“Relentless avarice stands firm with its iron heel upon the Constitution. This creature has chained the agricultural states to the Northern rock and lives like a vulture upon their prosperity. It is the effort of Prometheus to burst his manacles that provokes the assault on slavery.”
On April 12th, 1861, seven newly formed Confederate States attacked the Union Fort Sumter. Shortly after, another four states seceded from the Union. This decision to leave the Union was the result that came from the years of what many Southerners called theft, and what others labeled simply as abuse. The states that relied primarily on agriculture to maintain prosperity were suffering because of the Union’s actions. With orders to form up into
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The first reason is that the Southern economy was not thriving as it should have been because the dependency on the Northern states severely limited the growth of the Southern Economy. The second reason, a reason that was more common among both troops and Pointy Heads, was Defense. Defense of not only the states that the Southerners called home, but defense of their way of life. The southerners saw no problem with their way of live, a way of life that meant the enslavement of others, a way of life that contrasted much when compared to countries that the United States trade with. Slavery had become a problem not only because of the brutal treatment of what most other countries knew as human beings, but because slavery limited how effectively the United States performed on the world stage. Slavery marred the appearance of the United States, and therefore became an issue. It was not so much an issue for the northern states to get rid of slavery because the northern states did not have an agrarian economy. The main issue was for the southern states who had grown such an economy that without slave labor, the mere prospect of maintaining such an efficiency was seemingly impossible. The slow process of reforming the southern economy was slow to start- in fact, it never did start. The southerners were comfortable with the way in which they earned their money, and change did not suit