Conflicting visions: The American Civil War as a revolutionary event

Abstract

There has been a renewed interest on the part of economic, political and social historians in the significance of economic factors in causing the Civil War. This research has emphasized the ways in which the emergence of a “market revolution” in the North exacerbated political and economic differences between the Free and Slave states. Our argument focuses on how a particular aspect of the growth of a market society — what we term the “life-cycle transition” — transformed the way in which people in the North viewed their economic “strategies”. This new economic vision produced a political economy that was increasingly at odds with the economic vision of a slave South. The paper addresses six key areas of policy where these “conflicting visions” produced tensions: land policy, internal improvements, banking, education, immigration, and tariffs. We conclude by showing how the cumulative effect of these tensions reinforced the South's commitment to a philosophy of states' rights that ultimately led them to seek dissolution of the American Union.

Citation

Ransom, R.L. and Sutch, R. (2001), "Conflicting visions: The American Civil War as a revolutionary event", Research in Economic History (Research in Economic History, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 249-301. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0363-3268(01)20008-1