Civil War Thesis

Thesis: Although many believe the American Civil War morality slavery directly triggered slavery, the outbreak was truly stemmed from economic differences between the North and South coupled with a weak central government. In 1787, the Constitutional Convention passed the ineffective Three-Fifths Compromise exasperated the existing tensions between the agrarian South and industrial North. Tensions first erupted when the South demanded that slaves to be counted as a full person. The South’s primary motivation for such demand was due to fact that they were largely agricultural society that required many slaves to work on their vast plantation. A greater population consisting of masters and slaves would increase southern representation in …show more content…
The Compromise of 1850 cultivated further tensions between the North and South as it prevented additional provincial expansion of slavery. However, it did not address the structural discrepancy that divided the United States (“Trigger Events of the Civil War”). Part of the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Act, which stated “that it shall be the duty of all marshals… to obey and execute all warrants” and if any “refuse to receive such warrant…he shall be fined in the sum of one thousand dollars..” (“Fugitive Slave Act”). This act forced northern non-slave owners to participate in the South’s activities and many industrial Northern colonists had no interest or use for getting involved in anything to do with slavery. Furthermore, Senator Charles Tillinghast James argued in his speech that “the slavery of the South, if an unpardonable sin, is not to be answered and atoned by the people of the North. They have nothing to do with it” (“Senator Charles Tillinghast James, Speech on the Fugitive Slave Act, August 26, 1852”). The northerners felt as if they were carrying the burden of the rural South’s slave-centric society as many northerners did not rely on the slave system and thought that this punishment was unjust thus establishing