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Vf,nYINB VIEWPOINTS The Civil War: R€pres'dible or Irrepressib

f]ew topics have generated as much controversy among I American historians as the causes of the Civil War. Interpretations ofthe great conflict have naturally differed according tosection and have been ehdi$dwith both erno- tional and moral fervor. Yet despite long and keen interest in the origins of the conflict, the causes olthe Civil War remain as passionately debated today as theywere a cen- tury ago.

The so-called Nationalist School of the late nineteenth century typiflpd by |ames Ford Rhodes, claimed that slav- ery caused the Civil War and credited the conflictwith ending "the peiuliar institution" and preserving the Union. But in the early twentieth century, progressive historians such as Charles and Mary Beard argued that the war was not fought over slavery per se, but rather was a deeply rooted economic struggle between an industrial North and an agricultural South. Anointingthe CivilWar "the Second American Revolution," the Beards claimed that the war transferred the dominantclass power in America from the southern plantation aristocracyto the rising class ofnorth- ern industrialists.

Shaken bythe disappointing results of World War I, a newwave of historians argued that the Civil War, too, had actually been a big mistake. James G. Randall and Avery Craven asserted that the war had been a "repressi- ble conflict" and they attributed the bloody confrontation to overzealous reformers and blundering political leaders.

Following the Second World War, however, a neona- tionalist view, echoing the earlier views of Rhodes, began

'"fupicti hC,Civil War as'anu'navoidable conflict ' .befweeh two'societies, one slave'and one free. For Allan Nevins and David M. Potter, irreconcilable differences in morality, politics, culture, social values, ind ecdnomic systems increasingly eroded the ties between the sec- ' tions 6nd inexorably set the United States on the road to Civil War.

Eric Foner and Eugene Genovese have emphasized each section's nearlyparanoid fear that the survival of its way of,life was threatened by the erpansion of the other section. In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (1970), Foner emphasized that most northerners detested slavery not

' because it enslaved blacks but because its rapid extension threatened the position of free white laboreri. Genovese has argued that the South, convinced tliatits labor system was superior to the northern factbry qystem,

' saw northern designs to destroy theirway of life lurking at every turn.

More recently, historians of the "Ethnocultural School,' espeeially Miehael Holt, have offered a different analysis of

" hsw'the.coitlap6eo,f e two established politicalparties r taused,the.eivil War. ftey note that the two great political parties.had eadier.rnuted sectional differences over slavery , b'yfoeusing on issues,such asthe tariff, banking, and interne,l: improvernents. Accordiag to this argument it was the tempo. rary consensus on almost all national issues other than slaverl that enabled the slavery issue to rise to the fore. Slavery fueled the rise of purely regional parties that saw their politi- cal.opponents as ttueats to their way of life, even to the life of the Republic itself.