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The Inevitable Conflict Of The American Civil War

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The Inevitable Conflict The American Civil War was a bloody, horrific conflict that killed roughly a million people including civilians. The war lasted four entire years despite being mapped out as a short skirmish and easy victory for the long standing Union. Most people claim the war was fought over slavery, others argue it was fought for the protection of states’ rights. Regardless of the reasoning for a domestic war, it is just as important to understand what chain of events lead up to the first shot being fired. With sectionalism rendering the nation more and more divided, the Civil War may have been the only viable option to determine the final destination of our country’s government. A series of controversial legal decisions and radical actions ultimately lead to the Civil War. The North and Southern regions of the United States had been slowly drifting apart, largely due to their drastically different economies. The South’s capital depended solely on slave labor unlike the North which had a booming industrious economy ran by business moguls and cheap immigrant labor. Many Northerners, although racist, abhorred the idea of slavery. In the year 1850, amidst heated dispute over the territories won in the Mexican-American war, the great compromiser Henry Clay devised a series of acts known as the Compromise of 1850 to resolve the issue. One component of this compromise intended as a provision to the South, a stricter Fugitive Slave Act was passed which required

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