Thoughts on the 150-th anniversary of the American Civil War

12-th April is one of the most momentous days in human history. This was the day when guns and canons roared for the first time in what is known to posterity as the American civil war. This year is the 150-th anniversary of that epoch shattering event.

It is a common knowledge that the issue of slavery was the most important issue behind the civil war. However a closer look at the events both leading up to as well as following the war suggests that slavery was just the immediate symbol of more deep causes within the American system at the time.

The American northern states had become industrially developed and dependent upon industries at the time of civil war whereas the American southern states were dependent upon agriculture and more precisely on the crop of cotton. Both the industrial north and the feudal south needed cheap labor for their industries. It was only given that both would ultimately confront for the cheapest source of labor i.e. the slaves. The north needed the slaves as cheap labor for its industries henceforth it had a direct interest in the abolition of slavery in south and direct movement of those slaves to north. The Puritan work ethic prevalent in north which favored self-sufficiency and hard work generally did not consider the slave labor-dependent southerners in very good light.

The southern feudal lords needed the slaves badly for laboring in their cotton and sugar firms and hence forth it was commonplace that they would fight tooth and nail against any movement from north to abolish the slavery.

African-Americans are highlighted as the most important cause behind the civil war yet we often fail to understand that the plight of the African-Americans did not cease to exist as we think after the end of the civil war itself. Not all the northern leaders including the president Abraham Lincoln had believed in the racial equality between the blacks and whites. He had the following to say in the governorial debate for the state of Kentucky in 1858:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]---that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

(Source: http://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/emancipation/docs/fourthdebate.html)

In fact the African-Americans were not emancipated in the north directly at the beginning of the war or some months thereafter. They also did not get voting rights after the civil war as or any times soon afterwards. In fact it seems to me that African-Americans remained the most inconsequential in the American polity even well after the end of the war.

I believe the biggest underlying cause of the war was the conflict between two competing ideologies. The North which had a superior society thanks to Industrialization and the idea of free movement of labor had to come to a conflict against the feudal south which believed in its god-given superiority of whites over blacks.

We will be naive to think that the conflict between those two above mentioned ideologies in America ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at 1865. Now days in America the main issues are immigration and other similar things like outsourcing which are directly derived from the idea of free movement of labor and capital. The opponents to the issues of immigration and outsourcing tend to be protectionists of their own identities of a white Anglo-Saxon America where a certain section of population controls all the opportunites over others. I will not be surprised if the growing chasm between the supporters and opponents of free movement of labor results in the same as it did in 1861 in future.