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North vs south after the civil war
Political differences between the north and south during civil war
Political differences between the north and south during civil war
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When asked the question; “What caused the civil war?” many people would like to say slavery. Now they are right but they are also only half right. In this essay I’m going to help clear the air on what all caused the civil war like: industry, farming, court arguments, and many other issues. The first conflict of the Civil War that not everyone thinks about is how the two economies differed, North and South wise. As shown in the DBQ document B we can see that the northern states didn’t produce a lot of agriculture. As a matter of fact they didn’t produce any of the countries cotton which at the time was a booming cash crop. The north thrived in industry. They supplied over 1.3 million factory jobs. But a large majority of these factories were cotton factories. Where they made cloth, clothes, etc. I believe that they didn’t want the south to secede because that would almost cripple their economy. …show more content…
In our DBQ (document D) Senator James Hammond is speaking before the US Senate, March 4, 1858.
He explained to the Senate that the income for exported goods (1857) was about $279,000,000. Of that amount he calculated that about $158,000,000 of that amount came from southern goods such as cotton and rice. He ends his speech with “No power on earth dares to make war on cotton. Cotton is King.” The economies of the north and south pushed the nation into separation. It made the south believe that they didn’t need the north to make money and to live, but the north needed the south they needed the income. I can assure you that cash money was a huge part of causing the Civil
War. The north and south have had their differences far before the Civil War. The north wanted a stronger central government, but the south wanted a strong state government. These differences made it hard for them to get along when debating over issues much like the Kansas-Nebraska Act (The Americans page 160). The Kansas-Nebraska act basically took a big territory and split it up into two territories. Making the northern territory, Nebraska, a free state, and a southern territory, Kansas, a popular sovereignty state. The act would ignore the Missouri Compromise. The act became law in 1854. Kansas was a booming territory when it first started out. Antislavery and proslavery citizens settled into Kansas in order to win the vote on slavery. However, thousands of “border ruffians” from Missouri came to Kansas, illegally, and voted it to be a slave state. That caused many antislavery activists in Kansas to group together and start a blood gory fight which is today called “Bloody Kansas”. The final reason and most important to some people is slavery. Slavery in America has been an issue since the founding fathers created the constitution. They knew as a young country they would not survive if they were separated. There was a lot of controversy and tension over slavery. One of the first white abolitionist to take a stand against slavery was John Brown (DBQ Doc I). On October 16, 1859, led a group of 18 men black and white to take over the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His goal was not only to take over the arsenal, but to cause an uprising in the slaves and to free them. Unfortunately however, the slaves didn’t revolt, and John Brown and his men were either captured or killed. John was arrested and putt on death row and was hung for treason. The northern citizens saw him as a martyr or someone who was killed for his beliefs, but the south saw him as a terrorist. The election of Abraham Lincoln pushed the south over the line (Division). Lincoln made in clear in all his debates and speeches that he despised slavery and he wanted to work for civil rights. The south knew that they would lose their way of life if they didn’t have their slaves. 1860 rolls around and it’s Election Day. Abraham Lincoln wins the election beating John Breckenridge with a 180 to 72 electoral vote. Shortly after he was inaugurated he was bombarded with hate letters, but he didn’t let them bother him. Instead he put them in a file labeled “Assassinations”. Then South Carolina announced that it was seceding form the nation it was then followed by 10 other southern states. Five weeks after the inauguration the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
The economies of the North and South were vastly different leading up to the Civil War. Money was equivalent to power in both regions. For the North, the economy was based on industry as they were more modern and self-aware. They realized that industrialization was progress and it could help rid the country of slave labor as it was wrong. The North’s population had a class system but citizens could move within the system, provided they made the money that would allow them to move up in class. The class system was not as rigid as it was in the South. By comparison, the South wanted to hold on to its economic policy. In doing so, the practice of slavery kept the social order firmly in place. The economic factors, social issues and a growing animosity between the two regions helped to induce the Civil War.
Certain situations in history have impacted the future that we have come to know. The Civil War began in 1861 because of how divided they were with decisions that would impact the whole country. They tried to resolve some issues with the three fifths compromise in 1787, but it didn’t last long before both sides feared that one would one day overpower the other.Certain major situations evoked the Civil War. The three primary conflicts between the North and the South that initiated the Civil War were slavery, economic conflicts, and politics.
In the 1860’s the United States weren’t united because of the issue of slavery. The civil war was never just about getting the union back together, but about making it count and getting rid of slavery. The south wanted their slaves and would say they are “-the happiest, and in some, the freest people in the world”. (Doc 5) However, the north knew that was not true because of Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed it caused some issues. Anti-slavery supporters were not happy because they did not want expansion of slavery, but the pro-slavery supporters weren’t happy because they wanted slavery everywhere for sure. (Doc. 7)The Kansas-Nebraska act caused trouble before it was even passed, Senator Charles Sumner argued against and attacked pro-slavery men causing Preston Brooks to beat Sumner with a cane. The south praised Brooks while the north felt for Sumner. (Doc 8) In 1858 during his acceptance speech Lincoln said his famous line, “A house divided
The American Civil War was caused because of the North and South differences in economies, disagreements about abolishing slavery and whether the state or federal government had more power. These three factors played a key role in America's deadliest war. Understanding the causes of the Civil War is important because the war was one of the most important events in our nation's history. After the Civil War all men were truly created equal, it reunited the country as one, and redefined what it meant to be an
There are various explanations as to who and what really caused the Civil War. It is even fair to say that sometimes morals stand in the way when deciding who really started the war. Therefore, the facts must be analyzed clearly and in depth. It is true that the north played a major role in the Civil War, however, the south would not release their strict traditional beliefs of slavery. As time progressed, slavery debates pressured the South more and more to stand by their strict beliefs. Fugitive acts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Secession all showed how the south used brutal methods to preserve slavery. Therefore, since the popular sovereignty doctrine, the pro-slavery souths’ strict use of slavery and decisions to secede from the nation, angered the north, leading to a civil war.
