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Abraham Lincoln once stated, "A House divided against itself cannot stand. I Believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other". More than anything else, differing interpretations about the Civil War drove the debate over the meaning of the Constitution and of the Union.
These were, of course, not new issues. Indeed, as Professor Joseph Ellis has noted in Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation both had been on the minds of the delegates to Philadelphia in 1787. And, significantly, they were considered so controversial that neither the word "slavery" nor the word "nation" appeared in the Constitution. In the late 1800's the Southern states began to slowly secede from the Union on grounds that the federal government was limiting their rights, such as the right to own and regulate slaves, which were at that time considered to be property (Monk 208). Slavery was the South's main reason for secession, among other things. The South also, at that time, chose to remain an agricultural region; therefore, it had strong reasons for seeing that slavery, as an institution, continued without limits or interference. At the same time that all of this angst was going on, the Supreme Court was being appointed a case that would add even more fuel to the already raging fire. The Dred Scott Decision of 1856 gave yet another argument to this long debate about the issue of slavery between the North and the South. The case itself would not have reached the Supreme Court in the first place had it not been for the fact that slavery and its extension into new territories had become such a continu...
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...from the beginning. In contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these states is perpetual, or everlasting (Lincoln's Inaugural Address). Abraham Lincoln stated in his Inaugural Address of 1860 that, " Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to say that no proper government ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination" (Lincoln's Inaugural Address). I agree with Lincoln's theory because if the framers created the Constitution with provisions for its own termination, then they would have implied that there would need to be necessary cause for such an action. No Union would create a constitution implying temporary unity (Ward 34). Lincoln's words and theory of a perpetual union explains the fundamental statement "no state has the right to secede from the Union."
Lincoln was a very smart lawyer and politician. During his “House Divided” speech he asked the question, “Can we, as a nation, continue together permanently, forever, half slave, and half free?" When he first asked this question, America was slowly gaining the knowledge and realizing that as a nation, it could not possibly exist as half-slave and half-free. It was either one way or the other. “Slavery was unconstitutional and immoral, but not simply on a practical level.” (Greenfield, 2009) Slave states and free states had significantly different and incompatible interests. In 1858, when Lincoln made his “House Divided” speech, he made people think about this question with views if what the end result in America must be.
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...
From the day, the first European set foot on American soil up until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which occurred in 1865. Slavery was a controversial issue. The issue of slavery divided up the United States of America to ultimately put the two against each other. The Northern States who identifies themselves as the Union disapproved of the atrocious actions of the South who condone the crude treatment of slaves and the disturbing practices of slavery. Although slavery was not the sole cause of the Civil war, it played an important part in the disunion of the United States. The battle between states rights and federal rights rubbed more salt in the already enormous wound. Southern States who later considers themselves the confederates disapproved of the idea that the available actions of the states to act upon certain situations were dwindling, reducing the power and rights of the states. The set up of all these complications and disagreements led to the secession of the southern states which initiated the start of the brutal American Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
The election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of the South led to the outbreak of the civil war. The civil war was the first revolutionary change in America. States' rights were a major issue during this time. Issues of power, different interpretations of the constitution, and banking issues led to many difficulties. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. In South Carolina's Declaration of Causes, it was stated that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states" (Document A). The 10th amendment which limited the power of the federal government had acted as a backing for the secession of the South. Nowhere in the constitution did it say that the states had no right to secede from the Union. This secession from the union forever changed the country. Another major change that occurred after the civil war was the thirteenth amendment which abolished slavery. Even though the slaves had fought for the Union in the civil war, they were unable to take any political action and were still inferior as it is stated in document C. The fifteenth amendment granted the right to vote to all men no matter the race. It was argued t...
