"In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon." proclaimed William Lloyd Garrison. The actions before the war, like John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, only set the course for the time of “high noon” to occur. War was already inevitable, but actions, fate, and chance pushed the United States over the breaking point. Though the topic of slavery was a main source of conflict, three major ideas were the flint to the steel in this blaze of dissension. With the impolitic actions by the leaders of the American government during this time period, vast irreconcilable differences resulting in sectionalism, and ill-timed emergence of Lincoln the results of these steps led to the bloody conflict of the Civil War.
Actions in a political nature during this time period were very passive-aggressive. The compromises and decisions including states’ rights, court decisions, and the passing acts were flawed in terms of resolving issues long term. Starting in 1820 with the Missouri Compromise ,though historians say it helped postpone the war, it started a territory conflict for the North and the South wanting to add more territories which would eventually become states padding numbers for support of their side. While there was a obvious difference in terms of belief of slavery, the compromise actually a drew a line in the “sand”, geographically diving the country over the Parallel 36°30′ north line. With this line drawn, any future added territories were going to cause conflict. The Compromise of 1850 was no exception to this. Though again it avoided war temporarily between the North and the South, the immediate results of the Compromise were lopsided. With the addition of California as a free state, reductio...
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...the topic of States’ rights. Right in the Bill of Rights it says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Many a times this idea was violated for benefit of both sides. In addition, States’ rights were more use as a catch-all idea. States' rights theories gained strength from the truth that the Northern population was growing much faster than the population of the South, so it was only a matter of time before the North controlled the federal government due to sheer numbers. Acting as a "conscious minority", Southerners hoped that a strict interpretation of the Constitution would limit federal power over the states, and that a defense of states' rights against federal encroachments or even nullification or secession would save the South’s power.
On the question as to whether states’ rights was the cause of the Civil War, Dew references a speech made by Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, during his inaugural address as one that “remains a classic articulation of the Southern position that resistance to Northern tyranny and a defense of states’ rights were the sole reason for secession. Constitutional differences alone lay at the heart of the sectional controversy, he insisted. ‘Our present condition…illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established’”(13).
“I would rather be right than be President,” stated Senator Henry Clay concerning the issue of finding a resolution for the countries burning issue during the mid 1800s. Even though Clay lost the presidential election of 1849 to Zachary Taylor, he was determined to find a solution to America’s prevailing debate of whether or not to extend slavery into their new territories. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had officially ended the war with Mexico and political warfare in the Unite States was a rising issue. Part of the treaty forced the Mexicans to give up tracts of their land including Texas, California, and all the land between. This left the Americans in a predicament of whether or not to admit California to the Union as a free state, therefore making the ratio of free to slave states imbalanced. Ever since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the balance between slave states and free states had been maintained, but California began to petition Congress to enter the Union as a free state. Since Texas was a slave state, they claimed land north of the 36°30' demarcation line for slavery set by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. However, the Texas Annexation resolution required that if any new states were formed out of Texas land; the land north of the Missouri Compromise line would become free states. As Clay worked for months to develop a compromise to solve the nation’s issue, he received help from Stephen Douglas, a young Democrat from Illinois. On January 29, 1850, after several other people suggested ideas that failed, the two men presented a series of bills that were ushered through Congress. California’s wish was granted and they were entered as a free state, officially disrupting the equilibrium in the states. The second bill...
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
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
In 1850, the government issued the Compromise of 1850 that had five main points, but there were three key statements that made it important. The first key point was that California would enter the Union as a free state, which meant that the
The South argued that protecting the integrity of “States’ Rights” served as the primary justification for the Civil War. However, the idea of states rights is rooted in greed – in the effort to maintain or grow economic power. “States Rights” is defined as rights...
The Compromise of 1850 brought relative calm to the nation. Though most blacks and abolitionists strongly opposed the Compromise, the majority of Americans embraced it, believing that it offered a final, workable solution to the slavery question. Most importantly, it saved the Union from the terrible split that many had feared. People were all too ready to leave the slavery controversy behind them and move on. But the feeling of relief that spread throughout the country would prove to be the calm before the storm.
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...
The 1850's were a turbulent time in American history. The North and South were seeing total different views on the issue of slavery. The North saw slavery as immoral and that it was unconstitutional. The south on the other hand saw slavery as their right. The South viewed African Americans as lower human beings which justified slavery. "The 1850's was a time of attempted compromise when compromise was no longer possible." This quote best describes this time period, because Americans were trying to compromise their views to prevent a large conflict, but there were many events which made a compromise impossible.
Disagreements regarding slavery surrounded the primary reasons of succession and the Civil War. Citizens displayed views completely opposite of each other. On one end, many wanted slavery completely abolished while others wanted it to be limited to certain portions of the United States. In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. Along with those rulings, the Court also said that blacks could not sue at a federal level because they were not citizens of the United States. These decisions pulled on the already loose hold of the states’ unity. Northerners went ballistic over these rulings and passed laws to ensure slave...
The Civil War was caused by a myriad of conflicting pressures, principles, and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences and pride, and set into motion by a most unlikely set of political events. From the colonial period in America where the institution of slavery began, through the period of the revolution whereby blood was shed to validate the notion that all men were created equal (yet slavery existed in all thirteen colonies), to the era of the Civil War itself, it is undoubtedly clear that the main causative factor of the war was slavery itself. With that said, it is the objective of this brief essay to shed light on three of the causative factors that led to the Civil War while subsequently considering the question of whether or not the conflict solved any of the issues that contributed to the war.
When even the highly-supported secession documents clearly outline how important slavery was to the southern states, it is hard to deny its fault in the war. The argument that the Confederacy was fighting for states’ rights is the most-often suggested alternative, however all one needs to do is dig deeper and calculate what these
Since the beginning of their new nation, the United States had many differences between the Northern and Southern states. During the Constitutional Convention they disagreed on how to determine their representation in the house based on population; the Southerners wanted to count their slaves and the Northerners did not, which lead to the three-fifths compromise. Later in the Convention there were concessions given to the South, which left the Northerners feeling uneasy, such as: a guarantee that the slave trade would not be interfered with by Congress until 1808 and slave owners were given the right to recover refugee slaves from anywhere in the United States. While many Northern delegates were disappointed with the rights given to the South, they felt it was necessary for the good of the Nation. This was necessary to form a strong central government and union between the states.
Furthermore, the push for western territories federally brought the fear that the South’s precarious political ideology could be forever lost with the introduction of new states into the union. However, the majority of the Northern states believed that the Southern interest politically was controlled by a minority of rich planters whose interest were for themselves and not what was best for the South (Schultz, 2009). Also, the supreme court ruling on the Dred Scott case led the North to believe that the South wielded an alarming amount of power in the political realm. Accordingly, the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860 without winning a Southern state was the turning point politically towards civil war.
In spite of the prominence of the states in everyday life, the most demanding public policy questions former to the American Civil War involved discussions over the possibility of national power with most Americans believing it should remain partial. Yet federalism was still the center of political arguments. The Constitution did not report if states did nor did not reserve any remaining sovereignty in the powers given to the national government. The fact that the states were much more capable in accomplishing governmental purposes adequately t...