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Credit: pbs.org

We were told in our history lessons that the American Civil War stemmed from the noble intentions of the Union States to end slavery in North America whilst the Southern States opposed as they were of an agrarian society of which cotton and sugar plantations were labour intensive. Well, that is just part of the story. As in any back story to an event in history, there is always money involved.

The Southern States traded cotton to Europe and the rest of the world. They got their other supplies from Europe and the Northern States. The South found imports from Europe to be cheaper than from their counterparts in the North. To protect the local industries, the Union, mostly comprising the Northern states, started imposing a levy on the European imports.

This incurred the wrath of Europe who stopped purchasing American cotton. The South felt bullied. Resentment was brewing.

Meanwhile, in the European continent, the French, the British and the Germans were apprehensive of a stable booming economy in the other side of the Atlantic. After defeating the Spanish and sending their armada packing from the Caribbean, the Americans decreed the Monroe doctrine which dictated that any attack on Northern or Southern American continent by a foreign force would be considered as an invasion on American soil and the Americans would retaliate. This kept their enemies at bay. The enemies thought a divided America would make their task easier. Hence, the wounded foreign powers had all the reasons to instigate hatred between brothers.

In fact, during the Civil War, the French conquered Mexico to put up a puppet leader in Maximilian, who had a cordial relationship with the Confederate States. At that time too, the British tried to checkmate the Americans by placing troops in Canada. Russia, who had a bone to pick with the French-German-British alliance for attempting to break some Balkan and Scandinavian states away from the Tsar kingdom, placed their battleships in America to threaten the potential invaders.

Lincoln, who was no sympathiser of the African slaves' course and had superiority feeling of the white race over the coloured, just wanted to stop slavery and send them all back to Africa. The problem is that the Southerners had invested a lot of money into acquiring slaves. Losing them immediately would be disastrous. The slave owners actually planned to make slaves freemen over time. Making them free would mean that they were paid for their work. Slaves were getting lazy already.

Credit: mycivilwar.com

The threat of the Southern states to leave the Union was the reason the Americans went to war.

War was good for business, especially for the bankers. Financiers from the European continent moved in to support both sides of the Marcus-Dixon line. From then, money dictated the progression of the course of the war. Many new monetary policies were devised to finance the war. Fiat money was printed and legitimised by legislation. National banking system and war bonds were sold to fund the war. The losing party is the general public. They lost their life earnings. Northerners who demonstrated and opposed the war were shot and killed by the Union soldiers. Imagine, shooting your own people to save slaves!

Lincoln made enemies on both sides of the divide; the Southerners for losing, the Northerner businessmen who wanted to make a more significant killing from the South. It seems that John Wilkes Booth was a member of an organisation that wanted to take over America to establish a military government!