As the result, due to the difference between the north and south. They north and south viewed each other differently as two different kind of people. Stephen Douglas explained that the view of southern plantation owners (document 5). They believed the laws fit the northern, not the southern. Therefore, they made their own rules and treated themselves as individual nation which then turned into the confederacy. As a result, Abraham Lincoln gives a speech explaining that in order to succeed we need to work as a nation instead diving each other setting disputes with one in others. (document 4) Therefore, Lincoln goes on to say that two house can’t be divided because they can’t not stand by themselves, but Lincoln challenge the secession of the south because he wonders it would be erupting but he inferred because of slavery. Therefore, the north and south began to have
From the start of the American Civil War, 1860, until the end of the Reconstruction, 1877, the United States of America endured what can be considered a revolution. Prior to the year 1860, there was a lack of union because of central government power flourishing rather than state power. Therefore, there was a split of opposite sides, North and South, fighting for authority. One major issue that came into mind was of slavery. At first, there were enactments that were issued to limit or rather prevent conflict to erupt, such as the numerous compromises, Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. They did not fulfill the needs of the states, South states in particular; therefore, in the year 1860, the Civil War had commenced. There was the issue of inequality of Blacks in suffrage, politics, and the use of public facilities. However, much constitutional and social advancement in the period culminated in the revolution. To a radical extent, constitutional development between 1860 and 1877 amount to a revolution because of events like the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil Rights Act, the amendments that tried to change African Americans lives in American Society and contributed to get the union together. There is the social developments as well that to a lesser extent had amounted to the revolution because of organizations like the Klu Klux Klan, Freedmen’s Bureau lacking, and discrimination against African Americans that caused progression of violence and white supremacy.
In the 1860’s the United States weren’t united because of the issue of slavery. The civil war was never just about getting the union back together, but about making it count and getting rid of slavery. The south wanted their slaves and would say they are “-the happiest, and in some, the freest people in the world”. (Doc 5) However, the north knew that was not true because of Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed it caused some issues. Anti-slavery supporters were not happy because they did not want expansion of slavery, but the pro-slavery supporters weren’t happy because they wanted slavery everywhere for sure. (Doc. 7)The Kansas-Nebraska act caused trouble before it was even passed, Senator Charles Sumner argued against and attacked pro-slavery men causing Preston Brooks to beat Sumner with a cane. The south praised Brooks while the north felt for Sumner. (Doc 8) In 1858 during his acceptance speech Lincoln said his famous line, “A house divided
The 1787 Constitutional Convention was paramount in unifying the states after the Revolutionary War. However, in order to do so, the convention had to compromise on many issues instead of addressing them with all due haste. This caused the convention to leave many issues unresolved. Most notably were the issues of slavery, race, secession, and states’ rights. Through the Civil War and the Reconstruction, these issues were resolved, and in the process the powers of the federal government were greatly expanded.
...ited States.” Lincoln passed on his belief that the nation must be united and that a “new birth of freedom” would be created, or the nation would “perish from the world,” should the Union failed.
During the mid nineteenth century the United States started to part, yet at the center of the century individuals perspectives began to wind up more concrete thus detachment in the Union turned out to be more extreme. From 1850 to 1861 it was evident that the union was isolating into the North and the South. The Constitution assumed a noteworthy part in the division that was happening. Through sectional preference of bits and pieces of the Constitution and through thoughts that were let well enough alone, the Constitution prompted sectional dissension and nearly failure to the union. Therefore several issues created the identity for the Civil War such as, Missouri Compromise, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Abolishment Movement, and the Dred
Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America: "I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 106.]
A controversial issue during 1860 to 1877 was state’s rights and federal power. The North and South were divided over this issue. The North composed of free states and an industrial economy while the South was made up of slave states and an agricultural economy. The South did not like federal authority over the issue of slavery; therefore, they supported the radical state rights’ ideology. South Carolina seceded from the Union because it believed that since states made up the Union, it could leave when it chooses to. The government argued against the South saying that they had no right to leave the Union because the Union was not made up of just states but people. However, the South counteracted this argument with the case that the 10th amendment “declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by its states, were reserved to the states.” (Doc A) However, the government still believed that secession from the Union was unjust and decided that a new change surrounding state’s rights was necessary. As a result, when the Union won in the Civil War, a resolution was made, where the state’s lost their power and the federal government gained power. U...
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other," said by Abraham Lincoln. In 1860 President Abraham Lincoln swore to keep slavery out of the territories, as a result the states in the south seceded and founded a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The government and most of the northern states refused to recognize the validity of their secession. They feared that the United States was going to drift apart and not be unified. They wanted to preserve the union at any cost. The civil war began
As the country began to grow and expand we continued to see disagreements between the North and South; the Missouri Territory applied for statehood the South wanted them admitted as a slave state and the North as a free state. Henry Clay eventually came up with the Missouri Compromise, making Missouri a slave state and making Maine it’s own state entering the union as a free state. After this compromise any state admitted to the union south of the 36° 30’ latitude would be a slave state and a state north of it would be free. The country was very much sectionalized during this time. Thomas Jefferson felt this was a threat to the Union. In 1821, he wrote, ”All, I fear, do not see the speck on our horizon which is to burst on us as a tornado, sooner or later. The line of division lately marked out between the different portions of our confederacy is such...
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...