Since the beginning of their new nation, the United States had many differences between the Northern and Southern states. During the Constitutional Convention they disagreed on how to determine their representation in the house based on population; the Southerners wanted to count their slaves and the Northerners did not, which lead to the three-fifths compromise. Later in the Convention there were concessions given to the South, which left the Northerners feeling uneasy, such as: a guarantee that the slave trade would not be interfered with by Congress until 1808 and slave owners were given the right to recover refugee slaves from anywhere in the United States. While many Northern delegates were disappointed with the rights given to the South, they felt it was necessary for the good of the Nation. This was necessary to form a strong central government and union between the states.
The South was fighting against a government that they thought was treating them unfairly. They believed the Federal Government was overtaxing them, with tariffs and property taxes making their lifestyles even more expensive than they already had been. The North was fighting the Civil War for two reasons, first to keep the Nation unified, and second to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the commander and chief of the Union or Northern forces, along with many other Northerners, believed that slavery was not only completely wrong, but it was a great humiliation to America. Once we can see that with these differences a conflict would surely occur, but not many had predicted that a full-blown war would breakout.
In conclusion the election of Lincoln as president in 1860 caused a civil war because it was falsely perceived by the south that Lincoln would threaten the state’s constitutional right to slavery. This false idea was due to a rift between the northern and southern states in both an economic and ideological manner. That is the north was based on industry and generally was opposed to slavery. But the South was an agricultural society which ran on slavery and, due to Nat Turner’s Insurrection and John Brown’s stand at Harper’s Ferry, was fearful of the north’s involvement in the governing of states as well as being opposed to this on the basis of state’s rights. The election of Lincoln caused the south to succeed from the union causing civil war.
In the years paving the way to the Civil War, both north and south were disagreeable with one another, creating the three “triggering” reasons for the war: the fanaticism on the slavery issue, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the separation of the Democratic Party. North being against the bondage of individuals and the South being for it, there was no real way to evade the clash. For the south slavery was a form of obtaining a living, without subjugation the economy might drop majorly if not disappear. In the North there were significant ethical issues with the issue of subjugation. Amazing measures to keep and dispose of subjugation were taken and there was never a genuine adjusted center for bargain. Despite the fact that there were a lot of seemingly insignificant issues, the fundamental thing that divided these two states was bondage and the flexibilities for it or against. With these significant extremes, for example, John Brown and Uncle Tom's Cabin, the south felt disdain towards the danger the Northerners were holding against their alleged flexibilities. The more hatred the South advanced, the more combative they were to anything the Northerners did. Northerners were irritated and it parted Democrats over the issue of bondage and made another Republican gathering, which included: Whigs, Free Soilers, Know Nothings and previous Democrats and brought about a split of segments and abbreviated the street to common war. Southerners loathed the insubordination of the north and started to address how they could stay with the Union.
The Southern and Northern states varied on many issues, which eventually led them to the Civil War. There were deep economic, social, and political differences between the North and the South. These differences stemmed from the interpretation of the United States Constitution on both sides. In the end, all of these disagreements about the rights of states led to the Civil War. There were reasons other than slavery for the South?s secession. The manifestations of division in America were many: utopian communities, conflicts over public space, backlash against immigrants, urban riots, black protest, and Indian resistance (Norton 234). America was a divided land in need reform with the South in the most need. The South relied heavily on agriculture, as opposed to the North, which was highly populated and an industrialized society. The South grew cotton, which was its main cash crop and many Southerners knew that heavy reliance on slave labor would hurt the South eventually, but their warnings were not heeded. The South was based on a totalitarian system.
"Causes Of The Civil War." History Net: Where History Comes Alive. N.p., Sept. 2010. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.
Throughout the years, many people have been taught that the reason the Civil War happened, was to abolish slavery all through the United States. Although that is true, there were more reasons why the Civil War occurred.Referencing will be done on different articles and writers to support the findings of the authors. The article “Slavery, the Constitutional, and the Origins of the Civil War” by Paul Finkelman, discusses about the North (union) and the South (confederacy) and the disagreement of the territories following the constitutional laws regarding slavery, the article explores both sides of the territories and their beliefs of how the situation of slavery should have been dealt with. The article “The Economic Origins of the Civil War” by Marc Egnal, discusses the North’s (union) and the South’s (confederacy) economic situation that could have pushed the two territories to engage in war with one another. Finally, the last article “Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the American Civil War” by Eric Foner, focuses on the Norths (union) and Souths (confederacy) views on politics and ideas of how each territory is ran and how they have affected the North and the South. These historians supplied specific and different explanations that explained what exactly caused the United States to enter into a Civil War. With the information provided by the authors, the evidence will lead us to the answer of what caused the Civil War.
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
The Civil War was a battle between the northern states and the southern states. The southern states wanted to secede
The main problem in every event leading up to the Civil War involved the issue of slavery, making slavery the main cause of the war. The initial blame for the war can be pointed at America’s founding fathers who knew slavery violated every aspect of America’s liberty, but yet they still did not prohibit slavery. If it was not the election of President Lincoln that caused South Carolina to secede from the Union, allowing other states to follow, a different event would have triggered the war, making the Civil War inevitable. All in all, the Civil War was bound to happen and it became the bloodiest war in American history.