The general argument made by David Herbert Donald in Why the War Came: The Sectional Struggle over Slavery in the Territories is that the issue of slavery in the national territories started the Civil War. More specifically, Donald argues that the Kansas-Nebraska Act, crafted by Stephen A. Douglas, revived the issue of slavery in the territories and divided the nation into hostile sections which turned the great forces that once cement American unity into a tool that further divided the nation. Donald points out that North detested slavery to the conception of slavery as being un-American and was the main reason why the South was lagging behind. In order to abolish slavery, the North, who held the majority in the national government, acted on the regulation of national territories. The national territories were one of the few areas that the North could act against slavery since they did not have power over slavery within the states it existed. The South, on the other hand, believed the North was out to destroy them and …show more content…
The Missouri Compromise had excluded slavery from the region but Southerners defeated a proposal to organize the territory as a free state. In response, Stephen A. Douglas sponsored a bill and was willing to add any amendments concerning slavery in order for it to pass. The act of pleasing both sides, which had worked in the Compromise of 1850, did not work for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Pressured by Southerners, President Pierce endorsed it and pressured Northerners in Congress to vote for it. As a result, many Northerners, who were against slavery, banded to form the Free-Soil Party which beliefs would coalesce into the Republican Party. Consequently, this event destroyed national parties and created political parties based on sectionalism with Democrats in the South and Republicans in the
Both sections were to be able to decide on the issue of slavery based upon popular sovereignty, and the Missouri Compromise would be gotten rid of. This act was passed some years later under the administration of President Franklin Pierce. In an attempt to end the spread of slavery, anti-slavery northerners formed the Republican Party in direct opposition of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Moreover, uprisings began in Kansas and pro and anti-slavery forces began acting against each other. In 1856 pro-slavery men attacked Lawrence, Kansas.
While the North tried to stop the South from withdrawing their spot in the Union, the North also denied the Southern states rights. Sectional groups assembled in the North regarding the “unnatural feeling and hostility” to slavery in the South. “ By consolidating their strength, they have placed the strength... no avail in protecting Southern rights (Document I). The Northerners believed that slavery is not right, and also that “the demand of African slavery throughout the confederacy” is unheard of.
Also, I will be explaining what the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was. January of 1854 Sen. Stephen Douglas wrote a bill that would divide the land in the west of Missouri into two states Nebraska and Kansas. Douglas wanted popular sovereignty for both states; this would allow the residents of the two states to vote on if slavery would be legal in new states. Groups against slavery were against Douglas’s push for popular sovereignty, because without the ability to vote slavery would not be allowed in the new
The American Civil War was in many ways a logical conclusion to the growing differences between the Northern and Southern United States from its beginnings the late 1700’s. The growing sectional differences in politics, economics, and society made war seem nearly inevitable by the year 1861. One major cause of The American Civil War was the Missouri Compromise. This was a cause because the Missouri Compromise the Compromise split the north and south to being slave and non slave territories, which led the country divided.this averted war for 30 years until california was up for grab for whether it was it was a free state, because it crossed both sides of the Missouri Compromise line. In Document 5 Abraham Lincoln states “A house divided against
The Kansas-Nebraska Act would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had been keeping the union from falling apart for 34 years. Almost all of the Southern Whigs voted for the bill and all of the Northern Whigs opposed it. This caused there to be conflict and no agreement could be found, thus causing the Southern Whigs to be known as Democrats and the Northern Whigs to stay Whigs. It had split up the Whigs and Democrats to form a new party; the Republicans. They were anti-slavery.
Stephen Douglas, an advocate of popular sovereignty, and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican candidate, were both running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. These two men met in a sequence of seven debates before they battled for office of presidency in the election of 1858. Slavery eventually became the main issue discussed repeatedly in each of the debates, due to the Mexican War adding new territories left to be assessed as free soil or not. During this time, the Compromise of 1850 was a temporary fix to the sectional issues for the states that made the decision to participate in the extension of slavery. However, the Missouri Compromise of 1854 brought the issue back up again.
Northerners recognised the bill as the repeal of the 34 year old Missouri compromises and feared that the bills true intentions was to extend slavery to the entire nation. Congress was able to pass the Kansas Nebraska act but resulted in a severe division between the nation with 91% of the opposition coming from northerners, not only did it make the division bigger between the north and south but also caused the house of representatives to fight due to their different view points. Soon enough the issues revolving around the act and slavery divided the Whigs and democrats, with congressman from both parties acting for and against the act. An Illinoi Whig named Abraham Lincoln spoke out about how monstrous slavey was in an 1854 speech. By this time the Whigs ceased to exist due to them being split between their northern and southern factions.
