The Statesian Civil War was a civil war between the Statesian government (the Union) and the reactionary secessionist Confederate States of America (CSA) from 1861 to 1865. When the war began, 286 out of over 1,000 Statesian officers joined the Confederate Army.[1]:133
Background
Conflict between North and South over slavery began almost immediately after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The North officially abolished slavery in 1804, though using gradual emancipation laws that kept young Africans enslaved as late as the 1850s.[2] The industrializing North had little use for slavery, which was unprofitable for manufacturing. Unending streams of European immigrants to the North (in large part sourced by enclosure acts like those in Scotland in the early 1800s)[3] provided a huge reserve army of labor cheaper than what it would cost to buy, care for, guard, and educate slaves.
Even agricultural regions in the North were ill-suited to slavery, as wheat crops were seasonal and slaves would need care year round. In the North, slavery wasn't abolished on a moral level, rather it was simply less economical than "free" labor from a reserve army of labor. This meant that the economic bases of the political estates in the North and South began to considerably diverge. The conflict between these political estates is characterized by the problem of whether slavery would expand to the new territories westward.
As territories began to become states, these political estates maintained a balance with the Missouri Compromise in 1820. This legislation ruled that slavery would not spread north of the 36º 30' latitude line for the new territories and that an equal number of free and slave states would enter the union, guaranteeing an equal number of senators for the northern and southern estates.
This political balance was once again disturbed by the acquisition of new lands westward, this time annexed from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-Statesian War. The new western land demanded that the question over slavery should be settled in the Kansas and Nebraska territories in preparation for the building of railroads. The political conflict resulted in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, with its infamous "popular sovereignty" provision that directly contradicted the previous Missouri Compromise. The white men living in a territory would now themselves vote on becoming slave or free states. This resulted in the Bleeding Kansas border war, with pro-slavery "border ruffians" and anti-slavery forces flooding into the Kansas and Nebraska territories to sway the vote.[4] The guerrilla warfare between these forces, culminating in John Brown's attempt at slave revolution in Harper's Ferry in 1859, soon exploded into full-blown civil war.
In early 1861, several southern states of the USA seceded to form the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln succeeded James Buchanan as President of the United States in March. The CSA seized the army base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina in April 1861, beginning the war.[1]:133
Indigenous involvement
Most of the Confederate officers had fought against indigenous nations in settler colonial wars.[1]:133 The Union also oppressed indigenous peoples and took almost 500 million acres of their land with the Homestead and Pacific Railroad Acts. Most of this land went to large owners and speculators instead of individual families.[1]:140–1
West
The Dakota people of Minnesota were starving by 1862 and began a revolt against the settlers. The Union crushed them and hanged 38 in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. John Chivington's volunteers killed 133 Cheyennes and Arapahos on the Sand Creek reservation. Colonel Patrick Connor massacred the Shoshone, Bannock, and Ute in Nevada and Utah. James Carleton fought against Cochise, the leader of the Apaches, in Arizona. He enlisted Kit Carson, who forced 8,000 Navajo people to march 300 miles to a concentration camp in the New Mexico desert. A quarter of them starved to death.[1]:136–9
Southeast
The southeastern natives (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, Seminole), who had been forced to move to Oklahoma during the 1830s, were split along class lines, with a tiny slave-owning elite supporting the Confederacy and the majority staying neutral. Stand Watie of the Cherokee became a general in the Confederate army, but many natives also fought against the CSA.[1]:134–5
Progressive role
The Civil War began as a war against separatism, and Lincoln did not initially want to abolish slavery. Later, when slaves and former slaves entered the Union army, they turned the war into a revolution against slavery.[5] After many slaves had already escaped to the North, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and allowed them to serve in the Union army.[1]:135–6
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: '"Indian Country"'. [PDF] Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. ISBN 9780807000403
- ↑ “Pennsylvania passed its Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. Yet, as late as 1850, the federal census recorded that there were still hundreds of young blacks in Pennsylvania, who would remain enslaved until their 28th birthdays.”
Nicholas Boston and Jennifer Hallam (2004). "Slavery and the Making of America" Thirteen PBS. Retrieved 2023-09-04. - ↑ “As for a large number of the human beings expelled to make room for the game of the Duke of Atholl, and the sheep of the Countess of Sutherland, where did they fly to, where did they find a home? In the United States of North America.”
Karl Marx (1853). The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery. New York City: New York Daily Tribune. [MIA] - ↑ "The Kansas-Nebraska Act". United States Senate. Retrieved 2023-09-04.
- ↑ Domenico Losurdo (2011). Liberalism: A Counter-History: 'Crisis of the English and American Models' (p. 166). [PDF] Verso. ISBN 9781844676934 [LG]