DBQ Essay: What Cause The Civil War?

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When asked the question; “What caused the civil war?” many people would like to say slavery. Now they are right but they are also only half right. In this essay I’m going to help clear the air on what all caused the civil war like: industry, farming, court arguments, and many other issues. The first conflict of the Civil War that not everyone thinks about is how the two economies differed, North and South wise. As shown in the DBQ document B we can see that the northern states didn’t produce a lot of agriculture. As a matter of fact they didn’t produce any of the countries cotton which at the time was a booming cash crop. The north thrived in industry. They supplied over 1.3 million factory jobs. But a large majority of these factories were cotton factories. Where they made cloth, clothes, etc. I believe that they didn’t want the south to secede because that would almost cripple their economy. …show more content…

He explained to the Senate that the income for exported goods (1857) was about $279,000,000. Of that amount he calculated that about $158,000,000 of that amount came from southern goods such as cotton and rice. He ends his speech with “No power on earth dares to make war on cotton. Cotton is King.” The economies of the north and south pushed the nation into separation. It made the south believe that they didn’t need the north to make money and to live, but the north needed the south they needed the income. I can assure you that cash money was a huge part of causing the Civil

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