People such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass wanted immediate freedom for all enslaved people. In plain acknowledgement that slavery was an offensive practice, Congress in 1808 banned the importation of African slaves. Tariffs are generally considered to be a "Lost Cause" of the Civil War, but the cited example is directly out of the Georgia Causes of Secession document. In the industrial North, there was a low, festering resentment that eight of the first 11 U.S. presidents were Southerners—and most of them Virginians at that. The Northern and Southern sections of the United States developed along different lines. In short order, always pugnacious South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, followed by six other Deep South states that were invested heavily in cotton. However, as years went by, the North, particularly New England, had developed cotton mills of its own—as well as leather and harness manufactories, iron and steel mills, arms and munitions factories, potteries, furniture makers, silversmiths and so forth. With the vote split four ways, Lincoln and the Republicans swept into power in November 1860, gaining a majority of the Electoral College, but only a 40 percent plurality of the popular vote. Equally outraged Southerners sent their own settlers, and a brutish group known as Border Ruffians from slaveholding Missouri went into Kansas to make trouble for the abolitionists. Summary Answer . The Southern Democrats put John C. Breckenridge on the ballot. E)The Confederacy seized Fort Sumter, forcing troops to surrender. ), Irreconcilable Differences Having acknowledged that, let me also say I have long believed there is no more concise or stirring accounting for the war than the sentiments propounded by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in The Second Coming, some lines of which are included in this essay. As with most wars, however, there was no single cause. That held the thing together for longer than it deserved. Into this unfortunate mix came an abolitionist fanatic named John Brown riding with his sons and gang. Some fought on moral grounds. What are the short term and long term causes of the Civil War? In this atmosphere, the seeds of white supremacy were sown. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun—who resigned as vice president to represent South Carolina in the Senate—fought vehemently for nullification. Additionally, some abolitionists took a less peaceful route to fighting against slavery. It is amazing that even today, nearly 150 years after the Civil War started, there is passionate debate regarding the "cause" of the Civil War. The population of the pro-slavery states was around 9.6 million in 1850 and only about 350,000 were enslavers. This included many of the wealthiest families, a number of whom owned large plantations. These were the first pangs of sectional dissension. Please note: The audio information from the video is included in the text below. The Civil War erupted from a variety of long-standing tensions and disagreements about American life and politics. States’ Rights refers To the struggle between the federal government and individual states over political power. On the eve of the Civil War, some 4 million Africans and their descendants toiled as slave laborers in the South. Somehow the Presbyterians hung together, but it was a strain, while the Episcopal church remained a Southern stronghold and firebrand bastion among the wealthy and planter classes. While we will examine some various reasons for the buildup of tension between the Southern states and the . The battle was the first major battle between the Union and the confederates that was won by the confederates and created controversy in the north causing the north to take more military actions towards the south and starting the war. That was not enough to calm the fears of delegates to an 1860 secession convention in South Carolina. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against enslavement and enslavers. Perhaps learning from that experience the danger of going it alone, in 1860 and early 1861 South Carolina sent emissaries to other slave holding states urging their legislatures to follow its lead, nullify their contract with the United States and form a new Southern Confederacy. Problems came to a head with a violent clash at Lawrence, Kansas. recognized slavery as the immediate cause of the Civil War.” Also, Lincoln said in 02:27 his second inaugural address, “One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, The first organized government in the U.S. after the Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. Whenever you have two people—or peoples—joined in politics but doing diametrically opposing things, it is almost inevitable that at some point tensions and jealousies will break out. One abolitionist in particular became famous—or infamous, depending on the point of view—for battles that caused the deaths of pro-slavery settlers in Kansas. Causes of the Civil War. Others voted down secession—temporarily. