Cause Of The Civil War

The topic of slavery is one dated back to the beginning of the United States and continued to be discussed throughout the history of it as well. It was a key issue that would lead to several laws and compromises that would be put into place before the Civil War. With these new laws and compromises, the tension between the North and South continued to grow. These tensions increased more with the difference in economics between the two territories. It is often thought that the sole reason for the Civil War was in fact slavery. Although many of the leading causes of the tension stemmed from the issue of slavery, the War itself had many contributing factors including certain economic and political issues.
The North and South were different territories …show more content…
With industry, the North had no need for slave labor which led the majority of them to support free labor. The economic differences are also the cause of new changes like the Missouri Compromise, which divided up the states who prohibited slavery (mostly south) and those who had abolished it (mostly north).The North and South were bound to have some opposition between each other since they were different people who had separate factors that would affect them.
The Missouri compromise worked until the Mexican- American war ended and the question of if the new territories would be admitted into the Union as free or slave states. Before the war, the amount of free and slave states were equal and wanted to be kept that way. This question led to another compromise, the Compromise of 1850, that admitted California as a free state and allowed Utah and New Mexico to choose for themselves with popular sovereignty. Also included in this compromise was the Fugitive Slave Act, which would increase the tensions severely. This act forced blacks to be returned to the South if there is someone who claims that they are their master. It spread outrage through the North and convinced many of them to provide sanctuary for these runaway slaves. The …show more content…
This case was caused by Dred Scott suing for his freedom due to his residence on free soil.The case reached the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and Congress made their decision. One ruling was the Dred Scott had no right to sue since he was not an American citizen and the other that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional all along: they had no right to ban slavery from territories. The north was furious about this decision, claiming that this was only an opinion and most of Congress were biased southerners. This political decision pushed the South and North even farther away from each other. An economic push for the war would come with the Panic of 1857. This crash causes over five thousand businesses failed in the span of a year. It would affect the North the hardest since their economy depended on industry and business while the South were hardly affected because of their dependence on agriculture. The South came out of the panic over confident and economically strong. As time went on, many Republicans agreed that the South were gaining too much power which would contribute to the election of Abraham Lincoln. Along with these decisions, who had less to do with slavery than previous incidents, came the unravelling of the Union and eventually