The issue of slavery was a crucial factor in the North and South going to war in 1861 because those in the Southern states had relied on agrarian methods to maintain their livelihood such as tobacco, sugar and cotton. Southern cotton plantations held global dominance in the industry due to their unmatched efficiency and the use of slaves maximised profits. However, slavery cannot be seen as solely responsible for the North and South’s war in 1861. A key attributing factor was sectionalism, which led to secession and conflict following the rapid territorial expansion in the United States during 1846 to 1854; states had different agendas, environmental circumstances and beliefs regarding their rights. This was a key issue stemming from the formation …show more content…
This authorised federal marshals posses to pursue fugitives on Northern soil and targeted not only recent escapees but also those who had run away decades before the Act was enforced. Those who did not join would also receive a $1000 fine which is equivalent to about $38,355 today with inflation. According to to historian Alan Farmer, the Fugitive Slave Act was slightly controversial and displeased many moderates and abolitionists in the North; this is supported by the Burns Affair of 1854 when a Boston mob broke out and resulted in the death of a guard in an effort to rescue the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns. A number of free states such as Vermont and Wisconsin also passed new measures to nullify the law such as by forbidding the use of state jails to imprison alleged fugitives; this made it difficult for federal law to be enforced. Moreover, abolitionist efforts to help fugitives escape to Canada increased in Northern communities. This resistance brewed resentment in the South despite the law being enforced in most of the 16 free states without further issues. This evidence supports Spicer’s argument (Appendix 2a) as despite the 1850 Compromise terms being made to protect the North and South’s stately rights and prevent secession, there were still issues linked to slavery following the creation of the Compromise which arguably exacerbated the issue by igniting Northern sympathy for fugitive slaves; this can be seen in the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was a novel published in 1851 by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Appendix
Slavery, political tension, disagreements between the north and south and the split opinions about Abraham Lincoln were components that contributed to the start of the American Civil War. These factors were the catalyst in the beginning of the Civil War. Slavery was the most influential factor that contributed to the beginning of the Civil War. The North’s support to abolish slavery in all American states was viewed as a violation of constitutional rights by the South, thus creating an extreme hatred between the two sides, and ultimately beginning the Civil War. The south, or “the great cotton empire”, was dependant on slavery to keep the large cotton plantations in business.
However, slavery was their biggest issue. The North’s ignorance of the South’s reliance on slavery had caused much tension between them throughout the years. Slavery led to the start of the Civil War because of slave vs. free states, tech advancement, and sectionalism. One of the main reasons was Slave vs free states, which was also the first piece of thread from the ball of chaos. “... the original thirteen states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
This labeling of slave owners as immoral and unjust leaves little to no room for compromise. While this was the Anti-Slavery Society Convention, it should be significant that there are people in the North who hold these beliefs. The presence of these beliefs allows for them to spread and grow throughout the
Slavery played a central role during the American Civil War. At this time, the primary catalyst for secession was slavery especially due to the resistance of leaders in the Southern politics through attempts by the antislavery political forces of the North to block the slavery’s expansion into the western territories. According to the SCWE, the lives of slaves went through significant changes. In the South, for example, the broad areas of the land were taken control of by the Union Armies. During the war, an active role was played by the slaves in their emancipation.
The first main cause of the Civil War was economic differences between the Northern and Southern states. During the first few decades of the 19th century, the North had an industrial revolution that brought an economy that relied on laborers. While at the same time, the South continued to rely on slaves for their farming and the production of cotton. The Northerners did not need slaves for their economy, but the Southerners could not make any profit without cotton or slaves. In the 1860’s, the North had twice as many railroads as the South, and the South had a bigger cotton production because of their slave population (Document A).
The North and South were divided on whether or not slavery was permitted to exist. When the Missouri Compromise was made, it maintained balance by “allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine as a free state”[4]. Such balance was vital, because in the perspective of the North, the better the containment of slavery in the south, the less of a chance that it could spread. Furthermore, in terms of sectional tensions, the Missouri Compromise proved adequate short term. It’s advocation of the rights of citizens gave the people of Missouri the option to create a state government that could “write a state constitution that would permit slavery”[2].
