Causes of the Civil War

Causes Of The Civil War

The Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1877, was mainly caused by the diverging society between the North and the South. The North and the South had different goals. There were many factors that led to the war and the chief ones were political decisions, morality of slavery, and economic differences between the North and the South.

A cause of the Civil War was that the economy was splitting. As said in document 2, the slaves were needed to work on plantations, which helped the South prosper in cotton production. But the south needed a lot of manufactured goods that the North made because the south didn’t have factories to make guns, ammo, textiles, and many other things. As a result of this, the South had to pay a tariff on everything they got from the North. Which meant the north basically made the laws now. Before Lincoln took office, seven states had declared their secession from the Union. South Carolina was the first to secede on December 20th 1860.

The issue on slavery was one of the causes of the Civil War. Slavery and slave trades had become a big part of the South’s economy. During the 19th Century, the North worked hard on abolishing slavery, which they thought was a disgrace to the Union. Compromises were proposed working toward an end to slavery. One of the compromises was the Missouri Compromise, which made Maine, a free state, and Missouri, a slave state, and everything above the 36° 30 north latitude free. Other compromises such as the Compromise of 1850 did please both sides. The Compromise included admitting California as a free state and interstate slave trade to be abolished which went in favor of the North. The Compromise also went with the South when it included stricter fugitive slave laws in document 7, the Kansas Nebraska Act, made it possible for new states to decide if they were going to be free, or slave states. The North and the South were far from settling the slave issue.

Another reason that caused the South to go to war was the difference in economic policies. The North was expanding more in the commercial and industrial side while the South was reliant on agriculture. The South only produced manufactured goods for consumption and the North was able to export manufactured goods. The taxes and tariffs were unfair to the South. The Tariff Act of 1832 put high import fees on all European manufactured good, which was established to protect the Northern industries. The South’s reaction to the Act was a threat to secede from the Union. The Northeast traded with the West while the South can trade only by sea.

In politics, the North had an advantage over the South. The North was more populated than the South, and only counting slaves was about 88% of the South’s total population. Although slaves were only counted as 1/2 of a person. Since the House of Representative was based on population representation, the increasing population in the North gave them a big majority over the South. In the North, they strongly believe that majority rules and that they should make and execute the laws. This can be seen in document 11. The Lincoln and Douglass election is an example. They are both from the North, but the South wanted Douglas to win because he was for popular sovereignty. In the end, Lincoln won because the Democratic Party was split up, and the Southerners were just outnumbered. There were good reasons that the South entered the war. The North had been going over the line, trying to take away their state rights. The South, which was dependent on slavery, would have been devastated if slavery was abolished.

So in conclusion these are the causes and events that led up to the Civil War, the economic differences, the morality of slavery, and political decisions.