Brian Holden Reid - The Origins of the American Civil War

The Origins of the American Civil War

ORIGINS OF MODERN WARS

General editor: Harry Hearder

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The Origins of the American Civil War

BRIAN HOLDEN REID

First published 1996 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge
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Brian Holden Reid 1996

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-49178-6 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reid, Brain Holden.
The origins of the American Civil War / Brian Holden Reid.
p. cm. (Origins of modern wars)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-49177-0 (CSD) ISBN 0-582-49178-9 (PPR)
1. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865Causes.
I. Title. II. Series.
E459.R45 1966

Set by 7

To Charles Roskelly

In this volume Dr Brian Holden Reid has given an account of the Origins of the American Civil War based on important original research and interpretation. It is thus a significant work of scholarship, besides being a valuable addition to the series. It is the fifteenth volume in the series, and the third to deal with a civil war.

Perhaps more terrible than any war in Europe between Waterloo and 1914, the American Civil War caused immense loss of life, human suffering and material destruction. Responsibility for this massive struggle cannot easily be traced. On the one hand, Dr Holden Reid makes the general statement that wars have frequently resulted from a series of well-intentioned acts, and such was the case in 1861, but he has earlier reminded us that whatever the strength of public opinion, and electoral shifts of opinion, it is the action the decisions taken by politicians which determine the chain of circumstances that result in war or peace. The politicians themselves could not, of course, foresee the full consequences of their actions, nor did they always express their motives honestly or explicitly. There were unspoken assumptions. The role played by unspoken assumptions in policy-making was first suggested by James Joll, whose Origins of the First World War was one of the first two volumes, with Ritchie Ovendales Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars, to be published in this series. Two fine historians who wrote early volumes in the series James Joll, and William Carr, who wrote The Origins of the Wars of German Unification are sadly no longer with us: their two books have been immensely important in giving weight and authority to the series.

Certain factors which seem to be common to most, if not all, wars are present in Dr Holden Reids history. There was the belief that the war would be a short one. In one sense the belief lessens the responsibility of the makers of war, but in another sense it underlines their lack of imagination. The men of 1914 cannot be blamed for failing to foresee the horrors of the Somme, but they can be blamed for lightly assuming that they could win the war quickly. The men of 1861 had no precedent on which to assess the nature of a great civil war, but they perhaps assumed too lightly that war was the only path open to them. Jefferson Davis, Dr Holden Reid tells us, said that he would rather appeal to the God of Battles at once than to attempt to live longer in such a union. The remark is reminiscent of the medieval concept of ordeal by fire. It is nevertheless not so cold-blooded as Bismarcks comment that German dualism has regularly adjusted relationships in a radical fashion by warfare and there is no other means in this present century by which the clock of development can be made to show the correct time. That warfare is a necessary component of progress is an ugly doctrine, but it is certainly arguable that the victory of the North over the South in the American Civil War marked a triumph of a more advanced form of civilization over an inhuman one. Does this, however, mean that a terrible civil war was the only way of telling the time, to use Bismarcks metaphor? The question raises the argument over inevitability, which has often arisen in the volumes of this series. It is a question about which Dr Holden Reid has much that is interesting to say.

There is an intellectual excitement to be enjoyed in the reading of this book, with its exploration of the origins of a war which provided one of the most important chapters in modern history.

HARRY HEARDER

Sir Llewellyn Woodward, in a preface to his short History of England (1947), wrote that writing a short history of a country with much to record is like trying to pack the crown jewels into a hat-box. Writing an account of a great subject like the origins of the American Civil War, which has inspired some of the most distinguished historical writing of the twentieth century, is likewise akin to trying to cover the Statue of Liberty with a tarpaulin. Consequently, this book is not a comprehensive history of the