Causes of the Civil War

1. Causes of the Civil War

2. sectionalism • Sectionalism – the greater loyalty many Americans felt toward their own section than to the country as a whole • Southerners – economy centered around plantations, cash crops, and steady agricultural growth • Felt the North was threatening their way of life • Northerners – focus on business and industry; concentrated on manufacturing, shipping and trading goods • Feared the South wanted to spread slavery across the nation

3. states’ rights • Southerners argued that the federal government was failing to respect the arrangement in the Constitution that had bound the states together. • They thought those powers were being used by the North and the West against the South to charge high tariffs and to challenge the preservation of slavery. • Calhoun - States’ rights to nullify federal law within its borders or secede from Union

4. Abolitionist movement • Believed that slavery was morally wrong and wanted to end it. • Men and women of high moral purpose and courage who sought to make the issue of slavery a focus of national politics. • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853) • William Lloyd Garrison – The Liberator • Harriet Tubman & Frederick Douglass – Underground Railroad • Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience

5. Dred scottdecision • A Southern slave who was taken by his owner to the North and then back into slavery in the South. Scott sued for his freedom. Having been on free soil, he argued that he could not be taken back into slavery. • He was denied his freedom.

6. Kansas-nebraska act • 1854 – Popular Sovereignty to be implemented in these areas to decide their own slavery issues • Stephen Douglas wanted support for a railroad in the North • Led to bloodshed in Kansas – “Bleeding Kansas”

7. tariffs • Duties were placed on foreign goods; caused practically everything purchased in the South to rise 50%. • A problem from 1828 up until the Civil War.

8. slavery • Debate over the future of slavery. • South – utilized slaves for plantations; Cotton • North – with immigration there was little need for slavery

9. Republican party • Formed out of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. • Abraham Lincoln ran under this party • Elected 1860

10. John brown’s raid • White abolitionist – launched a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry. • Quickly crushed. • He was tried and executed – seen as a hero in the North.