Guest Blogger: Mackubin T. Owens on the 150th Anniversary of the Start of the Civil War

Mackubin T. Owens / April 12, 2011

The Civil War began one hundred and fifty years ago today, when Confederate soldiers fired on the Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Tensions were high in the months prior to the battle at Fort Sumter, as President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office and seven southern states seceded. To discuss the Civil War, we sat down with Mackubin T. Owens, professor at the Naval War College and expert in military history.

Q: Professor Owens, what was the primary cause of the Civil War?

Owens: The proximate cause of the war was the Southern states’ attempt to break up the Union and Lincoln’s refusal to acquiesce to the Union’s destruction. For Lincoln, the American Union was a means to an end—the survival of republican government. Secession struck at the very heart of republican government. As Lincoln said in his First Inaugural, secession is essentially anarchy, and no republican government can survive if the principle of secession is accepted.

But the reason behind secession and the deeper cause of the war was slavery. All disagreements between the North and the South were rooted in the issue of slavery. In 1860, the Federal government had no authority over slavery in the states where it existed.  (more…)