not mentioning slavery specifically, prohibited amendments prior to 1808 that would have affected the Constitution’s limitations on Congress’s power to (1) restrict the slave trade, or (2) levy certain taxes on land or slaves. Id. art. V . See also id. art. I, § 9, cls. 1, 4 .

In 1808, two decades after the Constitution’s ratification, Congress prohibited importing slaves from other countries. 6 Footnote Act of March 2, 1807, ch. 22, 2 Stat. 426 . Although northern states had already abolished (or begun to abolish) slavery within their jurisidictions, 7 Footnote See George Rutherglen , State Action, Private Action, and the Thirteenth Amendment , 94 Va. L. Rev. 1367 , 1373 & n.23 (2008) . the domestic slave trade continued to flourish in the South.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, political tensions simmered as abolitionists and proponents of slavery argued over whether new U.S. territories would be admitted to the union as “slave” or “free” states. 8 Footnote The 1787 ordinance that the Confederation Congress enacted to govern the newly acquired Northwest Territory prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States, North-west of the river Ohio , Libr. of Cong. , https://www.loc.gov/resource/bdsdcc.22501/?st=gallery . The Northwest Ordinance, however, allowed for the “reclaiming” of slaves that escaped into the territory. See id. The Ordinance established the Ohio River as the boundary between newly admitted, northern territories that forbade slavery and southern territories that permitted slavery. Id. Initially, Congress resolved some of these disagreements. For example, in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. 9 Footnote Missouri Compromise: Primary Documents in American History , Libr. of Cong. , https://guides.loc.gov/missouri-compromise . The compromise also limited the geographic expansion of slavery westward into newly acquired territories. Id. In addition, Congress sought to achieve additional understandings on the issue of slavery in the five Acts that made up the Compromise of 1850. 10 Footnote Compromise of 1850: Primary Documents in American History , Libr. of Cong. , https://guides.loc.gov/compromise-1850 . The compromise strengthened federal judicial officials’ obligations to capture and return fugitive slaves; abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C.; admitted California as a free state; and allowed New Mexico and Utah to decide whether to join the United States as free states or slaves states. Id. Despite these early efforts, compromises on the issue of slavery began to unravel during the 1850s. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing each territory’s population to decide whether to permit slavery. 11 Footnote Kansas-Nebraska Act: Primary Documents in American History , Libr. of Cong. , https://guides.loc.gov/kansas-nebraska-act . This led to an outbreak of violence between abolitionists and proponents of slavery in Kansas. 12 Footnote Id. The Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford exacerbated tensions by declaring the Missouri Compromise to have been an unconstitutional deprivation of slaveholders’ property. 13 Footnote 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 451–52 (1857) , superseded by constitutional amendment , U.S. Const. amend. XIV . Disagreements over slavery and President Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency were the primary causes of the Civil War, which erupted when the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. 14 Footnote Battle of Fort Sumter, April 1861 , Nat’l Park Serv. , https://www.nps.gov/articles/battle-of-fort-sumter-april-1861.htm .

After almost two years of war, President Lincoln issued the “Emancipation Proclamation” by exercising his executive war powers. 15 Footnote The Emancipation Proclamation , Nat’l Archives , https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation . On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which announced his intention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. See Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , Nat’l Archives , https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/preliminary_emancipation_proclamation.html . Although President Lincoln issued the Proclamation in 1863, some slaves in the South did not attain freedom until much later. For example, slaves in Texas attained freedom when Major General Gordon Granger and Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865. Juneteenth , Lib. of Cong. , https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/juneteenth.html . The Proclamation declared that, as of January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” 16 Footnote See sources cited supra note 15. In 1861 and 1862, Congress enacted legislation known as the “Confiscation Acts” that freed slaves that came within Union lines and had been under Confederate masters, but this legislation was ineffective. President Lincoln was initially reluctant to enforce these laws strictly because of concerns that it would cause border states to secede from the Union. See Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 1st Sess. 1313 (1864); Paul Finkelman , Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Limits of Constitutional Change , 2008 Sup. Ct. Rev. 349 , 367–70 (2008) . Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862 via the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act. Act of Apr. 16, 1862, 37 Cong. ch. 54, 12 Stat. 376 . Congress abolished slavery in the territories in the Abolition of Slavery Act (Territories), 37 Cong. ch. 111, 12 Stat. 432 (1862) . The Proclamation did not apply to slaves that resided in “loyal” states that had not seceded from the Union. 17 Footnote Sources cited supra notes 15–16. Nor did it apply to slaves in portions of southern states under Union control. 18 Footnote Id. However, it applied to slaves in most of the rest of the core Confederate states’ territory. 19 Footnote Id.

