What roles did slavery play in causing the American Civil War?
In recent times, with the controversy over the Confederate battle flag, this question has become rather controversial and different people might give different answers to it. My own view is that slavery was a major cause of the war for the Confederacy but not a major cause of the war for the Union. That is, the South was generally motivated by the desire to preserve slavery but the North was not generally motivated by the desire to abolish it.
The South seceded from the Union largely because it felt that the institution of slavery was no longer safe in the United States. To see how this is so, look at the following link, where you can find South Carolina’s declaration of the factors that led it to secede. That document mentions slavery on numerous occasions and complains of the fact that Abraham Lincoln, “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to...
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slavery,” had been elected president. The South felt that their states’ rights were being infringed upon, but the only right they feared being deprived of was the right to hold slaves.” In short, then, the South seceded largely because it wanted to preserve the slave system and felt secession was necessary to accomplish this.
By contrast, the North was not bent on abolishing slavery. Instead, Northerners were more interested in confining slavery to the South and in keeping the Union together. The North was certainly opposed to the spread of slavery, and this brought it into political conflict with the South in a number of instances. These conflicts helped bring about the war. However, the main goal of the North going into the war was not to end slavery. President Lincoln famously said in a letter to Horace Greeley that his goal was to save the Union and that he would be willing to free all of the slaves, some of the slaves, or none of the slaves in order to achieve that goal. Clearly, the North did not go to war to end slavery.
My view, then, is that slavery helped cause the Civil War by driving a wedge between the two regions. Furthermore, it was a major cause of the war for the South since the South seceded to preserve slavery. However, the North did not go to war because of slavery but rather out of a desire to preserve the Union.
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