The Political Origins of the Civil War

, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 8– 13 doi: 10.1093/oahmag/oar006 © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Between late January and Election Day of 1860, 23-year-old Charles O’Neill, Jr. of New Haven, Connecticut spent his free time practicing military maneuvers. But he was not preparing to face the Army of Northern Virginia — the Civil War didn’t start until April 12, 1861. O’Neill, an elected fi rst lieutenant of the Washington Wide Awakes, a Republican Party – affi liated paramilitary campaign organization (Figure 1), was instead readying for electoral battle against Democrats like the rival Douglas Invincibles. To the young laborer the torch-lit processions, serenades, and occasional brawls were an important part of the most important political campaign of his life: “ You may imagine me in a silver and green cape, blue lantern in one hand, a yellow cane in the other, trooping though the mud giving orders, fi le left, march, shoulder arms, &c., ” he wrote his fi ancée the week of the momentous election. “ Hurrah for old Abe. We are going to win, true as you live ” ( 1 ). While O’Neill and his men rarely carried a live fi rearm or intended to continue drilling after election day, the very public military display of the Wide Awakes further unnerved Southerners already panicked about the election ( Figure 1 ). Formerly moderate newspapers like the Baltimore Sun splattered their pages with secessionist arguments. In the halls of Congress, Texas Senator Louis Wigfall accused New Yorker William Seward of encouraging his “ John-Brown, WideAwake Praetorians ” to remain organized following Lincoln’s election. “ One half million of men uniformed and drilled, and the purpose of their organization . . . to sweep the country in which I live with fi re and sword ” ( 2 ). O’Neill and Wigfall were hardly alone that fateful year in ascribing particular signifi cance to an election and, to a larger degree, politics in general. After all, it was a political act — the election of Abraham Lincoln, the fi rst overtly antislavery candidate, to the presidency — that sparked fi rst secession and then war itself. While few historians would disagree that the Civil War had important economic, social, and cultural causes, the fact remains that the Southern states didn’t secede because the Jonathan Earle