Civil War
Civil War
Wars have many causes. Each time a war has been fought it has solely been for political reasons and objectives. For the most part, people or nations go to war to protect a vital interest, protect an area from an invader or to achieve a moral purpose. The Civil War included all of these rationales.
To understand the causes of the war, you must first understand the North and the South as they were two totally different worlds. Until the population expansion into the lower South, slavery had been a fading society. The North had slaves, however freed the majority because they were too expensive to maintain. With an increase in demand for cotton, the availability of an easy way to separate cotton seeds, and a vast new region now available for growing the crop, slavery became essential for the South’s economic future.
In the nineteenth century, before mechanization, the growing and harvesting of cotton required the labor of many people. From the time the seed is put into the ground until the time the cotton is baled, the crop requires almost constant attention. To produce any sizable cotton crop, slaves were essential. As the most available source of labor, slaves themselves became more and more valuable, allowing fewer and fewer people to own them. Why then did the South feel so tied to slavery?
First, slave owners were men of social and political power. They were the ones who ran the state legislatures and elected men of their kind to Congress. The second reason is that slave owning became the road to status and success for Southerners who were ambitious for wealth and power. The South chose to remain an agricultural region. Therefore, they had strong reasons for seeing that slavery continued without limits or interference.
The North, during this same time period, was setting the stage for the industrial revolution that would transform the nation. Technology connected agriculture and industry, waves of immigrants served as the work force and produced a...
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- Date Submitted: 06/09/2008 10:03 PM
- Category: American History
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