Historiography of the Causes of the Civil War

Abstract

Civil War historiography is usually reserved for the pages of academic journals. But a series of events in 2017, amidst the ongoing debates about the removal of Confederate monuments, thrust the discussion about the Civil War's causation onto the front pages of newspapers and news websites. First, in an April 2017 radio interview, President Donald Trump questioned why politicians could not find a compromise to avert the Civil War. In October of the same year, President Trump’s then-chief of staff John Kelly expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War….” The front-page news underscored what historian Charles B. Dew acknowledged was “probably the most hotly debated issue in American history.” This paper seeks to summarize the major trends in the historiography of the causes of the Civil War, while also acknowledging that the secondary sources are massive. Only a small sample of the many thousands of histories can be presented here.