Of the seven deadly sins, the one that has plagued the United States the most throughout its history is greed.. Greed -- i.e., "the excessive desire to possess wealth or goods with the intention of keeping it for oneself." – can be seen in 1614, when Thomas Hunt sailed to Spain from his expedition in America with a ship packed with Patuxet Indians, bound to be sold into slavery. It can also be seen in 1773 as a major factor of the Boston Tea Party, where King George III was yearning for more control over colonial governments and hungry for the revenue from it. Greed can also be seen in 1830 during the Indian removal act, where President Andrew Jackson (backed by many other white Americans) signed a law that forced the five civilized tribes (Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, and Chickasaw) off of their land and dragged to different territories in Oklahoma. In each of those instances, greed served as the ultimate cause of behavior. Despite the many factors that played a significant role in the American Civil War, greed once again served as the catalyst and ultimate cause of the American Civil War. While anti-slavery movements, the idea of states' rights and the vision of "one union" each represented powerful arguments (or justifications for plunging the United States into civil war), the ultimate cause stemmed from fundamental differences between the "North and South" over control of economic power – i.e., modes of production, property, and money.
The South argued that protecting the integrity of “States’ Rights” served as the primary justification for the Civil War. However, the idea of states rights is rooted in greed – in the effort to maintain or grow economic power. “States Rights” is defined as rights...
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...otal factor that drove North and South to the Civil War. Even to this day, greed continues to plague Americans and it can be witnessed in many instances. For example the AIG bailout, which displays the problems that arise from greed for money (and in the bankers’ cases, power as well) in America. Or some Americans’ objection to Mexican immigration due to the argument that they are ‘taking our jobs’, which is very similar to those who were anti-slavery in the North. In the end, Money – or the accumulation of material wealth – must never trump our sense of humanity. Greed – whether in the form of economic power of a nation, profit for a corporation, or lifestyles of the rich and famous – should never take precedence over our core spiritual values. The Declaration of Independence reflected this in part: “All men are created equal…” All human beings are created equal.
On the question as to whether states’ rights was the cause of the Civil War, Dew references a speech made by Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, during his inaugural address as one that “remains a classic articulation of the Southern position that resistance to Northern tyranny and a defense of states’ rights were the sole reason for secession. Constitutional differences alone lay at the heart of the sectional controversy, he insisted. ‘Our present condition…illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established’”(13).
Slavery was merely one of the causes of the Civil War. Some historians argue that the political difference between the North and the South is a more influential cause of the Civil War while some insist that economic is the main cause. In fact, the political division between the North and the South was affected by the differences in the economic system of both. The North and the South had had different economic backgrounds that were established since the American colonial period. These economic differences from the colonial period brought about the political division that was based on preserving each other’s own wealth or property and eventually caused the Civil War.
First, the South couldn’t have won the civil war because state’s rights prevented unification of the South. The very issue that created the Confederacy helped to destroy it. In waging war, the South faced problems of politics and government that greatly complicated its problem of economic mobilization. No one would deny the troublesome effect of the conflict generated by differing ideas of how best to protect liberty and to organize southern society for the war effort. Southern people insisted upon retaining their democratic liberties in wartime, which proved fatal for the South. They had to struggle with a “confederacy formed by particularistic politicians [that] could hardly be expected to adopt promptly those centralists polices which victory demanded” (Donald, p. 26). Individual state governors fought bitterly with Jefferson Davis to prevent him from consolidating power to fight the war. They withheld troops and supplies while the Confederate Congress spent its time arguing over the rights of the states instead of prosecuting a war of national survival. Many internal conflicts within the South were acquiring and weakening the South’s unity. Internal conflicts caused confederate officials to choose between moving troops from the coasts and strengthening their armies, or leaving the...
One of the most convoluted themes in history is that of the meaning of war. The American Civil War specifically offers many differing explanations as to the true cause for which over 600,000 men dedicated and lost their lives. The Civil War was particularly so, in that there was no universal acceptance of the objectives or causes of the war from either side. Leaders from the Union and the Confederacy delineated distinctly different reasons for fighting, magnifying the hostility between the two regions both before and during wartime. The Confederacy insisted that, based on overwhelming sentiments, its secession was an inevitability that was within the bounds of constitutional law. The South justified this secession and subsequent violence by claiming that the federal government had become tyrannical and was infringing on state rights. In the years leading up to the Civil War, a matter that was pertinent for both sides was the issue of the implementation of slavery into newly admitted states as the nation expanded westward. The subject of slavery in this instance was more political than it was moral, as the issue revolved around the concept of representation in Congress. The North focused its efforts on preventing the union from dividing into separate factions. From the Union standpoint, the Civil War represented a fight to protect the union of the states and the future of democracy for the entire world. The Civil War, for both the Union and the Confederacy, was a fight for the preservation of each side’s conception of legal and natural rights as they pertain to liberty for all.