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its infamous Dred Scott decision, which elated Southerners and enraged Northerners. All the resenting and seething naturally continued to spill over into politics. Then there was the matter of the Tariff of Abominations, which became abominable for all concerned. This resulted in the idea of nullification, whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. A number of events helped fuel the cause for abolition in the 1850s. Six more states heeded the siren call: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The 1850s drew to a close in near social convulsion and the established political parties began to break apart—always a dangerous sign. Others fought to preserve the Union. No matter how distasteful he found the practice of slavery, the overarching philosophy that drove Lincoln was a hard pragmatism that did not include the forcible abolition of slavery by the federal government—for the simple reason that he could not envision any political way of accomplishing it. The question “what caused the U.S. Civil War?” has been debated since the horrific conflict ended in 1865. Over the years this group became stronger and by the 1820s had turned into a full-fledged movement, preaching abolition from pulpits and podiums throughout the North, publishing pamphlets and newspapers, and generally stirring up sentiments both fair and foul in the halls of Congress and elsewhere. Federal Government there is a key concept answer. The Dred Scott Case brought the issues of enslaved peoples' rights, freedom, and citizenship to the Supreme Court. President James Buchanan's administration did little to quell the tension or stop what would become known as "Secession Winter." Many felt that the new Constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census. He is the author of "The Everything American Presidents Book" and "Colonial Life: Government. This was shot down amid much debate. One economic cause is that the South was being dominated economically by the North. One of these immediate causes was the monarch, Charles I, who was very unpopular in every sense of the word, for a… The Missouri Compromise Catholics also maintained their solidarity, prompting cynics to suggest it was only because they owed their allegiance to the pope of Rome rather than to any state, country or ideal. Simmering animosities between North and South signaled an American apocalypse. A steady flow of immigrants, especially from Ireland and Germany during the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s, insured the North a ready pool of laborers, many of whom could be hired at low wages, diminishing the need to cling to the institution of slavery. Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson probably summed up the attitude of the day when he defined the South’s “peculiar institution” as a necessary evil, which he and many others believed, or at least hoped, would wither away of its own accord since it was basically wasteful and unproductive. [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’0′ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’25’ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’50’ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’75’ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’100′ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], [cat totalposts=’25’ offset=’125′ category=’1088′ excerpt=’true’ order=’desc’ orderby=’post_date’], VIDEO: Battery H Of The 3rd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery At Gettysburg, Dan Bullock: The youngest American killed in the Vietnam War. In the Southern states, longer growing seasons and fertile soils had established an economy based on agriculture fueled by sprawling, white-owned plantations that depended on enslaved people to perform a wide range of duties. Harriet Beecher Stowe Contrary to its intentions, the act actually galvanized Northern sentiments against slavery because it seemed to demand direct assent to, and personal complicity with, the practice of human bondage. What Really Caused The Nigerian Civil War. That dispute led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern and Western states and territories fought to preserve the Union, and the South fought to establish Southern independence as a new confederation of states under its own constitution. Join now. Immediate Cause of the Civil War: Lincoln’s Election & Secession of the South Direction: Read the enclosed Newsletter “ Lincoln’s Election and the Secession of the South” on pages 2-3. With all this back and forth carrying on for at least the decade preceding war, by the time hostilities broke out, few either in the North or the South had much use for the other, and minds were set. The states of the North, meanwhile, one by one had gradually abolished slavery. The Bolshevik victory ensured the supremacy of the Russian Communists in the nascent Soviet Union. The Civil War erupted from a variety of long-standing tensions and disagreements about American life and politics. Long & Short Term Causes of the Civil War by: Basia Klos SS hour 6 Conflict over slavery between the North and South is a long term cause of the Civil War because it spanned over a very long time. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free states or pro-slavery states. A visitor in the 1830s described the relentless cycle of the planters’ misallocation of spare capital: “To sell cotton to buy Negroes—to make more cotton to buy more Negroes—‘ad infinitum.’”. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by frequent presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas, overturned the Missouri Compromise and permitted settlers in the Kansas Territory to choose for themselves whether they wanted a free or slave state. The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820. Many Northern industries were purchasing the South's raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. But the U.S. Senate, by a sort of gentleman’s agreement laced with the usual bribes and threats, had remained 50-50, meaning that whenever a territory was admitted as a free state, the South got to add a corresponding slave state—and vice versa. In 1856, Charles Sumner, a 45-year-old Massachusetts senator and abolitionist, conducted a three-hour rant in the Senate chamber against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, focusing in particular on 59-year-old South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, whom he mocked and compared to a pimp, “having taken as his mistress the harlot, Slavery.” Two days later Congressman Preston Brooks, a nephew of the demeaned South Carolinian, appeared beside Sumner’s desk in the Senate and caned him nearly to death with a