Civil War Dbq Essay

The Civil War was provoked for several reasons which included industry, slavery, and territorial disputes among the Northern states and Southern states of the newly established United States. The first recorded engagement of war between the North and South is documented to have taken place on April 12th, 1861 at The Battle of Fort Sumter. This was the starting point of a war that would claim over 600,000 American lives in a relatively short span of 4 years.

Many different issues upon the north and south caused the Civil War, but slavery was the main conflict. Due to slavery, different political beliefs and systems were created causing conflicts such as disagreements during Westward Expansion and the election of Lincoln. The Constitution tried to balance the inequalities with many compromises, yet failed.

The Civil War was caused by economic conflict, slavery issues and the disagreements between the North and South.

Shelby Foote once said “But the Civil war defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.” In this famous phrase he states how the civil war shaped the future of generations ahead, and was the collision of our beliefs, which led to issuing many policies and the burst of many disagreements, which were later solved with violence. His statement is valid because it interprets the situation the people where in, how they felt, and how the Civil War later affected people’s actions and beliefs.

Throughout American history, the south and the north have consistently held different beliefs on how to handle some subjects. Whether it ranged from slavery, to taxing, or to business, southerners and northerners often seemed to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. It was not any different back in the 1800’s. Though intensely different, they were still part of the same country. One of the biggest issues that made the north and the south so distinct from one another was their view and perspective on slavery. The north, who was considered mostly republican, saw slavery as something that needed to be abolished for it was a great sin committed by mankind; while the south, who were mostly considered democrats, viewed it as a necessity for they considered African-Americans a race that needed to be controlled because they were less intelligent than the white man but very violent and because they were “built” for the hard labor. Over the 1800’s they had been a tension built between the two sides of the country. The tension rose to a boiling point when the 1860 election rolled around. After the elections occurred, a chain of events followed which would leave a lasting impact on the current United States. In the heart of these events was the civil war. To this day, it is very debatable that the war started because of the unsure future of slavery under new leadership.

take about hundred years later after the Civil War (1861-65) for the United States’ government to pass the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 recognizing the black community’s rights? Basically, the Civil War was about fighting for what kind of labor force was going to prevail. The north represented for a free labor economy while the South fought for the preservation of slavery. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor stated that the “wealth and power were not equally distributed in Southern society” (Yamahtta). While a small white proportion owned slaves in the South, the rest contributed in the southern society by maintaining order. In the North, free blacks were an obstacle for whites since they were constantly competing with each other for occupations. As a result, the

The antebellum era exposed the entirely different views and ways of life between the North and the South. These differences can be observed on the economic aspect. The North was industrialized enabling them to have functioning economy without the use of many labors; however, in the south, people relied on agriculture, and thus they needed a large number of slaved labors to help them work on the plantations. Such difference led to the main distinction which existed throughout the entire Civil War, the dependence on the slavery. These differences sparked conflict between the North and the South placing them in an indisputable position, eventually leading to the Civil War. The prosecution of the Civil War of North and South differed drastically. The North fought to preserve the Union which entailed abolishing slavery, enlisting the black in the army and also paying them proper wages, and the South fought to withdraw and preserve slavery and their agricultural lifestyle. These conflicting views did not disappear after the war. Although the North won the Civil War, they still wanted to unify the country, not only territorially, but also economically and politically by enforcing many new laws and amending the Constitution. And the South, even after the abolishment of slavery, people in the south remained hostile toward the freed people, saw themselves more superior than the freed people, and tried to resurrect the “Old South”.(192~198) To achieve the real union and realize the

The first main cause of the Civil War was conflict between the North and the South about differences in economies. The North economy was dependent on industrialization, while the South economy was dependent on agriculture (Document A). The North had a larger population because of immigrants migrating to the North. The reason why immigrants were migrating to the North was because since the North was more industrialised it had more factories and railroads that needed workers to operate. The South had a smaller population but did produce more cotton.

“No state upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the union”(Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address, Document C). “ The crisis upon us involves not only the right of self government, but the maintenance of great pricleple in the law of nations” (President of the Texas Secession Convention, Document C). Texas likes to be in control, so anyone can understand why state rights are important to them. As you can see in the first quote that Abraham Lincoln said that any state that did not agree with the Union can get out and leave. That’s exactly what Texas did, in 1861 Texas was the seventh state to succeed from the Union.

By the start of the Civil War, the North and the South had developed into two extremely different sections. There were opposing economic points of view, starting back into colonial periods, and it slowly drove the two regions farther in separate directions. Each one tried to force its point of view on the nation as a whole. Even though the Union was kept together for many years, in 1860 the condition was unstable. The different paths taken in the economic development of the North and South combined with the South’s slave based economy being threatened by the North contributed heavily to the development of the Civil War.

In fact, when the Constitution proposed the Compromise from the North to the South, it became a source of sectional discord. The structure of conserving the equilibrium of the free states and slave states contributed to the failure of the Union created by

In 1861, the American Civil War commenced after many years of tension building between the Northern and Southern states. The main reason of the tension was said to be the debate of slavery between the North and South, and although some documents support this claim, it is false. The war had been brewing since 1607, before slavery was even introduced to the colonies that would become the United States of America. The debate of slavery did play a major part in the civil war; however it did so in supporting the true cause of the civil war. The main cause of the American Civil War was not the debate of slavery, but rather Europe’s role in the American economy.

As the United States grew westward, issues that had begun with the original states grew and spread with it. The relationship between northern and southern states was never strong due to the cultural differences of the two, but the westward expansion weakened it further. These differences resulted in arguments in the government over how to handle the issues that were appearing. These arguments eventually became small skirmishes, like those in Kansas, which foreshadowed the large fight that would split the United States: the American Civil War. This civil war was caused by the economic, social and political differences of the north and south all centralized around one main issue: slavery.

The Civil War was a war between the union, and confederate states in the United States that occurred from 1861-1865. Many people believed that the Civil War was about slavery and southern states right to defend their states’ rights. The confederates were fighting for their liberty and independence under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, who they felt was a tyrant. However, the union, was fighting to preserve their territory, that was created by their founding fathers from chaos and dismemberment. President Jefferson Davis believed that the civil war was based on the confederate rights to secede from the union. Jefferson also felt that Abraham Lincoln was to blamed for the start of the civil war, since he was against slavery. Lincoln’s intended goal was to preserve the union, he claimed slavery was not the reason. “If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it, and if I could slave it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that (Shi &Tindall, 2015, pg.465)”. Lincoln told everyone that if the southern states were to return to the union that slavery would still exist. However, many people believed that Lincoln wasn’t being truthful.

Slavery was the most important cause of the Civil War, because this single issue divided the North and South to begin with. The ideological differences between the North and South led to economic differences, conflicts over newly acquired territories, disputes over the constitution, and political extremism. The Election of 1860 was the culmination of these disputes and caused the South to secede in 1861 and guided the way towards the Civil War.