The American Civil War Essay, Research Paper

Was Slavery the Cause of the Civil War? The American Civil War is the major military struggle between the United States of America and eleven Southern provinces that succeeded and organized as the Confederate States of America. Up until the terminal of the war in 1865 the primary beginning of labour in the United States were enslaved African Americans. Bondage can be defined as the most absolute signifier of human servitude and ownership. Their services or labour is obtained forcefully. Their physical organic structures are considered as the belongings of another human being, intending they could be sold, bought, traded, and be capable to anything else at their proprietor & # 8217 ; s discretion. . Since the first purchase of African Americans as slaves in North America in 1619, slavery bit by bit became an recognized characteristic and an indispensable industry to the economic system and society. But fortuitously the dehumanisation and these violating of human rights have non gone unnoticed. Although there are many different issues and events taking up to the war, it is clear that bondage is in fact the primary cause of the Civil War. There are many different causes for the Civil War. While the old ages taking up to the war were uneasy, they were besides a clip of enormous growing for the United States. In 1800 merely eight million people lived in America. By the beginning of the war in 1861, the population had soared to thirty- one million. The state besides had huge new undiscovered districts waiting to be settled. Strong foreign states such as England and France were eventually get downing to pay attending to this booming immature state. Although this growing brought the United States wealth and glorification, it besides created struggles throughout the state. As the state changed, two really distinguishable ways of life developed: one in the North and the other in the South. Throughout the North flourishing metropoliss like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were knee deep in the Industrial Age. Factories and Millss rose up along the streets and gave occupations to 1000000s of immigrants from foreign states. Inventors developed new machines that turned out merchandises at record- breakage velocities. These metropoliss bustled with noise and exhilaration everyday. The South was rather a different a different scene. Life in the South revolved around immense estates called plantations where immense Fieldss of cotton, baccy, and other harvests were grown. The largest metropolis in the South was New Orleans with a population of 150,000 people. Yet compared to the industrial metropoliss in the North New Orleans was merely a small town. The people in the two subdivisions were merely every bit different as their metropoliss and towns. In the North politicians and merchandisers accused Southerners of being backward and antique, while in the South work forces called Northerners suffering Northerners and complained that they were blind with greed. These bad feelings likely originate from the fact the two sides rely on each other for trade. The North depended on the rich Fieldss of the South for natural stuffs and the South depended on the mills of the North to treat their harvests. This state of affairs caused bad feelings, peculiarly from the Southern husbandmans. They felt that the monetary value Northern merchandisers paid for their harvests were excessively low and besides that they were being charged excessively much for factory-made merchandises from the North. In add-on, Southern husbandmans needed the Northern merchandisers to transport their goods overseas and hence had to pay whatever they charged. The North and South were two different states in every facet, similar in one facet merely, their hatred for each other. Peoples from the North and the South had developed different ways of life and thought. But nil did more to stir choler between them than the topic of bondage. Although the

slaveholding plantation owner category was a little minority of the Southern population, it dominated Southern political relations and society. Because slaves were the biggest investing in the South, the people unlike in the North overpoweringly supported slavery whereas ownership of human existences had been outlawed for old ages in the North.

In order to keep peace between the two sides political leaders tried to avoid the issue of bondage. But with turning resistance in the North to the enlargement of bondage to new districts the issue had to be addressed. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 settled this job temporarily by set uping the 36 30 & # 8242 ; parallel as the line dividing free and slave district in the Louisiana Purchase. But the inquiry arose once more when the United States boundaries were extended westward to the Pacific. The Compromise Measures of 1850 allowed for the admittance of California as a free province and the organisation of two new districts Utah and New Mexico from the balance of the land acquired in the Mexican War. The rule of popular sovereignty was used there which allowed the local legislative assemblies to find their position of bondage. Although the Compromise of 1850 was originally hailed as a success, the peace proved to be brief. The people in the South one time once more grew distrusting of the ever- strengthening North that now had bulk control in Congress and threatened their manner of life. Adding to their uncomfortableness was the turning figure of abolitionist groups all over the North and in concealed parts of the South that wanted to get rid of bondage. Strong protagonists of the antislavery cause like William Lloyd Garrison held meetings and published booklets and requests that angrily denounced slaveowners as felons and evildoers. Garrison went so far as to fire a transcript of the United States Constitution in public, naming it & # 8220 ; an understanding with snake pit & # 8221 ; because it allowed and protected bondage. Such public motions besides stirred up the slaves. In the summer of 1831, a Virginian slave named Nat Turner led a group of 70 inkinesss in a barbarous rebellion against a nearby town. During this March from farm to farm 55 Whites were murdered. Bloody rebellions like these left Southerners terrified and led them to name for a alteration even more strongly than they have been. Each onslaught pushed the Southerners toward more bitterness. Finally, adverting of the word bondage triggered acrimonious statements. Although the Civil War was a cumulating of four decennaries of intense regional struggle and deep-seated economic, societal, and political differences, bondage was the one issue that became impossible to work out and as a consequence became the struggle that pushed the North and the South to war. The American Civil War was the most annihilating event in American history. Over 620,500 lives had been lost, more than twice that wounded. More than four billion dollars of belongings was destroyed by the war. It was a sad war, a war that clearly showed that the United States had genuinely disconnected apart, that fellow Americans could and did go ferocious enemies. But the war was non a entire loss. The topic of bondage was inevitable and this war addressed this job head-on. The American Civil War made damagess with the tragic fact that the lineage of any black American can merely be traced to a measure of sale and no farther, by allowing freedom to four million inkinesss and all the African Americans of the hereafter. BibliographyDavis, Kenneth C. Don & # 8217 ; t Know Much About the Civil War. New York: Avon Books,1970Lester, Julius To Be a Slave New York: Scholastic Inc. 1968Ray, Delia A Nation Torn Apart Washington: Lodestar Books 1990Bandon, Alexsandra African Americans New York: Macmillan Publishing 1994Kent, Deborah The Civil War Washington: Washington Square Press 1974