gold-headed gutta-percha walking stick. It is unclear who first put forth this curious interpretation of American history, but just as the great schism burst upon the scene it was subscribed to by no lesser Confederate luminaries than president Jefferson Davis himself and Admiral Raphael Semmes, of CSS Alabama fame, who asserted that the North was populated by descendants of the cold Puritan Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell—who had overthrown and executed the king of England in 1649—while others of the class were forced to flee to Holland, where they also caused trouble, before finally settling at Plymouth Rock, Mass. And with the new tariff putting foreign goods out of financial reach, Southerners were forced to buy these products from the North at what they considered exorbitant costs. The immediate cause was Constitutional principle: the U.S. government refused to recognize the southern states’ right to secede from the Union, and the C.S. But when Northern abolitionists made a martyr of him, Southerners came to believe this was proof the North intended to wage a war of extermination against white Southerners. Who Were the Democratic Presidents of the United States? But there is blame enough for all to go around. The immediate cause of the war was the counter coup d’etat that over threw General Aguiyi Ironsi and the taking over of the leadership of the country by Colonel Yakubu Gowon.. During the Mexican War, the debate began about what would happen with the new territories the U.S. expected to gain upon victory. // < ! Causes of the Civil War: A Balanced Answer by Gordon Leidner of Great American History. If there is a case to be made on what caused the Civil War, the Southern press and its editors would be among the first in the dock. At first the abolitionists concluded that the best solution was to send the slaves back to Africa, and they actually acquired land in what is now Liberia, returning a small colony of ex-bondsmen across the ocean. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, which would ban slavery in the new lands. ... Pfc. Abraham Lincoln’s Election, Explore articles from the History Net archives about Civil War Causes. The sides of this debate were largely drawn between northern and southern states, thus widened the growing divide within the nation. Still others, including Abraham Lincoln, simply hoped to keep slavery from expanding. Our line of historical magazines includes America's Civil War, American History, Aviation History, Civil War Times, Military History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vietnam, Wild West and World War II. Later, South Carolina legislators acted on this assertion and defied the federal government to overrule them, lest the state secede. Nicholson. Jackson had vowed to send an army to force the state to stay in the Union, and Congress authorized him to raise such an army (all Southern senators walked out in protest before the vote was taken), but a compromise prevented the confrontation from occurring. Brown’s raid thus became a step on the road to war between the sections. The conflict drew involvement from a number of international actors and helped precipitate the rise of ISIL (also called ISIS or Islamic State) in eastern Syria. Definition and Examples, Order of Secession During the American Civil War, The History of the Three-Fifths Compromise. Slaves could be rented or traded or sold to pay debts. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was another issue that further increased tensions. Ownership of more than a handful of slaves bestowed respect and contributed to social position, and slaves, as the property of individuals and businesses, represented the largest portion of the region’s personal and corporate wealth, as cotton and land prices declined and the price of slaves soared. For their part, the agrarian Southerners harbored lingering umbrage over the internal improvements policy propagated by the national government, which sought to expand and develop roads, harbors, canals, etc., but which the Southerners felt was disproportionately weighted toward Northern interests. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. De Bow, J.D.B. Abolitionist John Brown Yeats wrote his short po… With the addition of Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859) as free states, the Southerners’ greatest fears were about to be realized—complete control of the federal government by free-state, anti-slavery politicians. The Dred Scott Decision Interestingly, many if not most of the wealthiest Southerners were opposed to secession for the simple reason that they had the most to lose if it came to war and the war went badly. To the surprise of other Southern states—and even to many South Carolinians—the convention voted to dissolve the state’s contract with the United States and strike off on its own. This was because the South had become used to shipping its cotton to England and France and in return receiving boatloads of inexpensive European goods, including clothing made from its own cotton. Beginning in the late 18th century, a small group of people in New England concluded that slavery was a social evil, and began to agitate for its abolition—hence, of course, the term “abolitionist.”. One elderly Tennessean later expressed it this way: “I wish there was a river of fire a mile wide between the North and the South, that would burn with unquenchable fury forevermore, and that it could never be passable to the endless ages of eternity by any living creature.”. Put another way, it was well known that Lincoln was anti-slavery, but both during his campaign for office and after his election, he insisted it was never his intention to disturb slavery where it already existed. Many Northern leaders like Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alahji Ahmadu Bello and so on were killed in … Table 8: Root Causes of the War.