As the nation approached the end of the Civil War, questions arose about the legal authority for the Emancipation Proclamation; Congress’s power to ban slavery by enacting legislation; and the future status of slaves and freedmen throughout the United States. 20 Footnote See Cong. Globe , 38th Cong., 1st Sess. 1313–14 (1864) . These questions played a prominent role in debates over Congress’s consideration of the joint resolution that would become the Thirteenth Amendment . 21 Footnote See, e.g. , id.

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9 Events That Led to the Civil War

By: Patrick J. Kiger

Published: January 17, 2023

After the American Revolution , a divide between the North and South began to widen. Industrialized northern states gradually passed laws freeing enslaved people, while southern states became increasingly committed to slavery. Many southerners came to view slavery as a linchpin of their agricultural economy , and as a justifiable social and political institution.

Throughout the first half of the 1800s, the nation struggled to manage the clash between these two incompatible viewpoints, working out deals such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 , which sought to balance the number of new free and slave states and drew a line through the nation’s western territories, with freedom to the north and slavery to the south. But in the last decade before war broke out, the conflict gained momentum and intensity. 

“Throughout the 1850s, a series of events increased sectionalism, emboldened southern secessionists, and deepened northern resolve to defend the Union and end slavery,” explains Jason Phillips , the Eberly Family Professor of Civil War Studies at West Virginia University, and author of the 2018 book Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth Century Americans Imagined the Future. “Many of these crises revolved around politics, but economic, social and cultural factors also contributed to the war’s origins.”

Here are nine events from the 1850s to the early 1860s that historians view as critical in the march toward the American Civil War .

The Compromise of 1850

In the wake of the Mexican War , tensions developed between the North and South over whether the western land gained by the U.S. should become free or slave territory. Things came to a head when California sought approval to enter the Union as a free state in 1849, which would have upset the balance struck by the Missouri Compromise several decades before. Senator Henry Clay, a Whig from Kentucky, proposed a package of legislation to resolve the disputes, but the Senate—after seven months of discussions—rejected his proposal.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat from Illinois, came up with an alternative proposal that admitted California, established Utah and New Mexico as territories that could decide for themselves whether to permit slavery, defined boundaries for the state of Texas, abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and obligated the entire country to cooperate in the capture and return of escaped slaves. But the deal only postponed the conflict.

“They didn’t really compromise,” says Michael Green , an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of several books on the Civil War era, including Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War and Lincoln and the Election of 1860 . “They just agreed to disagree.”

The Fugitive Slave Act

An existing federal law, enacted by Congress in 1793, allowed local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners, and imposed penalties upon anyone who aided their flight. But the new version included in the Compromise of 1850 went much further, by compelling citizens to assist in capturing escapees, denying the captives the right to a jury trial, and increasing the penalty for anyone aiding their escape. It also put cases in the hands of federal commissioners who got $10 if a fugitive was returned, but only $5 if an alleged slave was determined to be a free Black.

Northern abolitionists rebelled against the law. After 50,000 anti-slavery protesters filled the streets of Boston to protest the arrest of a Black man named Anthony Burns in 1854, President Franklin Pierce sent federal troops to maintain order and provided a Navy ship to return Burns back to Virginia.

“Northerners who had questioned slavery said, ‘We told you so,’ and those who hadn’t thought to themselves, ‘This is going too far,’” says Green. “It’s a radicalizing moment.” As a result, Massachusetts and other free states began passing “personal liberty” laws, which made it difficult and costly for enslavers to prove their cases in court.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' Is Published

In 1851, author Harriet Beecher Stowe , who was still grieving the loss of her 18-month-old son Samuel to cholera two years earlier, wrote to the publisher of a Washington, D.C.-based abolitionist newspaper, National Era , and offered to write a fictional serial about the cruelty of slavery. Stowe later explained that losing her child helped her to understand “what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is ripped away from her,” according to Stowe biographer Katie Griffiths .

