COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR (1820-1860)
This research paper summarizes, explains, and analyzes the principal events that led to the American Civil War. Between 1820 and 1860, the sectional rivalry between the North and the South intensified. That rivalry coalesced around the failure of the political system to arrange a lasting accommodation over the extension of slavery into the western territories. The economic and social forces which ultimately undermined the basis for political compromise between North and South gained momentum during the two decades 1820 to 1840; but political balance between North and South was maintained by the two party system during that period. A much more serious series of crises erupted in the 1840s and early 1850s over the extension of slavery that accompanied the expansion through conquest and settlement of the West during those decades. During the mid to late 1850s, the advent of the civil war became inevitable because of the fragmentation of the political center and a decline in the quality of its leadership which proved incapable after 1854 of holding the Union together against escalating confrontational and polarizing pressures.
Before 1820, the institution of slavery did not present significant political or constitutional issues in the United States. Many of the founding fathers were slaveholders, as were a number of later Presidents. The Constitution recognized obliquely the property rights of slaveowners in their slaves and 3/5 of the southern slave population was counted in computing southern representation in Congress. After the Revolution, all the northern states abolished slavery within their borders. Slavery in the South remained undisturbed and grew in importance.
The movement to free the slaves in the South was spearheaded in the North by the abolitionist movement founded by William Garrison in the early 1830s, but until the late 1840s Nevins said the abolitionists "were a r...