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Slavery in American society
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Most people say there are two sides to every story, but there can only be one side to the story of people, being denied as to having equal rights, no matter their color or creed. Slavery might have been acceptable to people in England, but the main reason that drew people to America was in the pursuit of Freedom. It's only reasonable to believe that to be true to this principle, slavery had to be abolished. The brutal disagreement that tore apart the North and the South was carried to its fullest extent in the United States in the years before and during the Civil War. The South, also known as the Confederates, supported slavery. The North, also known as the Union, was anti-slavery, and made every effort that they could to cease it. The Confederates were usually cruel to their slaves, and denied them basic rights. The Union supporters were right in their attempts to end slavery and protect the deserved equity of all people: white or black. Although slavery was not the only cause of the Civil War, it was a main factor to which the other issues seem minuscule. The event that caused the outbreak of the Civil War was the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Primarily, this document dealt with the right to reclaim runaway slaves. This law enabled southerners to call upon the federal government to capture runaway slaves who had fled from the South, and may be living in the North, in hope of a safe haven. The Fugitive Slave Act and the laws that it made legal, caused extreme controversy in the North. This caused a major split between the North and South. Some northern states passed laws forbidding state officials to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, which only angered the southern states. Many northerners started to take action to help slaves escape from their owners. This major controversy over the runaway slaves sparked the beginning of the Civil War. The northerners felt that slavery was an act that was in opposition to the United States Constitution. The Constitution states that all people were entitled to their basic rights, to which the suspected runaway slaves were being denied. It was known that some blacks in the North were free, yet they were still being accused of being a runaway during this time of chaos.
The United States began to dissatisfy some of its citizens and so the concerns of sectionalism, or the split of the country began to arise. There was a continuous riff between the south and the north over a few issues, a major one being slavery. The south argued that the slaves were necessary to support the southern economy. According to document A, the south were angry that the north was creating taxes that hurt the southern economy, thus increasing the need for slavery since they had to make up for the expense of the taxes. The south felt that the north was able...
Some of the causes from the civil war were that the North was more experienced than the South, they also had more resources to fight in battle. The civil war started when Southern states seceded from the Union after the election with Abraham Lincoln. The battle of Gettysburg had a huge impact on the civil war because it was a three-day battle, making it the bloodiest battle from the American Civil War. Also, the south’s Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania enetered in late June 1863.
In the spring 1861, years of building tensions between the northern states and southern states resulted in the American Civil War. In 1680 an anti-slavery Republican, Abraham Lincoln was elected president causing seven southern states to secede from the union. These seven states included--Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas--. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America. The American Civil War lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 and claimed more than roughly 620,000 lives. So what caused the Civil War? The three main causes of the Civil War were differences between the north and the south in economies, disagreements in abolishing slavery, and whether the State or Federal
The South was fighting against a government that they thought was treating them unfairly. They believed the Federal Government was overtaxing them, with tariffs and property taxes making their lifestyles even more expensive than they already had been. The North was fighting the Civil War for two reasons, first to keep the Nation unified, and second to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the commander and chief of the Union or Northern forces, along with many other Northerners, believed that slavery was not only completely wrong, but it was a great humiliation to America. Once we can see that with these differences a conflict would surely occur, but not many had predicted that a full-blown war would breakout.
In conclusion the election of Lincoln as president in 1860 caused a civil war because it was falsely perceived by the south that Lincoln would threaten the state’s constitutional right to slavery. This false idea was due to a rift between the northern and southern states in both an economic and ideological manner. That is the north was based on industry and generally was opposed to slavery. But the South was an agricultural society which ran on slavery and, due to Nat Turner’s Insurrection and John Brown’s stand at Harper’s Ferry, was fearful of the north’s involvement in the governing of states as well as being opposed to this on the basis of state’s rights. The election of Lincoln caused the south to succeed from the union causing civil war.