For generations students have been taught an over-simplified version of the civil war and even now I am just coming to a full understanding of the truth. The civil war was a terrible rift in our nation, fought between the northern states (known as the union) and the southern states (the Confederate States of America). The people’s opinions were so divided over the issues of the civil war that, in some families, brother was pit against brother. Eventually, the south succumbed to the north and surrendered on April 9th, 1865 but not before the war had caused 618,000 deaths, more than any other war in U.S. history.(1) In truth, many believe this horrible war was fought purely over the issue of slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not denying that slavery was a major cause and issue of the civil war, but social and economic differences as well as states’ rights were just as important issues and I will be discussing all three.
The war is the unfolding of miscalculations." -Barbara Tuchman Lasting from 1861 to 1865, the Civil War is considered the bloodiest war in American history. However, the Civil War had seemingly been a long time coming. There were many events that took place within the fifteen years leading up to the Civil War that foreshadowed the eventual secession of seven “cotton states” from the Union.
The American Civil War was the bloodiest military conflict in American history leaving over 500 thousand dead and over 300 thousand wounded (Roark 543-543). One might ask, what caused such internal tension within the most powerful nation in the world? During the nineteenth century, America was an infant nation, but toppling the entire world with its social, political, and economic innovations. In addition, immigrants were migrating from their native land to live the American dream (Roark 405-407). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousand African slaves were being traded in the domestic slave trade throughout the American south. Separated from their family, living in inhumane conditions, and working countless hours for days straight, the issue of slavery was the core of the Civil War (Roark 493-494). The North’s growing dissent for slavery and the South’s dependence on slavery is the reason why the Civil War was an inevitable conflict. Throughout this essay we will discuss the issue of slavery, states’ rights, American expansion into western territories, economic differences and its effect on the inevitable Civil War.
The North and South had totally different cultures and economies making their opinions on certain topics vastly different, hence contributing to the start of the war. The Southern state’s economy relied on the use of slaves to run their plantation system that produced mainly tobacco and cotton. “The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately” (The American Civil War). Therefore the South was thriving economically. “With different geographies and climates, the North and the South developed very different economies and lifestyles” (Biel 11). The Northern economy was based on free labor and was able to abolish slavery due to a great amount of immigration due to the potato famine in Ireland. This caused the North and South to be vastly different in moral beliefs. The North became enlightened on the horrors of slavery through literature such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe which describe the mistreatment of slaves, this learning experience led to the abolit...
From it’s colonization, America had seemed to be a willingful advocate of slavery. As the 19th century began, it became apparent that Southern States, economically dependant on agricultural business and “King Cotton” continued to work enslaved Africans while the Northern States turned the other cheek. As time went on, Northern citizens and Southern citizens in a once-unified country came into conflict in several different ways. The three main causes (Infringement of civil liberties, infringement of states’ rights, and the economic and moral issues of slavery) made the conflict between the South and the North impossible to resolve, resulting in the inevitable Civil War.
The Civil War was caused by a myriad of conflicting pressures, principles, and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences and pride, and set into motion by a most unlikely set of political events. From the colonial period in America where the institution of slavery began, through the period of the revolution whereby blood was shed to validate the notion that all men were created equal (yet slavery existed in all thirteen colonies), to the era of the Civil War itself, it is undoubtedly clear that the main causative factor of the war was slavery itself. With that said, it is the objective of this brief essay to shed light on three of the causative factors that led to the Civil War while subsequently considering the question of whether or not the conflict solved any of the issues that contributed to the war.
Although the American Civil War mainly occurred because of slavery, the fact is that slavery had a lot to do with economic and social issues.
...ch allowed Jackson to use force to collect revenues. The tension between South Carolina and the federal government, were eased through a gradual reduction of the tariff, proposed by Henry Clay, which allowed manufacturers time to adjust. The issue of states’ right had grown out of the southern perception of the federal government promoting commerce and northern interests. A push against manufacturing and a focus on the promotion of agriculture, in the south led to the election of Andrew Jackson, and limited the power the federal government had accumulated, and a return to the greater liberty in the south. The liberty the south sought to have more control over their economy, shared similar values to the northern push earlier to protect manufacturing. The largest institution that stood in the way of complete economic liberty was the Second Bank of the United States.
The saying “money is the root of all evil” applies strongly in the making of the civil war.
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
What is civil war? Many people have this question. Some are wrong, and some are right. Civil war is caused through one countries internal issue (Civil War Causes Fact Monster). Examples could be: political issue social issues, or even issues of equality between races in one country. Some of these events are the causes of the American civil war. Let’s start with some of the effects of the war.The American civil war was the most costly war ever fought on American soil. It took a long time for the American society to become stable after to the war. Along with that,out of the 2.4 million solders’ that fought in the war, 620,000 of them were killed during the war.Millions were injured (The History Channel Website). Millions of families were affected after this catastrophic event. Millions upon millions of families lost the man of the house to earn money for the family to survive. At this time period, most families depended on the men to provide for the family.