by Jerry Curtis

Created on: March 12, 2009

Slavery as a legal institution was abolished as a direct result of the Civil War. The demise of this "peculiar American institution" was made official by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed by Congress in early 1865 and ratified by the individual states by December 6, 1865.

By the end of 1865, the Civil War was over and the North's victory settled the perplexing and irreconcilable question of whether a country founded on the principles of freedom and equality could countenance human bondage. As America's "original sin," slavery would poison our politics, interfere with our country's westward growth and institutionalize an implacable Southern aristocracy of planter politicians who would, ironically, (correctly) view slaveholding as their sacred right and freedom protected by the US Constitution.

Did the controversy and sectional struggle over slavery cause the Civil War? It was not the single cause. There were others: the growing industrial and population disparity between the North and South, strong feelings of "union forever" (in the North) and "states rights" (in the South). But the problem of slavery seemed to be a pervading issue on which, like today's argument over abortion rights, our leaders could not come to a consensus.

Slavery, then, was both an emotional and important economic issue. Thomas R. Flagel in his book "The History Buff's Guide to the Civil War" (Cumberland House, Nashville:2003) puts it this way:

"Concerning the American Civil War, armed conflict erupted when one section split away and the other resisted. The departing section left to protect, among other things, a third of its wealth, over half of its labor force, its primary vehicle for economic opportunity, and its fundamental definition of social structure - in other words slavery. (24)"

President Lincoln deftly used the slavery issue by making its abolition a Union war aim. In 1863, when the outcome of the struggle was far from settled, Lincoln took advantage of the Union (quasi-) victory at Antietam by publishing his Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "All persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

Before the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union focus was simply to quell a rebellion of secessionist states. Lincoln knew that if he could tap into a reservoir of passionate abolitionist feelings in the North

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