In 1776, the founding fathers of the United States, together with the people of the original thirteen colonies were bound by a common interest of dissolving the tyrannical bands which have connected them with Great Britain. Through their determination and courage, they fought and defeated Great Britain and created what is now one of the most powerful and developed nations on earth, the United States. The hard work of the founding fathers who created the United States was to be demolished in a civil war, just eighty five years after the new nation was created. The Civil war began in 1861, it was the bloodiest war in the history of the United States. The war divided the nation into two major parts, the North and the South. There are many different reasons that contributed to this horrific war that dismantled the United States. Nowadays, the popular belief is that the main and only cause of the civil war was the opposing positions between the North and the South regarding the institution of slavery. However, the main factors that were crucial in bringing upon the extirpation of the union were, the Kansas Nebraska Act, the growing gap of economic and social differences between the north and the South, and above all, the different interpretations of the constitution between the North and the South.
The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 is one of the major causes that were crucial in causing the Civil War. The damages caused by the Kansas Nebraska Act were both political and social. By the beginning of the 1850s, citizens and entrepreneurs wanted to move into the area now known as Nebraska (Kansas Nebraska Act). However, until the area was organized as a territory, citizens would not move there because they could not legally keep a announce on the position. The Southern states' affiliates in The legislature were in no hurry to let Nebraska be a territory because the position lay north of the 36°30' Parallel, where slavery had been prohibited by the Missouri.
Compromise of 1820. However, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed the Kansas Nebraska Act, he suggested Nebraska should be accepted as a proslavery territory, and to get people to agree with his idea he suggested the second territory south of Nebraska should be a free state. The territory was Kansas. In spite of all this, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each side to resolve the issue of slavery on the factors of the well-known, popular sovereignty. It was clear that the land in Kansas was better for growing cotton and other crops compared to the land in Nebraska; this meant that the popular sovereignty proposed by the Kansas Nebraska Act would more likely allow slavery to take place in Kansas. Slavery in Kansas would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the sectional balance stable, and prevented the relationship between the North and South from falling apart for the last thirty-four decades. Moreover, this also meant that in order for the Kansas Nebraska Act to be passed, the long-standing bargain would have to be removed. Level of resistance was excessive, but gradually the bill was accepted in May of 1854. The North was frustrated. Animosity between the North and South was again increasing. Regarding the political effects, the damage caused by the Kansas Nebraska Act can be seen through the courses of the political parties at the time the bill was passed. The political effects of Douglas' bill were enormous. Passage of the bill irrevocably split the Whig Party (The Kansas-Nebraska Act ). The Whig party was one of the two essential government parties in the country at the time. The compromise of 1850 was mostly a Whig accomplishment made possible by the party’s aging leaders, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster (Kelly 2). Every northern Whig vetoed the bill; almost every southern Whig voted for it. With the emotional issue of the South's’ peculiar institution, there was no way a common ground could be discovered. Most of the Southern Whigs soon were taken into the Democratic party. Northern Whigs updated themselves with other non-slavery interests to become the Republican party. Leaving the Democratic party as the only remaining party that exceeded sectional selections. One of the social problems caused by the Kansas Nebraska Act was the fightings, and killings of suspected pro slavery groups by antislavery groups, which then forced pro slavery groups to retaliate. In other words the massive civil unrest in Kansas, which was caused by the slavery issue somehow set the precedent of the Civil War. Civil war in Kansas thus erupted in 1856 and continued intermittently until it emerged with the large scale Civil War of 1861-1865. Altogether, the Kansas conflict destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of property, paralyzed agriculture in certain areas, and cost scores of lives (The American Pageant 441). The North felt that if the Compromise of 1820 was ignored, the Compromise of 1850 could be ignored as well.Violations of the hated Slave Law enhanced. therefore increasing the tension between Southern states and the Northern states.
