The Ignition of the Civil War

The election of Lincoln, secession of the southern states and the Confederate States of America Constitution set the stage for the bloodiest and saddest war in American history. Before the Civil War even began the nation was divided into four very distinct regions; Northeast, Northwest, Upper south and the Southwest. With two fundamentally different labor systems, slavery in the south and wage labor in the North, the political, economic and social changes across the nation would show the views of the North and the South. The civil war was based on the abolitionists' ideas of emancipation and liberation of slavery the North wanted the war in order to create a society without slavery. The North's aggression to control the south lead to the where were it was no longer tolerable for the South. With the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln, the southern states decided they had to take drastic action in order to protect their own interests. The south had been waiting for an excuse to secede form the union, the election of Lincoln by the North was their chance. The Northern abolitionists' states were mainly responsible for the Civil war in many political, social and economic aspects.

Slavery was one of the factors that played a key role in the causes of the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise was a debate began as to whether Maine and Missouri would enter the Union as free or slave states. To be fair to the rule of the Mason-Dixon Line, Maine was admitted as a free state, and Missouri, even though it was also in the north, would enter as a slave state. The Compromise of 1850 dealt with whether California, Utah, and New Mexico would be slave or free. California was admitted as a free state, but since it made the ratio of slave to free states unequal, " it also stated that the territories of New Mexico and Utah would determine for themselves whether to become slave or free states."(Wise) The Kansas-Nebraska Act decided that any territory that became a state would have the right to vote on whether it would be slave or free, which made Northerners angry because it changed the terms of the Missouri Compromise. The constant flux of the issue of slavery grew during the years leading up to the war, as the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1859, and the Kansas-Nebraska act con...

Through all of the political affairs, territorial disputes, economic differences, and Election of 1860, slavery seems to play a part in each of these decisions. Everything comes back to the issue of slavery in the end. Attempting every possible way to resolve this reoccurring issue never seemed to work well enough to benefit both sides. Eventually, due to all of the disagreement and debate, slavery initiated the Civil War, the single most important and horrific war in United States history.

The Civil War was the bloodiest and most violent war in all of America's history. Not only did it pit brother against brother and father against son, but it also caused more deaths than all of America's wars before or since combined. The cause for the Civil War was not a single event; instead it was a combination of several. In general, the South felt overpowered by the North socially, economically, and culturally. The two sides’ ways of life were completely different in every aspect of the word. At the heart of all the issues lay one major cause for dissension which is known as slavery. Frankly, the combinations of events that led to the civil war drove people over the edge, had varying degrees of influence, and tended to have slavery as a reason hidden behind them.

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.

After winning the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States gained the western territories, which included modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. However, controversial topics, that helped cause the Civil War, arouse with the addition of these new territories. Primarily, the people of the United States wanted to know whether the new territories would be admitted as free states or slave states. In order to avoid fighting between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North, Henry Clay (Whig) and Stephen Douglas (Democrat) drafted the Compromise of 1850. Although the compromise was created to stop conflict ...

The Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between the Confederate States of American or the “South” and the Union or the “North”. It consisted of many battles including Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and the Battle of Gettysburg. It was an estimated 620,000 men that lost their lives during this gruesome war. Most consider the war to have been inevitable because neither the North nor South was willing to compromise in their beliefs or values in order to avoid it.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of the United States of America, the repercussions of which led to civil war. However it was not only Lincoln’s election that led to civil war but also the slavery debate between the northern and southern states and the state of the economy in the United States. Together with the election of Lincoln these caused a split, both politically and ideologically, between the North and South states which manifested into what is now refereed to as the American Civil War.

The Kansas -Nebraska Act was one of the main factors that polarized the nation leading up to the Civil War. The Kansas –Nebraska Act stated that popular sovereignty would be the deciding factor in whether or not the territory would be free or slave. This motivated many abolitionist and slave supporters from the North and South to move to western territories. This would ensure that the vote for slavery would be in their favor. Knowing this, Senator William Seward, an abolitionist, said, “We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give victory to the side which is str...

There were many crisis events that lead to the civil war. The main cause was whether slavery should be extended into the new territories. The Compromise of 1850 was five bills with three compromises. The book states, “California was admitted as a free state of the remaining former Mexican possessions was left to be decided by popular sovereignty (a vote of the territory’s inhabitants) when they applied for statehood” (Faragher, 363). The Northern states passed the fugitive slave law, which was also a crisis that leads to the civil war. The law heightened the power of the slave owners to capture escaped slaves (Faragher, 366). The northerners protested against the Fugitive Slave Law caused suspicion in the South (Faragher, 367). Another crisis