The Civil war was a defining event in American history, but it’s hard to know how the calamity came about. Many historians have cited grievances as the cause, but that theory has been criticized in recent years by economists who have found that low incomes make it easier to mobilize insurgencies. They argue that the main problem is that economic development limits opportunities for armed conflict and that this limit is more important than differences in ideological commitments or cultural preferences.
In the mid-1850s, political parties that had previously pursued compromise to maintain their northern and southern wings began to break apart. The Whig Party collapsed, and the Republican Party emerged as an explicitly anti-slavery force. By 1860, Northern voters had elected President Abraham Lincoln without a single Southern vote, and the states of the South (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) voted to secede from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America.
As the war escalated, the Confederate States faced a crushing Union military superiority. Their leaders’ determination to fight was weakening, especially after a series of Union victories won by General Ulysses S. Grant at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga in 1862-1863. By the fall of 1864, the Union army was pressing the Confederacy from the east and west. Despite a sagging economy, the South had more than a million military-age white men and could mobilize them on a massive scale.