In the piece, Oakes points out that there were unintended consequences of slaves running away to the North, consequences that would later lead to the abolishment of slavery. During this time thousands of fugitive slaves came to the Northern state. Favor to the new fugitive’s union legislature make new laws which apparently created conflict with the southern law. As Oakes stated, “Where northern law presumed that black people were free and so granted them certain basic civil rights, southern law presumed them, slaves. To protect northern free blacks from kidnapping by fugitive slave catchers, northern states established legal procedures for determining whether a slaveholders’ claim of ownership was valid” (Oakes, 95).
The Civil War Era was an extremely pivotal and revolutionary time in American History. Even as one nation, the separation between the South and North were becoming increasingly noticeable and tensionable, thus the Civil War Era. It has been noted that one of the driving factors behind the cause of the Civil War were the increasingly different economies between the North and South. The North and South had a symbiotic relationship with one another so as the driving forces behind the economies of each grew apart and their fundamentals started differ, problems arose. One of the main dilemmas being slavery, and its impact on the economy.
The need for more slaves after the switch from tobacco to cotton perpetuated an economic battle between the North and the South. Even though the Northern states utilized the raw materials from the South, in trying to deny the South slavery, the North could gain an economic advantage over the Southern States. Between 1774 and 1804, the Northern states abolished slavery. However, the “peculiar institution” remained vital in the South. The “peculiar institution” is a euphemism for slavery and its economic ramifications in the South.
‘Slavery was the root cause of secession’. ‘November 6 1860, Lincoln was elected president of America which resulted in panic emerging in the South’ . The election of Lincoln as president who was a Republican leader meant that ideologies, movements and values from the North would be implemented in the South which meant the abolition of slavery. Slavery was a huge characteristic of the South as the economy; politics; social status and psychological mind-sets were influenced by the process of slavery. The southern white population then derived the idea of secession which meant the South would gain independence from Northern aggression .
Notably, economic causes were major predicaments during the American civil war. These were the grounds of the civil war that affected the two regions in many ways. Within time, economic variations developed vastly between the two parts of the two regions. The Southern states depended much on farming than in industrialization. After the invention of the Cotton Gin, there as a greater necessity for persons and property, thus this made cotton the chief year’s produce of the South.
It’s 1852, an anti-slavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which created such a stir when it was published in 1852 that Abraham Lincoln reportedly called Stowe "the little lady who made this great war!”. It has set sales records. In addition, it is the second-best-selling book in America However, after decades of legislative conflict the novel has widened the division between North and South recently, such popularity has brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved. In the North, many people are scared, anti-slavery reformers, that were once disunited, has jumped aboard the "Uncle Tom" movement. So did politicians, which also ignited more controversy in Congress, lead by slavery's opponents and by its supporters.
Prior to the novel’s publication, pre-civil war America had already been facing tensions between the north and the south since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. A later turning point of the time was the Compromise of 1850 preventing further expansion of slavery to new American territories but fortifying the Fugitive Slave Act making fugitive slaves return to the south. When Uncle Tom’s Cabin was initially published in 1852 the American public had finally become aware of the horrors behind slavery and incidentally, demanded its abolition in the north while protesting the novel as slanderous in the south. Understanding the history surrounding the novel will help students to better grasp Stowe’s intentions for writing the novel (to uncover the truth behind slavery) while also putting themselves into the perspective of american citizens at the time who read the book for the first time and why it was so
To a greater extent, slavery was the greatest cause of the outbreak of the civil war in 1860. Disputes of slavery caused economic and political troubles between the northern and southern states leading up to the civil war. The fact the the northern and southern states were different in almost every way caused them to turn out like completely different territories, one of their greatest differences was the fact that most southern states economy relied on hard labour, agricultural jobs like tobacco in Maryland, and cotton in Virginia; this caused their economy to be more based on the labour of slaves than the more developed territories in the north (Harrold), who after this time was starting to not need the slave labour in their territories because after early 1800’s, the industrial revolution had been spreading to America, and the country developed very quickly. But in this expansion, only the north states were getting the effect of the industrial revolution, meaning the north would not need slave
“Uncle Tom´s Cabin” is a profound novel in American literature and history because it brought forward a new ideology with regard to the national view on slavery, and change the cruel system that treated black people as property. This epic making narrative was seen as an inspiration for humankind because it set the grounds for the American Civil. Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), published the text in March 1852 as a response to the “Fugitive Slave Act” that had been passed two years earlier, and in which it was considered a criminal act to help or aid any escaping slave; this brought great outrage among the citizens and transformed the novel into the most prolific anti-slavery text in American history. The foregrounding for the novel´s narrative framework is constructed with the help