Prior to the wake of the Civil War, the social and economic differences between the North and South were very clear. At the time of the original thirteen colonies, differences set in early. The South’s rich soil, and moderate environment made it more favorable for agricultural based businesses like tobacco, and cotton to strife well. Growing these cash crops required massive parts of land, and therefore residents resided far apart. On the other hand, northern colonies were not very reliant on plantations, but focused more on urban lifestyle. These variations were the starting of a sectional department that would haunt the nation for the years to come. With the nation quickly growing in population, territory, and industry, significant variations developed in the financial and social lifestyles of each area of the nation, specifically North and South. During the 1800s the South stayed with an economic system and a public order mostly established on their peculiar institution of slavery. On the other end, the North was always more innovative from the commercial perspective, and was also expanding industrially. In a way, the industrial trend did not only provide the North with its own lifestyle, but it also affected the South’s lifestyle as well. For example as the development of machinery and capitalism took root, people started to invent new machines and tools. This led to Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. This machine made cotton very profitable. Since the South produced more than half of the cotton in the country, the profit of this machine was seen mostly in the South. The cotton gin was able to simplify the time it took to process the cotton after harvesting. However, at the same time the increase in the variety of farms willing to shift from other plants to pure cotton intended the higher need for a lot of inexpensive labor, slaves. Thus, the Southern economy became a one crop economy depending on cotton and therefore on slavery (Kelly). As the years go by, the increasing social and economic gap led into the creation of movements like the anti-slavery movement. This movement was against the South’s social orders and beliefs. Progressively, the Northerners became more polarized against the South’s peculiar institution. Sympathies started to develop for abolitionists and against slaveholders. By the 1850s the abolitionist outcry had made a deep impact in the Northern mind. Many citizens started to see the South as the land of the unfree and the home of a hateful institution (The American pageant
398). This Northern mentality ignited the emerge of a group of extremist pro-slavery politicians from the South also known as the Fire-Eaters. They urged the South to break away from the union and create a separate nation (Mcnamara). Eventually: the increasing influence of the Fire-Eaters, the continuous strife of the Anti slavery movement toward
s the emancipation of slavery, and the lack of the political party that was able to make compromises, led to the secession of the Southern states and this action eventually led to the Civil War.
Before the civil war the US constitution was used to provide validation for both the abolition and the development of slavery. This was due to the fact that the constitution approved the institution of slavery. The South discovered validation and a way to upkeep their long recognized "peculiar institution" by decoding the constitution in support of their institution. On other side, extreme abolitionists made several of their own constitutional understanding that not only reinforced but also offered a way for abolition. This highly effective document was not just exposed to various understandings, but also was used as a weapon for both North’s and South’s political figures to defeat each other with (Snell 1).
This can be seen through the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 declared it illegal for anyone including the Northerners to aid runaway slaves, northerners who aided the slaves to escape were liable to heavy fines and jail sentences, it also stated that, states to which the slaves fled were obligated to return the slave back to his or her master. This law was made possible because the constitution recognized slaves as property, and therefore the South felt the need to pass the law that enforced the protection of their property. “No single irritant of the 1850s was more persistently galling to both sides, and none did more to awaken in the North a spirit of antagonism against the South”(The American Pageant 426). Notwithstanding the Northern Anti-slavery efforts, the South went on to justify, and protect their peculiar institution through the Dred Scott decision. The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision was handed down by the Supreme Court on the 6th of March, 1857. Dred Scott was a black slave who lived with his master on the free territories of Illinois and Wisconsin. After being backed up abolitionists, he sued his master for his freedom on the basis of his residence on a free territory. As a result, the Supreme Court did not only rule that Dred Scott was a slave and that he had no right to sue in a federal court because he was not a citizen. But under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney form a slave state of Maryland, the Court declared that a slave was a private property, therefore he or she could be taken into any part of the country and still be held there in slavery. This ruling was also backed by the Constitution. Under the Fifth Amendment, the Constitution clearly states that the government has no right to deprive any citizen's property without the due process of law. Since the South already established slaves as personal property, therefore they have the right to take their slaves wherever they wanted without being stopped by any government laws. The ruling of this decision opened the discussions on weather the past compromises were Constitutional. As a result, the Court ruled that the Compromise of 1820 which banned slavery from northern territories had been unconstitutional all along. “This pronouncement was one of the opening paper-gun blasts of the Civil War” (The American Pageant 445). After this decision was made, tensions between the North and the South were at times high, and eventually led to the Civil War just four years after the ruling was made.
The Civil War was a great tragedy in the history of the United States, and it will never be forgotten as long as this nation is still standing. The Civil War was inevitable due to the depth of differences in perspectives regarding the way of living, and almost every fundamental principle that governs a society. Even before the Constitutional Convention which set the premises of the government, this nation grew up as two individual nation that were not divided by physical barriers, but fundamental beliefs that were meant to be shared by the entire nation in order for the society within the country to strive peacefully. In the end, due to circumstances that led to the inevitability of a Civil War, this nation was forced to go into an unforgettable war as two individual nations with different social and political understandings and was able to come out as a once sovereign nation that was stronger than it was before.