The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War

TEN: Conclusion

TEN/Conclusion itudy of the Panic of 1857 does not dislodge the primacy of slavery as the cause of the American Civil War.' Following the monetary collapse, the all-absorbing topic of debate continued to be slavery throughout the North and the South. The Panic of 1857 reintroduced some economic programs into political discussion, but, except in Penn sylvania and New Jersey, these economic concerns failed to generate a 1. The statement that slavery was ultimately the cause of the Civil War is simply my general understanding of the current historiographical trend in antebellum American scholarship. To say that slavery caused the Civil War, however, is not to say how slavery caused the Civil War—whether by economic confrontation, cultural antagonism, political machinations, or the like. See Eric Foner, "TheCauses of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions," CWH, XX (1974), 197-214; Eric Foner, "Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the American Civil War," in George M. Fredrickson (ed.), A Nation Divided: Problems and Issues of the Civil War and Reconstruction (Minneapolis, 1975), 15-34; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The South and Three Sectional Crises (Baton Rouge, 1980), 1-7 and passim. There have been recent attempts to explain the origins of the Civil War without emphasizing the slavery issue: Ronald P.Formisano . The Birth of Mass Political Parties, 5-8, 244,326-29, stresses the rise of ethnocultural politics in the North, the spirit of anti-partyism, and anti-southernism; Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, 2-10, ingeniously and persuasively argues that the collapse of the second party system ended the ability of American politics to contain the slavery issue; and Joel H. Silbey, "The Surge of Republican Power," 199-299, theorizes that the growth ofevangelism in the North drove southerners to fear that northerners sought to impose Yankee standards on the southern mode of living—a fear of cultural imperialism. There are merits in all these interpretations, but also some difficulties as well. Why northerners would be anti-South without reference to slavery begs elucidation. Although the demise of the Jacksonian party system may have indeed enabled slavery to become the dominant national issue, it still needs to be demonstrated why the elevation of that subject was so inherently dangerous that it could wreck a government . And one could quite easily explain southerners' fear of the meddling nature of northern evangelism precisely because that cultural disposition of the Yankees threatened to meddle with slavery. A 262 / The Panic of 1857 response that in any sense rivaled the popularity of the slavery extension issue. Indeed, most politicians used the resurrected economic issues as a means to buttress their convictions for or against slavery; very fewindividualsjettisoned the subject in order to entice the public into their ranks on the basis of simple regional self-interest. Even in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the People s party sought to merge, not separate, the ideals of protectionism and antislavery. But if the Panic did not change the basic nature of the sectional controversy, it did direct attention to one of the most salient features of that debate—the fate of the laborer. Many of the specific effects the Panic of 1857 generated in the political realm grew out of the different experiences of the sections in adjusting to economic adversity. The crash originated in the reduction of European demand for American breadstuffs because of the end of the Crimean War, an economic circumstance that was abetted by some unsound American banking practices. Out of the recession that followed the monetary suspension came certain facts which no one disputed. The Great Lakes region was the area most severely affected by the monetary failure, and the troubles of westerners were quickly passed to those enterprises in the East that depended upon western sales. The South almost totally escaped the ravages of the Panic. Indeed, many Americans acknowledged that the South was seemingly impervious to economic fluctuations and that the prosperity of the Atlantic economy rested upon southern production of cotton.2 Undoubtedly the Panic of 1857 did contribute to the South s exaggerated estimation of the power of cotton in world commerce, but this development did not necessarily encourage secessionist dreams. The Panic of 1857 probably deflated the economic rationale for secession. At first various southerners manipulated the economic and social results of the monetary collapse to flaunt before the North the material richness of their unique civilization, the most flamboyant example being the "Cotton is King"oration ofJames...