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How Did The North Lead Up To The Civil War

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How Did The North Lead Up To The Civil War
Many factors caused the lead-up to the Civil War. The country's tension was high before the Civil War began for many different reasons that contributed to the Civil War. The tension was high due to many massacres and laws that even heightened the tensions between the North and the South states. South states believed heavily in slavery and wanted to keep slavery around strongly and firmly since the South depended on slaves to do agricultural work. However, the North believed that slavery was bad and believed in slavery being abolished. Although they still believed in keeping racism and segregation, the North still wanted to free slaves. Over time, the tension bubbled up so high that eventually, the country broke apart fighting. The fight was …show more content…
To get the South in his favor, Douglas compromised with the South and introduced an act that would divide the remainder of the unoccupied Louisiana territories into two new territories and would allow each territory to decide whether it would be a slave territory or a free territory. The act passed and became a legal law. Northerners were furious that the act was passed, they believed that the Kansas-Nebraska Act shattered the peace and did not want the decision of whether it was a slave state or free state to be decided by popular sovereignty. Northerners were the opposite of the South in their beliefs and although the North also wanted change, they wanted it to change in a different direction. Although the North did not take as much action as the South, Northerners had many abolition groups and beliefs, and those groups had an immense number of people in them. Northerners, outraged about the act that broke the delicate balance between slave states and free states, tried to get Kansas to be a free state. Northerners rushed anti-slavery supporters to Kansas to vote for Kansas as a free …show more content…
Article 4 made sure Congress couldn’t outlaw the transport of slaves from one state to another. Lastly, article 5 secured the right that the federal government would pay full compensation to slaveholders for slaves that slaveholders had lost because of abolitionists. This plan failed because Lincoln opposed the plan and took action to eliminate the act. Lincoln gathered a committee of 13 with 7 democrats, five republicans, and one constitutional unionist and passed a motion that the Crittenden Compromise could not be adopted unless supported by the majority of democrats and republicans. On January 16, 1861, the Crittenden Compromise was voted down in Senate, with all 25 Republicans voting no to 23 yes votes. Yet another attempt at peace was the Washington Peace Convention on February 4, 1861, where delegates from 21 of 34 states met in Washington. Many of the delegates came in the belief that they could be successful, others, from both sides, came simply to watch for their interests. The convention met for three weeks, and it created a 7-point constitutional amendment that was similar to the Crittenden

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