Analysis Of Michael F. Holt's The Political Divisions That Contributed To Civil War

Michael F. Holt, in his article The Political Divisions That Contributed to Civil War, argued the American Civil War was caused by the breakdown of the two-party political system, which generated a local loss of faith in the entire political system, justifying the creation of a new political system in the South. It was the agency of individuals attempting to solve their political grievances. While Bruce Levine, in his article The Economic Divisions That Contributed to Civil War, maintained unresolvable economic divisions between North and South made the Civil War inevitable, as the two different economies could not indefinitely coexist. While the conflicting economies of the North and the South played a major role in fashioning the war,

Levine noted, “The richest 5 percent of northern adults held more than half the regions total property.” In the South “the chasm separating the average slaveholder and the average farm-operating nonslaverholder in the cotton kingdom was huge.” The southern economy was based heavily on slavery and slave labor, but even with production increasing, the percentage of southerners who owner slaves had been declining. Levine indicated, “a shrinking portion if the southern whites owned slaves: 36 percent in 1830…and only 26 percent by 1860.” The class divisions in each economy were very similar. The northern economic system produced a struggle between worker and capitalist, while it was between rich whites and poor whites in the South. In fact, prior to the war, poor northerners were often attracted to the platform of Democrats from the South. However, the split during the Civil War did reflect these economic imbalances, as one might expect. The poor did not unite against the rich; instead they joined both the Union and Confederate armies voluntarily in great numbers. Holt pointed out, “[T]he rank and file of each army was overwhelmingly composed of farmers, skilled workers, and urban and rural laborers.” The poor non-slaveholding whites were increasingly receiving a disproportionate piece of the southern slave economy and had “to compete with slaves as well as poorly

Both sides desired a republican form of government. Each wanted a political system that would “protect the equality and liberty of the individuals from aristocratic privilege and…tyrannical power.” (404) However, the north and south differed greatly in “their perceptions of what most threatened its survival.” (404) The secession by the south was an attempt to reestablish republicanism, as they no longer found a voice in the national stage. Prior to the 1850s, this conflict had been channeled through the national political system. The collapse of the two-party system gave way to “political reorganization and realignment,” wrote Holt. The voters of the Democrats shifted their influence toward state and local elections, where they felt their concerns would be addressed. This was not exclusively an economically determined factor. It displayed the exercise of agency by individual states. Holt pointed out, “[T]he emergence of a new two-party framework in the South varied from state to state according to the conditions in them.” (406) The “Deep South” was repulsed by the “old political process,” most Southerners trusted their state to be the safeguards of republicanism. (404) They saw the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, a member of the “the anti-Southern Republican party,” as something the old system could not