Stowe’s story, published in 41 installments, boosted the paper’s circulation, and a Boston publisher decided to release it as a two-volume novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly sold 300,000 copies in its first year, and the vociferous public debate about the book exacerbated the differences between the North and South. Northerners were shocked by the brutal depiction of slavery, which Stowe had synthesized from published autobiographies of slaves and stories she had heard from friends and fugitive Blacks. In turn, “Southerners react noisily to it,” Green explains. “They’re saying, ‘This is terrible. You’re attacking us. You’re all against us.’” When Stowe visited the White House in 1862, President Lincoln asked, “So this is the little lady who made this big war?”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1854, Senator Douglas, the author of the Compromise of 1850, introduced another piece of legislation “to organize the Territory of Nebraska,” an area that covered not just that present-day state but also Kansas, as well as Montana and the Dakotas, according to the U.S. Senate’s history of the law. Douglas was promoting a transcontinental railroad that would pass through Chicago in his home state. But the envisioned northern route had to pass through the Nebraska territory, a place where slavery was prohibited by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Rivals, including slave owners, wanted a southern route.

To get what he wanted, Douglas offered a compromise, which would allow settlers in those territories to decide whether to legalize slavery. Massachusetts Senator  Charles Sumner , an opponent of slavery, attacked the proposal for creating “a dreary region of despotism.” Nevertheless it was passed by Congress, with cataclysmic results.

“It re-opened that land to the expansion of slavery, and destroyed a long-established political compromise on the issue of slavery in the West,” Phillips says. Pro-slavery and antislavery activists surged into the territories in an effort to sway the vote, and clashed violently in a conflict that became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” which foreshadowed the Civil War.

The Pottawatomie Massacre

One of those who went to Kansas was a radical abolitionist and religious zealot named John Brown , who had worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad and founded an organization that helped slaves escape to Canada. Brown moved to Kansas Territory, where in May 1856, he was angered by the destruction of a newspaper office and other property in Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces. Brown decided retaliation was in order.

At a spot near a crossing on Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin, Kansas, Brown, four of his sons and several others lured five proslavery men out of their houses with a promise that they would not be harmed, and then slashed and stabbed them with a saber and shot them in the head, according to a contemporary account of the attack. Brown’s brutality was denounced by Southern newspapers and by some Northern ones as well, and it “aroused emotions and distrust on both sides,” as an article from the Kansas Historical Society notes. The fighting in Kansas continued for another two years.

The Dred Scott Decision

Dred Scott , an enslaved man, was born in Virginia and later lived in Alabama and Missouri. In 1831, his original enslaver died, and he was purchased by a U.S. Army surgeon named John Emerson. Emerson took him to the free state of Illinois and also Wisconsin, a territory where slavery was illegal due to the Missouri Compromise. During that time, Scott married and he and his wife had four children. In 1843, Emerson died, and several years after that, Scott and his wife sued Emerson’s widow in federal court for their freedom on the grounds that they had lived in free territory.

Scott, who was assisted financially by the family of his original owner, endured years of litigation until the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In an 1857 decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the court decided that Scott was not entitled to U.S. citizenship and the protection of law, no matter where he had lived. In the court’s view, the Constitution’s framers had not intended for Black people to be free, but instead viewed them as property, with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The ruling made further political compromise too difficult.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

Brown dreamed of carrying out an even bigger attack, one that would ignite a mass uprising of Southern enslaved people. On a night in October 1859, he and a band of 22 men launched a raid on Harpers Ferry , a town in what is now West Virginia, and captured some prominent local citizens and seized the federal arsenal there. His small force soon was counterattacked by local militia, forcing him to seek refuge. The following afternoon, U.S. Marines under the command of then-Col. Robert E. Lee arrived and stormed the arsenal, killing many of Brown’s men and capturing him. Brown was tried and charged with treason, murder and slave insurrection, and sentenced to death. He was hanged in December 1859. While the attack failed to trigger the widespread revolt he envisioned, it drove the North and South even further apart.

“Northern abolitionists who preferred pacificism praised Brown as a martyr to the cause of freedom and even helped to finance his attack,” Phillips explains. “Southerners expected more acts of terrorism and prepared by bolstering their militias.” In many respects, Brown’s raid could be viewed as the first battle of the Civil War, he says.

The Election of 1860

Abraham Lincoln , a self-taught lawyer who had served a single term in Congress, emerged in the mid-1850s as an articulate and persuasive critic of slavery, and achieved national prominence with a series of debates against Senator Stephen Douglas in an unsuccessful campaign for Douglas’s seat. When the Republican Party held a convention to nominate a presidential candidate, the chosen location of Chicago gave Lincoln a home-court advantage over more experienced politicians such as Senator William H. Seward of New York.

