In the 1850’s the United States was not so United. There had been many internal problems, that were tearing the entire country apart. Issues such as slavery, and power of the states were coming between the country. The south and north had been arguing about the issue of slavery for a very long time. The North was against it. They had set out to abolish it. But the south was growing very rich off it. It was cheap labor. Al the slave owners had to pay for was room and board, which was cheaper then paying salaries. Since the industrial revolution and the invention of things like the Cotton Gin the south had become a large producer of all things cotton.
The production of cotton was in heavy demand at the time. It was one of the United States biggest exports. Because it was made with slave labor it was very profitable. If slavery was to be abolished it would have a large effect on the economy. The South felt it had the upper hand against the North. The south was also very independent. It did not like government control. The south wanted no part in being a country. But they were in the Union. They could not get out. The south decided to form it’s own country. The Confederate States of America.
The North would not let them go. They felt that the south was a part of the union forever. At the time of this whole uproar within the country a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln had been climbing the political ladder. He who believed in what the north stood for. He was a Congressman and very anti slavery. He helped make up bills that to abolish slavery, but they never got passed . Many southerners did their best to keep Lincoln out of the White House. They feared what he might do as a President. That he would hurt the
south. He did not want to see them separate themselves. He said “No state upon it’s mere motion can lawfully get out of the union. I shall take care, as the constitution itself expressively enjoins upon me, that the law of the United States be faithfully executed in all of the states.”
Many southern delegates threatened to leave the Union if Lincoln was elected. Lincoln won the election, and became President of The United...
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... to free ourselves.”
Lincoln had entered office and didn’t want to go to war. But he wanted to keep the fort. He felt that he needed an upper hand against Davis, and Fort Sumter was that ace in the hole. Lincoln wasn’t totally ready for the shots to be fired. Cannon fire and gun fire was exchanged by the to forts. Lincoln sent the ships full of supplies out the same day. It was on it’s way to the port when it could not make it. The fire crossed the path of the ship.
This meant that Fort Sumter only had a small amount of ammo. They had never received any supplies. They had little chance of winning the battle. 34 hours later the firing stopped. General Anderson surrendered. The only upside to the whole thing was that no one died. It was just firing that happened. The next day the United States declared war on the Confederates. The real war of wills was just beginning. President Lincoln was not in office to weeks and he was at war. But now it was more important. It was no longer for a fort but for a country. Davis had won the battle but the war was far from over.
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...
At the time, the South depended on slavery to support their way of life. In fact, “to protect slavery the Confederate States of America would challenge the peaceful, lawful, orderly means of changing governments in the United States, even by resorting to war.” (635) Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong and realized that slavery was bitterly dividing the country. Not only was slavery dividing the nation, but slavery was also endangering the Union, hurting both black and white people and threatening the processes of government. At first, Lincoln’s goal was to save the Union in which “he would free none, some, or all the slaves to save that Union.” (634) However, Lincoln realized that “freeing the slaves and saving the Union were linked as one goal, not two optional goals.” (634) Therefore, Lincoln’s primary goal was to save the Union and in order to save the Union, Lincoln had to free the slaves. However, Paludan states that, “slave states understood this; that is why the seceded and why the Union needed saving.” (634) Lincoln’s presidential victory was the final sign to many Southerners that their position in the Union was
Southern and Northern People had different ideas about the civil war. There were problems within their country and they wanted to fix them. They knew the country was created for the people and was run by the people. They wanted the nation to succeed, but one side wanted it to be free for all people no matter the race, while the southern wanted to keep slaves. With these complete opposites ideas of thinking the southern states decided their only option was to separate from the Union. They split and this left the country confused. Confused about what was in store for the nation they had grown to love. It was no longer clear what they future held for American and it would take a couple of years to get the country moving down the path that leads to the world we live in today.
The existence of slavery was the central element of the conflict of the north and south. Other problems existed that led to this succession but none were as big as the slavery issue. The only way to avoid the war was to abolish slavery, but this was not able to be done because slavery is what kept the south running. When the south seceded it was said by Abraham Lincoln that “ a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” Because slavery formed two opposing societies and slavery could never be abolished, the civil war was inevitable. These were all the reasons why the south seceded from the union, this succession was eminent and there was no plausible way to avoid it.
Eventually slavery did die out and the southern states were once again apart of the union, but not without a civil war. Ultimately the North and South’s differences could not be resolved through anything other than a Civil War. These causes, as well as others, left the South no other viable option, in their eyes, than to secede from the union, leading to the Civil War. Political, societal, and philosophical conflicts combined with one another to form the ultimate disagreement over slavery between the two regions. All in all, admitting a disproportionate amount of free states to slave states into the union, preventing slavery from expanding, and President Lincoln’s election were significant factors that lead to the secession of the southern states in 1860 and 1861.
