In his article, What Caused the Civil War?, Edward L. Ayers unpacks the different views regarding, as the name suggests, the cause of the Civil War. He recounts an episode of the Simpson's where an individual taking his citizenship test attempts a lengthy explanation of the Civil War and is told by the official to "just say slavery."
While this explanation is somewhat accurate, historians are not satisfied with it. There are two approaches to correcting faulty thinking regarding the cause of the Civil War. The fundamentalists, who emphasize the conflict between free labor and slave labor, point to a struggle over the future of the United States and a struggle between slavery and freedom. The revisionists tend to emphasize slavery less and focus more on events and political structures, like the fragmentation of the Democratic party and the election of Abraham Lincoln. In both approaches, slavery plays a role, but much more predominately in the fundamentalist argument.
The Civil War was caused by small steps that led to big, unforeseen consequences. Slavery was a large part of the problem. But it was not slavery that caused the Civil War. Confusion and misunderstanding between the North and South played a role. The collision of politics and slavery steered the country to war, with print being a catalyst. The action and reaction of people in the North and South to these events brought on the Civil War.
History does not have simple answers for why something happens and simple answers should be avoided. We need to understand the society which is being studied as a whole.
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