“When they set up the convention floor, they put Illinois in a spot where they could get to the other delegations that were less committed,” Green says. “The New York delegation, which was supporting Seward, was put in a corner where they couldn’t get out.” That made it difficult for them to negotiate and persuade others to support their candidate. In the general election, Lincoln caught more lucky breaks. After the Democrats were unable to decide upon a candidate, southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while northerners nominated Douglas. Breckenridge and Constitutional Party Candidate John Bell split the South, while Lincoln swept the northeastern and midwestern states except for Missouri (which went to Douglas), as well as Oregon and California to win the presidency despite getting just 40 percent of the vote. “For the first time, the Electoral College worked against the South,” Green explains.

The Formation of the Confederacy

The election of the first U.S. president who was a vocal opponent of slavery came as a shock to Southerners. “Now, there is going to be someone in the White House who is not going to do what the South says it wants done, reflexively,” Green explains. “Their feeling is, no matter what Lincoln says about protecting our rights, he’s not going to do that. We don’t trust him. He’s been elected by people who are out to get us.”

Less than six weeks after the election, the first secession convention met in Charleston South Carolina. About 60 percent of the 169 delegates were slave owners, and they voted unanimously to leave the Union . Local residents celebrated with bonfires, parades and the ringing of church bells. Five more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana—soon followed. Representatives from those six states met in February 1861 to establish a unified government, which they called the Confederate States of America . Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected as Confederate President. Texas joined in March. 

After Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April and Lincoln called for federal forces to retake it, four more states—Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—left the union and joined the Confederacy as well.

Though the Confederacy’s leaders didn’t realize it, they actually were hastening the end of what they sought to protect. “Had they stayed, slavery as an institution almost certainly would have survived much longer,” Green says.

Instead, a four-year, bloody war devastated much of the South, took the lives of more than 650,000 from both sides, and led to the emancipation of more than 3.9 million enslaved Black Americans, in addition to changing the nation in numerous other ways.

HISTORY Vault: The Secret History of the Civil War

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• Background Essay on Why They Fought

This essay explores the motivations of soldiers on both sides of the U.S. Civil War.

For most of the 160 years since the Civil War was fought, what was considered important about ordinary soldiers was that they fought, not what they fought for . In order to promote sectional harmony and reconciliation between North and South after the war, political and social leaders emphasized the valor of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. They chose to remember shared experiences and values like service, military strength, and sacrifice, rather than focusing on the very different political, social, and moral causes for which Civil War soldiers fought. We think, however, that it is critically important to understand why men (and occasionally women) joined their respective armies and engaged in such a long, bloody, and costly conflict. It is clear from soldiers' letters and actions that competing ideas of race, class, and citizenship were central to the conflict. 

One of the enduring questions about soldiers' motivations in the war is  why did so many non-slaveholding white southerners join the Confederate cause ? While it is true that a nascent Southern nationalism played a role for some, understanding the motivations of non-elite white southerners opens a window into mid-nineteenth century ideas about social mobility, class, and race. For white southerners, to get ahead meant to purchase a slave, build up capital, purchase more enslaved people, and to strive towards the economic, social, and political power of the plantation-owning gentry. This is why so many southerners struck out for cheaper lands in newly opened territories, bringing enslaved people and rending enslaved communities in the East, during the 1820s and 1830s; it is why so many supported the war with Mexico in the 1840s and fought bloody conflicts in Kansas in the 1850s. They hoped that new lands would offer new opportunities to get in the slave-holding, plantation-buidling game. This truth about social mobility in the antebellum South, and its dependence on the enslavement of black Americans, explains the quick and fierce loyalty to the Confederate cause on the part of so many poor whites: they fought to preserve slavery in order to preserve their chance to climb the social and economic ladders of their world. Looking at the motivations of white southern soldiers helps students understand the antebellum society they fought to maintain.

When we teach about the motivations of ordinary soldiers, we also see that the North was far from unified in its support for the war. Many disagreed with President Lincoln's aims throughout the conflict—to some he was a tyrant, pushing the nation into a war it did not want, while for others, Lincoln's desire to "preserve the union" did not go far enough in guaranteeing the end of slavery and the citizenship of African Americans. The issuance of the National Conscription Act in 1863 stoked class tensions, as poor and working-class men, many of them immigrants, were drafted into the Union army. Further inflaming tensions was the law's provision that allowed anyone who could pay $300 to avoid military service. In July 1863, violent anti-draft riots broke out in New York City, where a mostly working-class Irish immigrant contingent burned and looted the Colored Orphans Asylum and the draft office, and lynched African Americans. At least a dozen were killed  before the riot was quelled by the arrival of Union troops, weary from their recent battle at Gettysburg. The draft riots underscore that deep divisions of race and class were alive and well in the North, as well as the South, and that the war, rather than solving these problems, exacerbated them.