Lincoln's election lead to the belief that Southern interests were no longer considered in the federal government, and that the government would outlaw slavery. However, Lincoln's only agenda was to preserve the union and restrict slavery where it already resided. Despite receiving no votes from Southerners, Lincoln was still able to win the election. Southerners viewed this as Northern conspirators planning the destruction of Southern institutions. Southerners virtually lost all political power due to the influx of immigrants in the North and the election of Lincoln. Southerners feared Lincoln would use federal power to push through the abolition of slavery. Lincoln’s desire to restrict slavery caused many Southerners to feel as though their constitutional rights were violated. With no representation in government Southerners felt the only solution was to secede from the Union and form their own government. In addition, Lincoln’s inaugural address made it clear that “the Union of these states is perpetual,” making clear that secession would not be tolerable. Lincoln's attitudes and policies after winning the Election of 1860 fueled the secessionist’s arguments of the South. If any other candidate had been elected, who was more willing to compromise, war would’ve been avoided and concessions could’ve been made to both sides. However, Lincoln couldn’t compromise with the South,
The United States was divided into two divergent sides fighting for control even before 1860. These conflicts never ended up reaching the battlefield, but the free states and slave states were in a battle for representation in Congress. Both sides wanted to control the balance of states in order to gain more authority in Congress. The Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850 were attempts to prevent the growing conflict but only delayed the inevitable. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union and other southern states soon followed. By the time that Lincoln was inaugurated in 1860, seven states parted from the Union and were eventually joined by four more. The South seceded because they assumed that they had the constitutional right to do so. South Carolina seceded because they believed the North would gain enough power in the central government to abolish slavery entirely in the United States. Secession was their last choice in order to maintain their power and lifestyle. The Civil War led to the Emancipation Proclamation and abolishment of slavery, but this ...
Tensions between the North and South had grown steadily since the anti slavery movement in 1830. Several compromises between the North and South regarding slavery had been passed such as the Nebraska-Kansas and the Missouri act; but this did little to relieve the strain. The election of President Lincoln in 1861 proved to be the boiling point for the South, and secession followed. This eventually sparked the civil war; which was viewed differently by the North and the South. The Northern goal was to keep the Union intact while the Southern goal was to separate from the Union. Southern leaders gave convincing arguments to justify secession. Exploring documents from South Carolina’s secession ordinance and a speech from the Georgia assembly speech will explain how the Southern leaders justify the secession from the United States.
The decision for the South to secede from the Union was not a knee-jerk decision. There were many issues that played a role in their decision to secede. For example, economically speaking, the South's main economy was based on slave labor, and with the populous tide turning against the institution of slavery, it was a matter of time before the government would abolish the practice; thus, interfering with the livelihood of plantation planters and essentially bankrupting the South's overall economy. Also, politically speaking, "the effort to maintain a balance between free states and slave states was being threatened by the expansion in the West" (Schultz, K.M., 2013). Although a series of compromises were enacted, supporters eventually became
Although, they didn’t favor emancipation, they were expecting slavery to die on its own over time. The border states that still held slavery, had many problems arise. A Union officer in Kentucky freed slaves, after a major victory. Many Union soldiers were upset and threw down their guns and disbanded. Lincoln had to intervene and unfree those slaves, because of fear of military backlash. The emancipation was very beneficial to the North, as it crippled the South’s production. They had very few slaves fighting for them, as they were now free. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did great things for the North. Slaves that were held in rebellion states were now free people, which gave the Union more fighting support. As the freed slaves would join their cause to terminate slavery. With the Union’s victory of the war, it held to a stronger
First of all, there is an economic difference between the North and the South. In the North, society was fast becoming industrial and focused more on city life. In contrast, the South remained a region of small towns and large plantations. As Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable (Grischy). People who owned land began to grow cotton which led to a large amount of cheap labor, so slaves were needed. The South became a one crop economy which depended mostly on cotton and therefore on slavery. On the other hand, the North was based more on industry rather than agriculture. It focused on manufacturing and using raw materials to make finished goods. While the northern people favored taxes on imports, also known as tariffs that protected factory owners and workers from foreign competition, the southern people, on the other hand, were opposed to tariffs. In order for Southerners to buy goods from the North, the Northern politicians passed heavy taxes on imported goods from Europe. The economic difference was one of the reasons that div...
...Northerners couldn’t respect their wishes to decide how to deal with slavery and fugitive slaves in their own states, they may as well not even be a part of the United States. This led to secession and once again, The Civil War.
Many would argue that tobacco or cotton was main profits for Southern states, but we can all agree that without slavery there would be no gatherings of both products. The Southern states would believe that slavery is acceptable; they would do so by scaring people into believing that “Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.” Slave owners were looking for a way to maximize the use of slaves, in doing so Eli Whitney created the cotton gin1. Since this revolutionary machine was increasing the production of cotton it required for more slaves to be put to work in fields.
Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...
...secession, he was prepared for the possibility of war, but had no plans to attack the South. He made offers with the South to trade the forts for assurances of peace, and even ordered his men to surrender if it would save their lives. While Lincoln’s decision to supply the fort with provisions was a provocation and led to a Confederate attack, Lincoln never made the order to fire on the South first, and he took steps, continuously, to avoid a conflict and try to reason with the Southern government.