Civil War Problems

The problems that eventually caused the Civil War had been brewing since the formation of the United States. It became a perfect storm; everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. One issue in particular, slavery, had been contentious since the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787. Slavery was an issue of economy and political influence at the time but became integral to the southern economy in 1794 with the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin dramatically decreased the cost of cotton production and thus dramatically increased the demand for the free labor provided by slaves. Because the profit margins were so high, southern planters focused more of their resources on the production of cotton making slavery more
The three-fifths clause of the constitution states that each slave would count as three-fifths of a person. This clause was included in the constitution as a compromise with the southern states. The south wanted each slave to count as one person because they wanted more influence in the House of Representatives. The northern states claimed that slaves should not count as people at all because they were technically property. This clause created the foundation for the tensions between the north and south because it shows the importance of slavery in the south for both influence in government and for its economy. The compromise allowed the south to push for increased slavery because it would give them greater influence in government. When the removal of slavery is discussed, because of the south’s over-reliance on the cotton trade,saw this discussion as an attack on their way of living and an attack on their influence in government. In addition to the Constitution, The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 further increased the tensions between the north and the south as the new states in the Northwest Territory were not to have slavery at all. This upset the south because they would be losing influence in Congress because slave states would be in the minority. The Legislative branch further limited slavery by enforcing the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves. This act prohibited the importation of slaves from
In the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, the chief justice declared that Dred Scott could never be freed because of his location since he was technically property and not a citizen. According to the Constitution, the federal government did not have the ability to restrict property rights in the states. This decision resulted in southerners believing that the federal government had no right to free any slaves at any point because they were property not United States citizens. The decision implied that since slaves could never be U.S. citizens, they were not awarded the rights laid out in the constitution. Many northerners were outraged because they believed that slavery was prohibited by law in the declared states but, due to this decision, those laws were negated. The Supreme Court ruling on Prigg v. Pennsylvania not only established federal law as superior to state law but also negated the idea of sectional slavery. The court in Prigg ruled that slaves, if caught after running away from a slave state to a free state, were not free; they would have to be returned to their original owners. This decision was disheartening for northern abolitionists as they pushed for increased freedoms for fugitive slaves and made the north compliant to the issue of slavery. The question of the