Essay On The Causes Of The Civil War

Raining bullets, charging enemies, fear, hunger, and impending doom. Who would put themselves under so much pressure? Why would Texans fight in the Civil War? After President Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, many Southern states saw trouble brewing.

1860 through 1877 America witnessed a bloody war that resulted in several constitutional and social developments, all attempting to break the established black subordination social order prevalent in the South. By 1877 the Civil War and Reconstruction had ended, and the social revolution had failed. There are two key parts to a revolution: force, and its use to bring a new order to society. There was certainly force during this time period, with Confederate lost and the Union’s military presence in the conquered land, the South had no choice but to accept the Constitutional Amendments and other acts that Congress had passed. However, for every policy that Congress had forced on the South, there was a loophole or an act of violence that fought against it.

The northern states did not want slavery and the Southern states did. Due to the civil War there was hundreds of thousands wounded fighting for what they believed. That issue caused a divide that still affects the country till this day. The 13th amendment freed the black slaves, but did not give them citizenship. That is why they put the 14th amendment in place to give blacks citizenship

The everlasting debate of free or slave was one that Lincoln’s speech was based around. He stated, “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free…. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become a lawful all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.” (document M) Document N shows that Lincoln won the Election of 1860. This was the breaking point for the United States-

(Source E). Lincoln knew if he abolished slavery he would essentially be crippling the Confederate states. Therefore, he decided to act swiftly, and on the 1 of January 1963, President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, and in so doing, legally, provided the slaves with a way to leave their owners (Source

DBQ #3: Civil War and Reconstruction In the decade preceding the Civil War, tensions between the North and the South intensified. The Compromise of 1850, which freed California, implemented a more rigorous version of the Fugitive Slave Act, and made several other points was the last true attempt to peaceably resolve the tensions revolving around slavery. Starting in about 1854, the South began to accuse the North of refusing to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act, and at one point the Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 also contributed greatly towards the Civil War, as it triggered what later would become known as “Bleeding Kansas”.

President Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves of all states. The southern states were outraged and felt like they were mistreated. Not long after, South Carolina seceded from the union because they felt like there was no longer a place for them in the Union. Not long after South Carolina seceded many other southern states felt the same way and seceded as well. The states that seceded soon created the Confederate States of America where they elected Jefferson Davis as their provisional president.

With expanding the union came disunion. The states began to feud about the expansion of slavery. This quote from John C. Calhoun captures the mind frames of the time. “ I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely effective measure, end in disunion… the agitation has been permitted to proceed… until it has reached a period when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the Union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the greatest and gravest question that can ever come under your consideration: How can the Union be preserved?”

Southern resistance killed reconstruction by having the Ku Klux Klan murdering

From November 1860 to May 1861 we have had 11 of our Southern states secede from the United States of America. They threatened to secede if our current president Abraham Lincoln was elected into office. The reason all 11 states seceded is because they believe that the government was becoming too strong, and they didn’t want them to tell them how they could live and how they couldn’t. In other words they didn’t want the government to tell them if they could have slaves and if they couldn’t. The Southerners felt that if they stayed with the United states that the Northern states would begin to control them.

However, these differences show that the North and South were actually two distinct countries held together by one constitution. The North felt that decisions regarding slavery and its legality were entrenched in the central government while the South felt that such decision belonged to the individual states. In the times preceding the war, both sides could not reach a compromise. Bonner mentions, “Because secession and war were permitted to come, warned Russel, "We are not entitled to lay the flattering unction to our souls that the Civil War was an inevitable conflict (Bonner, 195).” Hence, these differences could only be addressed through war.

The circumstances that led to the Civil War (the issue of slavery, the secession of the South, etc.) made the Civil War inevitable. The Missouri Compromise had attempted to resolve

Then Tocqueville surprised me even more. He could tell that we were on our way to civil war. I don’t recall anyone in American telling us we were going to enter the bloodiest conflict in American history if we didn’t change how we treated our slaves. But Tocqueville looked at that relationship and realized that if the South continued to own slaves and treat them like pack-animals then at some point, someone was going to break. I find it a little insulting that a foreigner, who stayed in America all of 9 months, was able to detect a brewing conflict that we were blind to.

The civil war was an inevitable result due to tensions and events that had taken place within the union during the past few years before the beginning of the war. Events such as the Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska act which repealed the Missouri Compromise, and finally the assault of Fort Sumter. The southern states began to assume that their states rights’ were being violated, the north was attempting to gain control of the union in order to abolish slavery and thus the south began succession from the union. The southerners’ efforts and its expansion proslavery mobs became hostile and violent toward Northerners prior to the war, although southerners were resulting in violence and intimidation to prevent others from speaking out against

In conclusion, the primary cause of the civil war was not slavery instead was the issue of states rights. The Northern armies won the Civil War and the the South returned to the Union. “The Civil War started because of differences between free slaves states and the power of the government that said if slavery was correct or incorrect. ”(The Civil War in America Prologue). Slavery was right at that time but now it is wrong.