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The Legacy Of The Civil War

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The Civil War was one of the most controversial periods in American history. As a result of the controversy, there have been many theories that explain the cause of the war. Most theories state the causes of this conflict arose from geographic, economic, political, and even social differences. Tensions over slavery had been building for decades, and every time a new state in the West was added, there was an extremely tense debate over whether or not slavery would be permitted in the new state. Americans did not believe that the United States could remain half slave free and half permit slavery. The issue of slavery significantly affected the culture of the South. While America began to modernize in the mid nineteenth century, the southern states remained primarily rural and agricultural. The southern states were more reliant on slavery because of the amount of agricultural work and lack of modernized technology. Cotton was the staple cash crop of the South, which relied predominantly on slave labor. Even though slavery was not nearly as predominant in the North, they still relied on slave labor in many places. Though the Southern economy boomed because of cotton, it did not modernize, largely because the South became too dependent on cotton. Many Southerners felt that if slavery were to be abolished in the United States, the Southern culture would disappear with it, because Southern culture by 1860 was completely immersed in a slave society. As the North modernized they

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