In  an 1864 letter to Abraham Lincoln , James Shorter, writing on behalf of his fellow soldiers in the 55th Massachusetts regiment, summarized the motivations of many black soldiers: "We came to fight For Liberty justice & Equality" [ sic ]. Although initially denied the opportunity to serve in the Union army, African Americans continually put pressure on government and military leaders to enlist black soldiers. After they were finally allowed to join, more than 200,000 black men signed up. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, refused to accept lower wages than white soldiers were paid. In their letters and acts of protest, black soldiers repeatedly claimed that they were entitled to equal and fair treatment to white soldiers. Further, they affirmed their right to enjoy the full privileges of citizenship because of their shared participation in the military struggle. Black soldiers often pointed out that they did not passively wait for freedom to be granted but, as soldiers, helped to win the war that ended slavery.

In This Collection

Primary documents.

• "Men of Color, To Arms!"
• African-American Victims Describe the New York City Draft Riots
• New York City Police Respond to the Draft Riots
• Congress Issues the Conscription Act
• An African-American Soldier Fights "In Defense of My Race and Country"
• An African-American Soldier Asks for Equal Pay
• An African-American Soldier Writes on Behalf of His Fellow Troops
• "Wanted, a Substitute"
• A New York Rioter Explains His Opposition to the Draft
• A Georgia Soldier Condemns the Exemption of Slaveholders
• "Southern 'Volunteers'"

"Colored Citizens, To Arms!"

Secondary Documents

• Background Essay on the New York City Draft Riots
• Background Essay on the "Twenty Negro" Law
• "Why Non-Slaveholders Fought for the Confederacy"

Teaching Activities

• The New York City Draft Riots: A Role Play
• "In Defense of My Race and Country": African-American Soldiers on Why They Are Fighting
• Who Fought for the Union?
• Who Fought for the Confederacy?

Historical Era

Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)

Slavery and Abolition

African-American Soldiers , Civil War , New York City Draft Riots

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Guest Essay

The New Movie ‘Civil War’ Matters for Reasons Different Than You Think

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

“Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it.

The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong.

Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning.

The reason for a surge in anxiety over a civil war is obvious. The Republican National Committee, now under the control of the presumptive nominee, has asked job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen — an obvious litmus test. Extremism has migrated into mainstream politics, and certain fanciful fictions have migrated with it. In 1997, a group of Texas separatists were largely considered terrorist thugs and their movement, if it deserved that title, fizzled out after a weeklong standoff with the police. Just a few months ago, Texas took the federal government to court over control of the border. Armed militias have camped out along the border. That’s not a movie trailer. That’s happening.

But politicians, pundits and many voters seem not to be taking the risk of violence seriously enough. There is an ingrained assumption, resulting from the country’s recent history of global dominance coupled with a kind of organic national optimism, that in the United States everything ultimately works out. While right-wing journalists and fiction writers have been predicting a violent end to the Republic for generations — one of the foundational documents of neo-Nazism and white supremacy is “The Turner Diaries” from 1978, a novel that imagines an American revolution that leads to a race war — their writings seem more like wish fulfillment than like warnings.

When I attended prepper conventions as research for my book, I found their visions of a collapsed American Republic suspiciously attractive: It’s a world where everybody grows his own food, gathers with family by candlelight, defends his property against various unpredictable threats and relies on his wits. Their preferred scenario resembled, more than anything, a sort of postapocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie.”

We’ve seen more recent attempts to grapple with the possibility of domestic conflict in the form of sober-minded political analysis. Now the vision of a civil war has come to movie screens. We’re no longer just contemplating a political collapse, we’re seeing its consequences unfold in IMAX.

“Civil War” doesn’t dwell on the causes of the schism. Its central characters are journalists and the plot dramatizes the reality of the conflict they’re covering: the fear, violence and instability that a civil war would inflict on the lives of everyday Americans.

That’s a good thing. Early on when I was promoting my book, I remember an interviewer asking me whether a civil war wouldn’t be that terrible an option; whether it would help clear the air. The naïveté was shocking and, to me, sickening. America lost roughly 2 percent of its population in the Civil War. Contemplating the horrors of a civil war — whether as a thought experiment or in a theatrical blockbuster — helps counteract a reflexive sense of American exceptionalism. It can happen here. In fact, it already has.

