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Implications Of The American Civil War Essay

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The American Civil War: Causes and its Implications
The American civil war (simply known as the civil war) was fought for four years, from 1861 to 1865, between the Union forces and the Confederate forces (Varon, 2008). Eleven states of the 34 states that made up the United States declared secession from the union and formed the Confederate States of America or the Confederacy (Towers, 2012). This prompted the then president of the union, Abraham Lincoln to wage war on the Confederacy with the aim of preserving the union. This paper discusses the factors and/or circumstances that led to the civil war and the implications of the war on the United States.
Causes of the civil war
Slavery
Slavery was the main cause of conflict between the North and South. With industrialization and urbanization, slavery had been phased out in the North and many Northerners felt slavery should be abolished as it was uncivilized and did not sit well with the nation’s beliefs of liberties and rights (Towers, 2012). However, the South was characterized by large plantations producing mainly cotton, which depended on cheap slave labor. Therefore, they felt that if slavery was abolished, it would ruin their economy since they would not be able to run their plantations profitably
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The Republicans in the Congress were controlled by the Northerners while the Democrats by the Southerners (Varon, 2008). They usually took opposite stands when drafting laws such as taxes. The political influence in the federal government based in Washington D.C. was also changing with the Northerners taking power as result of rapid increase in populations as opposed to the South (Keegan, 2010). The Northerners were industrialists who depended on paid labor while the Southerners were agriculturalists based on slave labor (McPherson, 2007). This created perceptions that the country is divided into
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