Primary Causes of the Civil War
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There is a popular conception regarding the cause of the Civil War, that the war was fought over the issue of slavery and that the North was battling to free the slaves. In fact, while there were some in the North who desperately wanted an end to slavery, this was not the primary cause of the war, nor was the abolition of slavery the primary purpose of the war from the northern point of view. Historians generally agree on this as they agree on many of the underlying reasons for the Civil War, reasons which were on the one hand economic, involving economic differences between North and South, and on the other political, with Abraham Lincoln pursing the war primarily to defend and protect the Union. An analysis of a number of texts on the subject of the Civil War and its causes indicates the different approaches taken by historians, different ways in which they present their material, and alternative theories they offer as to the cause of the Civil War. Slavery had a role in creating tensions between North and South because of the efforts of northern abolitionists to stir up opposition to the institution for the half-century or so prior to the start of the Civil War, and historians do find that the anti-slavery sentiment was strong in the north, contributed to developing political tensions between North and South, and created special resentment against the North in the South. John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. in From Slavery to F
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ded Forts Sumter and Pickens as territory that the federal government was now holding illegally. The Confederate congress resolved to obtain possession of the forts immediately, and when they tried and fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War was started.
The battle between North and South was in part a continuation of the debate over national control opposed to states rights, as noted. The Southern perspective was that self-government was best protected in local units such as the state, and southerners were prepared to fight for their rights against any perceived tyrannical encroachment from the North:
They saw themselves, in fact, as true revolutionary patriots. Like northerners, southerners cherished the Union. But they preferred the loose confederacy of the Jeffersonian past to the centralized nationalism Seward kept invoking.
The slavery debate was evoked in this same way, as something that the states should decide and that the North should not dictate to the South. Both North and South, however, saw the other as threatening its freedom and as infringing on its view of a proper republican society. When these differences could not be resolved and indeed polarized to a degree that made them intractable, war resulted.
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Approximate Word count = 4067
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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