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The Causes And Effects Of The Civil War

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The causes and effects of the Civil War will be defined through the institution of slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the military leadership of President Lincoln to resolve the uncompromising political position of the South/Confederacy. Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech will be an important primary source that defines the underlying resistance to the expansion of the slave states into new territories taken by the U.S. government in the 1850s. More so, the uncompromising and an increasingly militaristic aggression of the South in seceding from the Union defines the effects of this political “divide” between Republicans and Democrats in Congress due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. At the center of this issue, Lincoln’s leadership defines the slow process of political causality in opposing slave state status, which eventually manifested itself into a “house divided” in the Civil War. In essence, the root cause of the Civil War will be defined through the tension between slave and free state status, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the important pro-northern leadership of Lincoln in the coming war that would divide the nation. One of the causes of the political tension between northern “free states” and southern “slave states” was the issue of westward expansion. New territories, such as Kansas and Nebraska, defined attempted compromises that were meant to evenly divide these territories between the two factions. Therefore, the institution of slavery was a moral, ethical

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