One of the first people to predict the collapse of the Republic was none other than George Washington. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations,” he warned in his Farewell Address. “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature.” This founder of the country devoted much of one of his most important addresses, at the apex of his popularity, to warning about the exact situation the United States today finds itself in: a hyper-partisanship that puts party over country and risks political collapse. Washington knew what civil war looked like.

For those Americans of the 1850s who couldn’t imagine a protracted, bloody civil war, the reason is simple enough: They couldn’t bear to. They refused to see the future they were part of building. The future came anyway.

The Americans of 2024 can easily imagine a civil war. The populace faces a different question and a different crisis: Can we forestall the future we have foreseen? No matter the likelihood of that future, the first step in its prevention is imagining how it might come to pass, and agreeing that it would be a catastrophe.

Stephen Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

Source photographs by Yasuhide Fumoto, Richard Nowitz and stilllifephotographer, via Getty Images.

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• world affairs

Reflecting on Sudan’s Civil War One Year Later

Amel Marhoum works for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Before the war transformed Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, into a battlefield she lived there with her family. Starting on April 15, 2023, during the last days of Ramadan, heavy gunfire and shelling trapped countless families, including her own, in their homes with dwindling supplies of food and water. A year later, every segment of Sudan’s population, from pastoralists in rural areas to the country’s once thriving urban middle-class have been impacted. This is Amel’s reflection on how the war has changed her, her country, and her work.

Before the fighting truly began, there were indications in Sudan that a minor conflict was brewing, but not a full-fledged war.   I still feel like it is a dream—or more-so a nightmare. I keep thinking tomorrow I’ll wake up and things will be fine. But things are not fine. 

April 14, 2023  felt like a normal Ramadan night. We had our  suhoor   (early morning meal before sunrise)   and hours later the war erupted. That Saturday morning, April 15,  I was sleeping, which tells you just how peaceful and calm the day started out.

I was not prepared for what happened next. The sudden sounds of heavy artillery, airstrikes, and shelling were unimaginable. I had never heard sounds like this in my life.

As a Liaison Officer at UNHCR, I’m the kind of person who’s quick to react and take action. I could make only a few phone calls to relatives, friends, and colleagues before there was no connection. This was one of the big challenges at the time—not knowing what was happening to people. Equally challenging was helping colleagues find cash, fuel, and buses so they could leave Khartoum. I even remember thinking how much of a miracle it was when the UN convoy arrived at the city of Port Sudan on April 24. People were scrambling to leave any way they could.

A week later, as the most senior national staff member, I was put in charge of UNHCR’s office in Sudan. The phone didn’t stop ringing. We were a team of six, and our role was to help our staff and refugees move out of hotspots to safer zones—a difficult task because, in our area, the shelling was very heavy. My colleagues were terrified. Some needed money to movetheir children to safety, and some were stuck in areas where we couldn’t reach them. Every day, we would wake up and find that our neighbors’ houses were gone, and people were dead. 

I thought the fighting would last for a week or two, a month maximum, if it even dragged on in the first place. But then there was no food or water, and we were seeing more soldiers in the streets. We reached a point during the fourth week when we really had to leave—and fast.

Read More: Sudan’s Dangerous Descent Into Warlordism

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On the road to Madani, 85 miles southeast of Khartoum, I saw only destruction and death. I can never forget this—it’s like a horror film, but it’s one you can’t switch off. At one point, where we were held at gunpoint, saying our last prayers. But then the soldiers let us go.

On our journey, we reached the house of a family. We didn’t know them, and they didn’t know us. They insisted we stay with them—they brought us food and made the beds for us. In their house was the first time I felt at peace enough to sleep properly.

I set up the UNHCR office in Madani in early May, and then moved to Port Sudan a month later to establish [another]. Later I moved to Ethiopia to support UNHCR teams on the border with Sudan to receive arriving refugees. 

The lives of Sudanese refugees in the countries they’ve fled to are very tough now. Some of us have left without documents. We are without a home, and some have been left with nothing. But as long as there are people who, despite their own worries, are willing to accept us, there is hope. I saw this generosity with the Ethiopian people – their willingness to accommodate Sudanese refugees, despite their own challenges. They opened their borders and accepted us. But it also requires the support of the whole international community and us humanitarian workers. 

I feel I have aged so much this past year. This experience has changed all of us in Sudan. But I still have hope and confidence—in myself, in my family, in my team, in my work, and above all, in my country. 

Sudan is a country that has tremendous resources. I believe this generation and future generations can perform miracles with the right support. 

We can rise again and become better than when we started. This is what keeps me going. — As told to Sara Bedri

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