The U.S. citizenship test – which immigrants must pass before becoming citizens of the United States – has this question: “Name one problem that led to the Civil War.” It lists three possible correct answers: “slavery,” “economic reasons” and “states’ rights.”
But as a historian and professor who studies slavery, Southern history and the American Civil War, I know there’s really only one correct answer: slavery.
1862 photo of enslaved people and soldiers on a plantation, standing for the camera.
Enslaved people and soldiers on a South Carolina plantation in 1862. Henry P. Moore/LOC/Archive Photos via Getty Images
White Southerners left the Union to establish a slave-holding republic; they were dedicated to the preservation of slavery.
What’s more, unlike slavery in the ancient world, slavery in the United States was based on race. By the time of the Civil War, Black people were the ones enslaved; white people were not.
