The common perception of the cause of the Civil War is the issue of slavery. Yet President Lincoln was not an advocate of ending slavery in states where it already existed, only in expansion territories. Further, other causes like the growth of industrialism, interest groups, and different economies in the North and South played a significant role in causing the Civil War. When looking at the multiple causes that eventually caused the Civil War, slavery was perhaps the least significant an issue among them.
Slavery was, indeed, an issue that contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. However, though the Southern states depended on slave labor to profit from their agrarian economy, Lincoln was opposed to abolishing slavery in states where it already existed. Still, LincolnÆs determination to prevent slavery from being implemented in expansion territories did pit him against Southern leaders determined to maintain slavery, like Jefferson Davis.
More than slavery, it was the disparate economies of the North and South that fueled the move toward war. Prior to the Civil War, the industrial revolutionÆs effects were more readily apparent in the urbanized North, where the climate and agricultural conditions had ôprecluded production on the scale enjoyed in the Southö (Miller 1967, 191). The North became the region of development for the factories and manufacturing that employed new technologies, while the expansion of the railroad system opened new territories in the West. New technologies developed the Western mining industries, while railroads provided an easy and inexpensive method to ship resources to the Northern industrial states.
The rapid development of industry, according to Van Loon (1959), created a demand for a ôgovernment regulatory system that would rigidly exclude foreign goodsö (258). It was trade; therefore, that most put the South at odds with the North. The South ne
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