How Did The Constitution Contribute To The Civil War

The Constitution played a major role in causing the Civil War. One of its biggest impacts on America was creating a division between the states. This dissolution between the states is largely due to varying opinions on the legality and morality of slavery. It was impossible for the nation’s founders to know all of the major issues their nation would face in the future, so the Constitution, therefore, does not address certain topics that would lead to great dispute later on in the country such as whether or not slaves should be considered people or property. The Constitution was also vague or able to be interpreted in multiple ways in some areas about that, therefore, lead to debates, some so large that states began to secede. In addition to
As the question of slavery became more prominent, Congress became more evasive on whether to declare their new territory as pro or anti-slave states. This lead to many disputes between the anti-slavery North and the pro-slavery South. It was such a big controversy because population size determines the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. This means that if the new territory, shown in Doc A, becomes pro-slavery then the amount of pro-slavery representatives would outnumber the anti-slavery representatives in the House of Representatives, which the North was extremely against. Congress ultimately decided to use a process called popular sovereignty which let the inhabitants of the new territory choose for themselves whether to be free or slave to make it fairer. Yet the North still greatly opposed this because, as Doc B states, the new territory was closer to the South and would be inhabited by primarily Southerners so they would still choose to allow slavery, upsetting the balance between free and slave states. Thus, by not outlining clear rules for new land the Constitution created a divide between the Northern and Southern states over slavery that ultimately lead to the beginning of the Civil