In the years paving the way to the Civil War, both north and south were disagreeable with one another, creating the three “triggering” reasons for the war: the fanaticism on the slavery issue, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the separation of the Democratic Party. North being against the bondage of individuals and the South being for it, there was no real way to evade the clash. For the south slavery was a form of obtaining a living, without subjugation the economy might drop majorly if not disappear. In the North there were significant ethical issues with the issue of subjugation. Amazing measures to keep and dispose of subjugation were taken and there was never a genuine adjusted center for bargain. Despite the fact that there were a lot of seemingly insignificant issues, the fundamental thing that divided these two states was bondage and the flexibilities for it or against. With these significant extremes, for example, John Brown and Uncle Tom's Cabin, the south felt disdain towards the danger the Northerners were holding against their alleged flexibilities. The more hatred the South advanced, the more combative they were to anything the Northerners did. Northerners were irritated and it parted Democrats over the issue of bondage and made another Republican gathering, which included: Whigs, Free Soilers, Know Nothings and previous Democrats and brought about a split of segments and abbreviated the street to common war. Southerners loathed the insubordination of the north and started to address how they could stay with the Union.
...ecause they feared that Slavery would soon be completely abolished. These tensions eventually led to the civil war where the North won and slavery was ended although there were still slave like laws in place after.
"The American constitution recognized slavery as a local constitution within the legal rights of the individual states. But in the North slavery was not adaptable to the local economy, and to many, it contradicted the vision of the founding fathers for a nation in which all men are to be free. The South considered slavery as a necessary institution for the plantation economy. It was linked to the local culture and society. As the United states expanded, the North worried that the South would introduce slavery into the new territories. Slavery had become both a moral issue and a question of political power." (Kral p61)
The Union is to blame for the civil war, particularly the northern states because the federal union’s goal was to not promote conformity, but to permit diversity within the orderly confines of any socialized community (Niven 311). The union could easily be considered a haven for all types of people, not just slaves. From 1830 until 1860, relatively few immigrants settled in the South (Meyers). The Northern states had a different vision of what they wanted America to be and strongly opposed how the South ran things. The southern states thrived off slavery and is mainly how people made a living in that region. Slavery is the cornerstone of a social order that protected individual liberty and equality for the white population in the south (Niven 311). Meaning that the North had way more resources, workers, and support in comparison to the South, so slavery was a way for the Southern states to at least stay relevant in the United States of America. The North’s feelings about how slavery was tearing the country and the union apart was the spark for the Civil War.
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
It was only a matter of time for the inevitable conflict between the North and South to occur. The North and South were complete opposites in their economic systems, political views, social positions, and geographic regions. The dispute over slavery became the main conflict argued about throughout the country. Northerners formed the Republican party and the Southerners formed the Democratic party. Both sides tried to take different social positions based on the many conflicts prior to the Civil War. Although there were other important causes, ultimately differing views on political and social events and beliefs were the main causes of the Civil War.
The Civil War began on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor when the Confederate army attacked Union soldier and ended on May 9, 1865 with a Union Victory. There are many events, laws, and people that provoked the Civil War. The two most important causes are slavery and the expansion of the United States causing an unbalance of free and slave states. This essay examines major events that initiated the war starting from the Compromise of 1820 to the election of 1860 and proves how the Civil War was inevitable.
Constitutionally the North favored a loose interpretation of the United States Constitution, and they wanted to grant the federal government increased powers. The South wanted to reserve all undefined powers to the individual states themselves. The South relied upon slave labor for their economic well being, and the economy of the North was not reliant on such labor or in need of this type of service. This main issue overshadowed all others. Southerners compared slavery to the wage-slave system of the North, and believed their slaves received better care than the northern factory workers received from their employers. Many Southern preachers proclaimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible. Southern leaders had constantly tried to seek new areas into which slavery might be extended (Oates 349).
There are various explanations as to who and what really caused the Civil War. It is even fair to say that sometimes morals stand in the way when deciding who really started the war. Therefore, the facts must be analyzed clearly and in depth. It is true that the north played a major role in the Civil War, however, the south would not release their strict traditional beliefs of slavery. As time progressed, slavery debates pressured the South more and more to stand by their strict beliefs. Fugitive acts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Secession all showed how the south used brutal methods to preserve slavery. Therefore, since the popular sovereignty doctrine, the pro-slavery souths’ strict use of slavery and decisions to secede from the nation, angered the north, leading to a civil war.
The Secession of the United States was the cause of thr Civil War. The Southern Confederates were furious that the Northern Union for trying to abolish slavery. When Lincoln was elected president, he tried to once and for all abolish slavery in the North as well as the west. He tried to contain slavery to its geographical area to keep it from spreading anymore north, but the South erupted in rebellion and eventually went to war against the North in the Civil