Forces Are Mounting for a Civil War

Already familiar with the history, it seems odd for me to talk about the reasons why America was plunged into the Civil War in 1861. That said, as we approach this era in history, I'd like to take some posts to gather some thoughts and analyze how past movements in American history that we've already studied contributed to the outbreak of bloodshed. Throughout the week, I will be focusing on a different aspect for each day. Today, I will talk about idealism.

~ Idealism ~
Around this period is the explosion of conflicting idealisms radiating from Europe. These mostly arose from a clashing between the lower and upper class during the Industrial Revolution. We don't cover them very much in the American history curriculum, but they play a crucial role in dividing American society leading up to the outbreak. Idealistic movements were generally pioneered by philosophers and were graciously adopted by the polar ends of society: the filthy rich and the dirt poor. However, the idealistic movements were not strictly economic; they spanned social and political realms as well. To make it simple, we can plot ideals on a spectrum.

To the far left is communism, formulated by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto. In a communist society, there is no sense of private property or real ownership; everything is collectivized, nationalized, and ownerless. The communist movement, though, was not readily considered to be feasible by political contemporaries of Marx, mainly because he envisioned it as a collective movement in which the bourgeois would be swiftly overthrown, followed by the middle class. This premonition seemed overly utopian and unreasonable. A rather similar cousin of communism was thus adopted by social reformers: socialism. Socialism is similar to communism in that there is a loose understanding of property and ownership. In a socialist society, the government owns everything. Political and economic theorists foresaw peaceful societies in which competition was minimized and wealth disparities were nonexistent.

On the other side of the spectrum was ultra-conservatism. This was characterized by aristocratic wealth-holders dominating society, working off the naturally selective nature of capitalism to favor the rich and to make the poor poorer.

The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were the ultimate characterizations of a shift in sociological distribution: empire was falling apart and the individual was prospering. Instead of wealth being held in the pinnacle of society, a successful middle class was forming and wealth was beginning to scatter. Democracy was also on the rise, at this time.

Now, bringing it back to America, no such movement was alive in such a gigantic or uniform sense. There were, however, propulsions in society that saw the redeeming value of the individual over the success of the state. This leftist ideology, initially popular in New England, was slowly leaking across state borders. Perhaps the ideals of "equality for all" stemmed from these social movements and contributed to the heated debate over slavery, which ultimately was the prime initiator of the Civil War.

The right-wing ultra-conservatives that dominated southern plantations argued that black slaves needed to be subjugated in order to perpetuate the success of the economy. This was a characterization of the ideal that the success of the state and the concentration of wealth in the aristocratic classes was necessary to the success of society. It was southern aristocratic slave owners that also pushed for state sovereignty and the weakness of the federal government, which would help to uphold antiquated social orders.

On the other side, democratic moderates pushed for a stronger central government that almost eliminated states rights and placed the individuality of the citizen over the success of the economy.

Ultimately, while there were many contributing factors that led to the Civil War, conflicting ideals was surely a strong force in pushing the young nation into war.