The American Civil War and the independence of the Southern States
- The superiority of the white race as compared to the black race
- The white slaveholding master perceived as an aristocratic ideal
- Protection of the rights as sovereign states
- The system of slavery from an economic perspective
Although historians now agree that there were many causes for the American Civil War, one of these causes remains the desire of the Confederacy to defend the institution of slavery against what they perceived to be an attack by the Northern states. By electing Lincoln as President, the South believed, the North had asserted its power and its desire to end slavery (even though Lincoln never publicly expressed a desire to end slavery outright), and so they were forced to drastic action which led, eventually, to their total defeat, and no doubt accelerated the complete end of legal slavery. The reasons the South was forced to cling so self-destructively to the defense of slavery are complex and varied.
[...] Pole, J. R. The Pursuit of Equality in American History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. [...]
[...] So much of their society and sense of self- worth depended upon the peculiar institution, they could not afford to feel it threatened at all. Works Cited Blumrosen, Alfred W. and Ruth G. Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc Johannsen, Robert W. "Stephen A. Douglas and the South." The Journal of Southern History 33 (February 1967): 26-50. Phillips, Jerry. "The Theory of the Master Class: A Veblenian Perspective on the Antebellum South." International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 13 (Spring 2000): 499-513. [...]