American 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 36Ð'o 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