Cause Of War: The Tensions Of The Civil War

The Tensions behind the Civil War
During 1783-1859, before the Civil War, the North and South were slowly drifting apart between their cultural, economic, political, and religious tensions which eventually lead to the American Civil War, but it was ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. Proof of these tensions can be found in many primary sources including: “Slavery a Positive Good” by John C. Calhoun, “The Church and Slavery” by Albert Barnes, “A Debate on Slavery” by Nathan Lewis Rice, “My Bondage and My Freedom” by Frederick Douglass, and “The Young Abolitionists; Or Conversations on Slavery” by J. Elizabeth Jones. In the end, all of these disagreements about the rights of states led to the Civil War.
The main tension causing area
The South was mostly Baptist and the North was mostly Catholic. Though the war itself was mainly fought over slavery, the motivation behind it was people’s faith. Soldiers not only prayed before, during and after battles, but they were allowed to have their bibles with them. While the South tended to turn to religion when the movement of ending slavery came up, they believed that slaves were sent from God to serve white man, though they often justified their beliefs and actions through Bible verses. They deemed that slavery was actually helping spread Christianity and that they were if fact helping these slaves, because they were gave them food and clothes. Their defense for their religious views of slavery being God’s plan for the nation was that Southerners treated the slaves as part of their Christian communities by teaching them about God and worshipping with them. They made their power over the slaves seem like power of parents instead of masters. While the North believed that God viewed slavery as morally wrong and wanted an end to it according to the Bible, yet they could not really prove this idea without discrediting the Bible. The North shared a common view of the Civil War being caused so American can recognize the fault of the founding fathers and get back to idea of freedom through a Puritan lens, not a naturalistic lens. This prompted the Northern view that God had a plan for a unified American and He was going to find a way to settle the war. Both sides had growing differences due to the fact that each side viewed that their society was the best option a republic through Christian virtues. Each feared that the other threatened liberty and order brought upon by