Even though some may claim that the Election was a political factor about states’ rights, it was the underlying cause of slavery and the effects slavery that cause drive political differences that drove South Carolina to
Before reading This Great Struggle, I always viewed the Civil War as just a war that sprouted out of nowhere and just sort of happened over the single reason of slavery. But after reading this book I found that my misconception of the Civil War was extremely inaccurate. While reading this book I learned many new things about the Civil War that I had never known about before and I believe that it has given me a completely new outlook on the Civil War. Although he demonstrates how the war was not caused only by slavery, but he also proves the concept that slavery was a major cause of the Civil War. While reading This Great Struggle, I found that the war was, although commonly avoided and excused, fought over slavery.
Implemented in 1854, this revoked the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which forbade slavery in the North. Even though Kansas would not be considered as a Northern state, it became a place of bloodshed as pro- and anti-slavery aspects expanded into the territory, strengthening the rising tension that was already present between the two parties. Pieter Geyl confirms that the North and South were ‘divided by a moral issue of the first magnitude,’ with one party ‘detesting slavery and, the other glorifying it as the basis of its social system.’ ‘Bleeding Kansas’ was an important component in understanding that the different ideologies of slavery between the people of Kansas at this time, resulted in their inability to compensate personal values for communal peace. As this act was aimed to save the North, to unify rather than divide, the Kansas-Nebraska Act resulted in the opposing contention. Reporter William Russell from the London Times had additionally claimed that the ‘tone’ and ‘speech’ of Southerners when alluding to people from the North were said in spite and hostility.
Free and slave states were kept balanced to keep war from breaking out, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought on the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act split Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska, where Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free state, but leaving the actual decision on slavery to the residents of the territories. Bleeding Kansas occurred because this act led to violence between pro and antislavery forces. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Comprise because “it allowed southerners to bring slaves into an area formerly closed to slavery (373)” causing northerners to feel threatened. Kansas had “both southerners and antislavery northerners began an intensive drive to recruit settlers and establish a majority there (374).”
The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion Nat Turner struck back at the slave system with violence because he considered himself a prophet and felt that killing white people was God’s will. The original family that owned him gave him access to white children school books. The worst treatment of Nat Turner received as a slave was from Thomas Moore, who gave him a thrashing after Nat suggested that the slaves ought to be free and would be one day or another. I would not consider this abuse because many slaveholders would punish a slave for speaking against slavery. As a young adult, Nat Turner is said to have practically memorized all of the Old Testament.
The Manifest Destiny contributed to the Civil War because the expansion of new territories and states added into the United States. If the new territories were to vote in Congress for slavery and no slavery, it could be a threat for slavery in the South. ‘’many Southerners and some Northerners wanted slavery to exist everywhere in the United States, including in the new territories added to the country. Many other Americans did not want slavery to expand at all, and some people wanted slavery to be prohibited across the entire nation. Eventually these tensions would lead to the American Civil War’’ (Manifest Destiny, N/d).
Tensions rose across the country from those in support support of slavery and those opposed. Many states wanted to outlaw slavery while others adamantly defended it because it was the main institution with a high and consistent revenue. Ultimately, the disagreements over slavery are what lead to the Civil War. The country divided into an “Us versus Them” situation which lead to both sides having growing support for their views and making the groups less susceptible to an agreement. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves from confederate states.
To a greater extent, slavery was the greatest cause of the outbreak of the civil war in 1860. Disputes of slavery caused economic and political troubles between the northern and southern states leading up to the civil war. The fact the the northern and southern states were different in almost every way caused them to turn out like completely different territories, one of their greatest differences was the fact that most southern states economy relied on hard labour, agricultural jobs like tobacco in Maryland, and cotton in Virginia; this caused their economy to be more based on the labour of slaves than the more developed territories in the north (Harrold), who after this time was starting to not need the slave labour in their territories because after early 1800’s, the industrial revolution had been spreading to America, and the country developed very quickly. But in this expansion, only the north states were getting the effect of the industrial revolution, meaning the north would not need slave