Causes of the Civil War Essay

ââ€"  North was opposed to slavery while the South was pro slavery ââ€"  The primary conflict of the civil war was whether the states had the right to decide what they wanted to do with slavery. (radical abolition vs pro slavery) ââ€"  One of the arising conflicts that led to the American Civil war was the growing abolition movement in the North ââ€"  which was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed â€Å"all men are created equal.† ââ€"  Abolitionists: William Lloyd Garrison: The voice of Abolitionism. Originally a supporter of colonization, Garrison changed his position and became the leader of the emerging anti-slavery movement. His publication, THE LIBERATOR, reached thousands of individuals worldwide. His ceaseless, uncompromising position on the moral outrage that was slavery made him loved and hated by many Americans. Although The Liberator was Garrison’s most prominent abolitionist activity, he had been involved in the fight to end slavery for years prior to its publication. In 1831, Garrison published the first edition of The Liberator. His words, â€Å"I am in earnest — I will not equivocate I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD,† clarified the position of the NEW ABOLITIONISTS. Garrison was not interested in compromise. He founded the NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY the following year. ââ€"  Frederick Douglass: Born a slave in Maryland escaped to MA in 1838, became an outspoken leader of antislavery sentiment. Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. He provided a powerful voice then that was championing human rights. He is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.He also helped people escape to the North from the underground Railroad. ââ€"  Pro Slavery: John C. Calhoun: He believed that slavery was a â€Å"good positive good.† Calhoun endorsed slavery as ‘a good — a great good,’ based on his belief in the inequality inherent in the human race. Calhoun believed that people were motivated primarily by self-interest and that competition among them was a positive expression of human nature. The results of this competition were displayed for all to see in the social order: those with the greatest talent and ability rose to the top, and the rest fell into place beneath them.The concepts of liberty and equality, idealized during the Revolutionary period, were potentially destructive to this social order, Calhoun believed. With the stratification of society, those at the top were recognized as authority figures and respected for their proven wisdom and ability. If the revolutionary ideal of equality were taken too far, the authority of the elite would not be accepted. Without this authority, Calhoun argued, society would break down and the liberty of all men would be threatened. Political short terms : ââ€"  Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a slave who, in the 1840s, chose to sue his master’s widow for his freedom. He argued that his master, John Emerson, escorted him onto free soil in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, and thus had legally—even if inadvertently— granted him freedom. In 1857, the case reached the United States Supreme Court. The Justices ruled against Scott. John Emerson’s widow had since remarried, and she returned Scott, his wife, and his daughters to their owners, the Blow family, in May 1857, just months after the ruling. Both Dred and Harriet Scott died shortly thereafter, never to witness the legacy of their fight.The Dred Scott case was a major event on the road to the Civil War. The Supreme Court’s provocative opinion—which stated flatly that blacks had â€Å"no rights which the white man was bound to respect† and rejected the right of any territory to ban slavery within its own border s—inflamed public opinion in the North, leading to a hardening of anti slavery attitudes and a surge in popularity for the new antislavery Republican Party. ââ€"  The south wanted less government control, and more state freedom, while the North welcomed the central power of a government. ââ€"  Because of the strong animosity toward abolitionists in the South and the thought that Abraham Lincoln embodied these abolitionist ideals, he was left off of the ballot in many Southern states, and the more radical of the states, including South Carolina, threatened to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected president. Despite believing that the Republican Party’s platforms were too moderate, abolitionist, for the large part, supported Lincoln. Lincoln lost the popular vote by nearly two million votes yet won the Electoral College by nearly sixty votes. Despite the fractured Democratic party, had they nominated only one president and still maintained all the votes the received between three candidates, they still would have lost the election regardless of also having more popular votes than Lincoln. The election itself is possibly the most significant election in American history due to the monumental issue of slavery and how divided the country was, so divided that when Lincoln was elected (it was only the second national presidential campaign ever run by the newly formed Republican Party), radically proslavery states of the South kept true to their threat and seceded from the United States. (he was a free soiler, he was willing to let slavery stay in the south as long as it did not spread.) ââ€"  The South viewed the election of Abraham Lincoln, as president, as a threat to slavery. After Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the South threatened to secede from the United States that questioned â€Å"State Rights.â₠¬  Economic short and long term causes: ââ€"  the vast majority of industrial manufacturing was taking place in the North. The South had almost 25% of the country’s free population, but only 10% of the country’s capital in 1860. The North had five times the number of factories as the South, and over ten times the number of factory workers. In addition, 90% of the nation’s skilled workers were in the North. ââ€"  The labor forces in the South and North were fundamentally different, as well. In the North, labor was expensive, and workers were mobile and active. The influx of immigrants from Europe and Asia provided competition in the labor market, however, keeping wages from growing very quickly. ââ€"  The Southern economy, however, was built on the labor of African American slaves, who were oppressed into providing cheap labor. Most Southern white families did not own slaves: only about 384,000 out of 1.6 million did. Of those who did own slaves, most (88%) owned fewer than 20 slaves, and were considered farmers rather than planters. Slaves were concentrated on the large plantations of about 10,000 big planters, on which 50-100 or more slaves worked. ââ€"  Since Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton ‘gin, the cotton industry became a lucrative field for Southern planters and farmers. Utilizing slave labor, cotton planters and farmers could cut costs as they produced cotton for sale to other regions and for export to England. In exchange, Southern farmers and planters purchased manufactured goods from the North, food items from the West and imported luxuries like European designer clothes and furniture from England. The growth of the Southern cotton indu stry served as an engine of growth for the entire nation’s economy in the antebellum (pre-war) years. ââ€"  The other critical economic issue that divided the North from the South was that of tariffs. Tariffs were taxes placed on imported goods, the money from which would go to the government ââ€"  Southern Congressmen generally opposed it and Northern Congressmen generally supported it. Southerners generally favored low tariffs because this kept the cost of imported goods low, which was important in the South’s import-oriented economy. Southern planters and farmers were concerned that high tariffs might make their European trading partners, primarily the British, raise prices on manufactured goods imported by the South in order to maintain a profit on trade. ââ€"  North, however, high tariffs were viewed favorably because such tariffs would make imported goods more expensive. That way, goods produced in the North would seem relatively cheap, and Americans would want to buy American goods instead of European items. Since tariffs would protect domestic industry from foreign competition, business interests and others influenced politicians to support high tariffs.