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Dbq Civil War

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The Civil War as one of the most infamous conflicts in American History. It was a war borne from clashing ideologies and beliefs, and divided the nation by North and South and brother against brother. The North believed in that a strong central government was the best way to govern the nation. They supported the Republican Party and wished to stop the spread of slavery to new states, and later in the war, the abolition of it in its entirety. The South believed in the rights of states to create their own laws and that the states should be more powerful than the central government. They also supported the Democratic Party and, the largest cause of the war, believed that slavery should not be abolished and should be protected. While these issues …show more content…

Some of the stronger defenses revolved around slavery’s impact on the Southern economy. Slaves were almost essential for keeping massive plantations profitable and were essential for doing manual labor that whites were not willing to do themselves. They also argued against the sudden abolition of slavery by stating how such a sudden change would cause too be a shock on the southern economy. While some of these supporters believed that slavery was a necessary evil, many Southerners actually believed that slavery was morally just and the natural state of the world. They saw themselves as being like parents to slaves, guiding them on the matters of right and wrong and taking care of their needs, and in turned believed that “a merrier being does not exist on the face of the globe than the Negro slave of the United States”. They saw slaves as inferior adolescents whom, if left alone, would perish without someone caring for them. They also made it seem as if slaves every need was actually properly catered to even though, in almost every case, a slave’s quality of life was actually almost …show more content…

In 1850, a new law was passed known as the Fugitive Slave Law. This law was passed in retaliation to the growing antislavery sentiment and the influx in escaping slaves. It made it illegal to help escaping slaves anywhere in the United States and caused escaped slaves to not attain freedom when entering a free state. In 1857 in response to this law, Dredd Scott, a slave who entered the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin sued Sanford for his freedom. This case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court where it was then thrown out. The Supreme Court declared that Dred Scott did not have the right to sue since he was legally a piece of property; furthermore, the Supreme Court did not stop there with their ruling and declared that it was unconstitutional to ban slavery in anywhere in the United States and that slaves could not be freed by entering free states; this also effectively undid the Missouri Compromise by giving slave states an unfair advantage. This decision outraged many Northerners who had previously been moderates capable of swinging either way towards the Republican Party giving the party they needed to have a Republican president elected. Finally, with the election of Lincoln to office, the South believed that it was only a matter of time that slavery was abolished and decided to secede from the Union. This led to the Battle of Fort Sumter,

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