The compromise of 1850 was the first reason the Civil War was caused. The Compromise of 1850 was a solution to California’s wanting to enter the union and ended up upsetting the balance between slave and free states. On the website American Historama it says “The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to smooth out the confrontation between the slave …show more content…
In 1859, John Brown, a strong abolitionist, lead 18 people and raided Harpers Ferry in an attempt to get weapons. Though John Brown was executed for his action, it demonstrated that Northerners were willing to fight for there cause. John Brown’s raid is a cause of the war because it panicked the Southerners who thought Northerners were out to kill all of them. It states in the book The American Vision that “For most Southerners, however, Brown’s raid was all the proof they needed that Northerners were actively plotting the murder of all slaveholders” (Appleby 301).
The civil war was also caused by the expansion to the west. Expansion to the west was a cause of the war because as it expanded, the government had to decide if slavery was allowed in the west. In the website history.com, it states that “In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had attempted to resolve this question: It had admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the fragile balance in Congress” (History Staff). If there was no expansion west then the issue of free to slave states wouldn’t have been a problem.
Slavery was a fundamental cause of the Civil War. Although slavery was not the only cause of the Civil War, there were other causes too, like state rights and the interpretations of the constitution. The issue of slavery caused the Civil War by motivating the Compromise of 1850, John