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What Were the Causes of the American Civil War? Essay

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What were the causes of the American Civil War? The Civil War happened due to the many differences between the North and the South. For example economic, social, cultural and political differences. These all helped lead America to a Civil War. But to an extent, the most important cause was the fact there were many disagreements with states' rights versus federal rights. It was clear that there was always going to be a conflict between the federal government and the state governments because the federal government has the power to discuss bills and proposals for new laws. Whereas the state governments only has power to deal with policing, education and health care. And issues like slavery created tension between the two because the …show more content…

And the South's commitment to essential production of goods and slave labour was reflected in the region0s distinctive cult of honour, and its defence of social inequality. The South heavily relied on slavery to keep their economy stable, although not their only source of money, but by abolishing slavery and making it illegal it would damage their economy quite badly. And so this caused a lot of tension between the North and South because they were very different economically. The South is much more agricultural, and is reliant upon exports as well. The North on the other hand is in complete contrast to the South. The North industrialised very fast and many people of poor background and some African-American succeeded and made a lot of money. It isn't very clear that if they had lived in the South if they could have achieved this much success, but those in the North faced a lot less discrimination compared to the South. "Because the economics of the dynamic industrializing North and the static agrarian South were incompatible, the two societies were on a collision course that led inexorably to war" (http://civilwartalk.com/threads/historians-evolving-views-of-civil-war-causality.21223/) Many historians agree that this was not a major cause. According to economic historian Lee A. Craig, "In fact, numerous studies by economic historians over the past several decades reveal that economic conflict was not an inherent condition of North-South

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