With the pressure following the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, many northerners opposed slavery and were concerned with the possibility of its expansion. In 1856, these northerners formed a new political party called the Republican Party. Once Abraham Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate, the South began making plans to secede from the union if Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. In the “South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession”, delegates state, “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”15 Thus, proving the North backed the Republican platform while the South followed through with its plan to succeed from the Union. Although many Northerners were opposed to the expansion of slavery and or slavery itself, many still believed in the idea of white supremacy.
Lincoln was a Republican from the North and was against expanding slavery. This would be the first time many (Southerners) would refuse to accept the results of the election. In the end, many of the southern states would withdraw from the union. They would go on to create their own national capitol in the south. They would call themselves the confederate states.
The North was opposed to slavery. They believed that it was unjust to force others to work on someone else’s behalf. However is they chose to work then they deserved some sort of compensation. One last reason why the North did not support slavery was because they felt that African Americans were people and should not be treated like or sold as property.
Secession of slavery and other issues was a major discussion for a long time between the North and South. The republicans appealed to various groups in the North and swore elimination of slavery from territories. The Republican’s believe that a republican president would end the South’s controlling political issues. With the election of President Abraham Lincoln, it seems as if the South felt traded and the North felt empowered.
We can state the obvious, that we are not all perfect, and we certainly say things we don’t mean. Was President Lincoln really a racist? There is documented text that could point evidence that leans in either direction. Things said in the heat of long debates and drawn out conversations that ran for hours, does not make such a monumental man a poor or hypocritical person. Looking at the Constitutional right that “All men are created equal” to the thought that things won’t change without action, and to a man with no moral obligation other than to share his personal option that slavery was wrong, we dive into President Lincoln.
In the months following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, seven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. This was done primarily as a response to Lincoln’s election, as Lincoln did not support the institution of slavery, a crucial aspect of Southern society. Secession from the United States meant that these states would form a separate country from the United States with its own government and military. Some have speculated that secession was failure in democracy, that democracy should have prevented such a large part of the United States to be so unhappy with its government that it would form a new country. However, it was the American system of democracy that laid
However, while the republicans supported self-rule, they also endorsed the ownership of slaves. This is an obvious contradiction as demonstrated by the republicans wanted the federal government to lack authority over them; however, they approved the continuation of slavery. The majority of the supporters were southern landholders and laborers everywhere.
Southerners feared that sooner or later the addition of new free states but no slaveholding states would give control to abolitionists and slavery would be abolished forever. With the south being heavily based on slavery southerners did not like republicans because of their opinions on slavery which was ending slavery, so when Republican Abraham Lincoln won presidency in 1860 it frightened southerners as they feared that their own government was
The Democrats endorsed the “popular sovereignty” approach to slavery expansion that was used in the Kansas-Nebraska act. Their platform stated that new territories should decide themselves whether to be slave or free by popular vote; however, anti-slavery northerners feared that this result in the expansion of slavery further westward, a major fear of the Republican party. The Republican
‘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 .
Secession had been considered for years earlier but officially took place when Abraham Lincoln was elected as the President of the United States in 1860. Lincoln’s main aim was to preserve the Union but the South was upset because Lincoln was against slavery and in the end cherished abolishing slavery. South Carolina almost instantly seceded from the Union after the presidential election and built the Confederate States of America at which point other southern states soon linked. However, there were many causes leading up to South Carolina seceding from the Union. Each state was likely a set of duties they were to fulfill to continue their existence as sovereign states.
After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the rise of the Republican party, Southerners feared the tipping of the balance of political power against them; their need for self-determination parallel the colonists’ belief of rebelling against the oppressive government of Great Britain. However, the Civil War represented something more: the clash of the feudalistic, agrarian South with the industrialized, capitalistic North. These two powers differed socially, politically, and economically, and were especially conflicted over slavery. These two sections of the United States were divided against one another, and could not survive this way. Therefore, it is more accurate to state that though the Civil War resembled some aspects of the American Revolution, it was a clash between two forces who could not exist with one another in their current state, leading inevitably to conflict between the
After the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union. People in the South made a living through a plantation economy, Southerners needed cash crops that were labor intensive, using slaves to work this economy. The Northern economy was very different than the Southern economy the Northern economy was an industrialized economy, unlike the Southern economy. Abolitionists wanted slavery to end and thought it was an immoral and incorrect way to treat other human beings. Many Southerners supported the secession of South Carolina, and many other states, from the Union because they would rather leave the Union now than be killed by the people who hated them and the people they owned.
Abraham Lincoln would lead the Republican Party even though he did not win the south over in the election. He promised that he would save the Union no matter what the cost. This disconnect in policy would later lay the basis for the Civil War, which started in 1861. He never envisioned a proclamation or ending slavery but he was ultimately committed to saving the Union from the succeeding south. Lincoln gave into the antislavery Republicans toward the end of the war and finally decided to make slavery the true basis of the war.
Constitution and altered it by explicitly protecting the institution of slavery. This peculiar institution was what made the Confederacy unique. Sectionalism over economic, social, political, and constitutional issues regarding slavery continued from Buchanan’s inauguration in 1857 until secession after Lincoln’s election in 1860. “The expansion of slavery into western territories provided the catalyst for the growing perceptions of northerners and southerners that they held different intentions of the republic’s future.” “In the South, loyalty to slavery and its required expansion became the hallmark of party politics as the region’s politicians—Whigs, Know-Nothing, and Democrat—competed to demonstrate their loyalty to southern rights.”
Two fundamental questions normally surround the history of any war: whether the war was inevitable and if it was necessary. These same questions emerge any time during debates regarding the American Civil war. The most cited cause of the Civil war is the secession of certain southern states that formed the Confederate States of America in January 1861. Thomas Bonner writes "Civil War Historians and the "Needless War" Doctrine" arguing that Southern Carolina seceded in 1860, followed by six other states by January the following year. A deep analysis of the events leading to the war indicates that the Union and the Confederates had profound ideological, economic, political, and social differences.