Most people like to think they are smart and can recognize a good argument when they read or hear one, especially outside of debating with a significant other or politics. That sound arguments change very few minds when it comes to discussing the causes of the Civil War demonstrates how political that topic has become.

I saw a logical argument on Twitter about a year ago which had a profound effect on me and how I viewed discussions of the causes of the Civil War. It goes something like this:

The primary reason for Southern secession cannot have been the protection and extension of slavery into the territories if once a state seceded, fugitive slaves would not be returned and there would obviously be no slaves from that state in United States territories.

As a statement of common sense, it is powerful. Add to it the history of each of the individual state’s decision to secede and slavery was only an object rather than the root cause. Many Southerners resented that some states in the North would not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act but once their state was out of the Union it became a moot point. The chances of getting a slave returned was greater if they stayed in the Union. As well, once a state was out of the Union there was no debate as to whether slaves could be taken to a territory of the United States.

You doubt the argument has merit and it was just made up by Lost Cause advocates after the war? Let me leave you with the words of Thomas H. Benton as described by William Lloyd Garrison in 1857.

“If you dissolve this Union, friends and fellow-citizens, twenty slaves will run away where one does now…If you dissolve the Union, you will bring Canada practically down to the line of Maryland and Virginia…”