Civil War Turning Point Analysis

The Civil War represented a critical turning point in the history and development of the United States. In 1860, the U.S. Constitution had been finally ratified just 80 years before, creating officially the Union of "The United States." The events leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 put increasing pressure on the federal Union with individual states seeking their independence from federal rule for several reasons, and then a number of Southern states openly defied the existence of the Union and seceded from it. Thus, a central question of the Civil War was whether the Union of the "United States" would remain united and could survive.
The secession of the Southern states and the attack on Fort Sumter that initiated the war, however, were not the result of immediate circumstances …show more content…
were two more areas of inevitable conflict between the North and South. The matter of states ' rights had not been finally established in the Constitution in regard to clear distinctions between the powers of the states and the federal power, so this, as time came to passed, became another "gaping wound" which, like slavery, led to North-South conflict. In regard to states ' rights, in the South, the belief was that the states had many rights which could or should not be ceded to the federal union. On the other hand, in the North, the position on states ' rights was weaker, with the belief that the federal powers should be dominant. In regard to the new territories, the states in the South wanted each new territory or state to have the right to choose slavery, but in the North, the dominant perspective was to limit the spread of slavery by limiting the proliferation of slave states and territories. Thus, as the nation grew geographically, and new territories and states were in the process of coming into the Union, the antagonism between the North and South inevitably increased leading to armed