Causes Of America's Civil War

761 Words4 Pages

America’s Civil War On April 12, 1861 America’s Civil War had officially began and on May 9, 1865 the war had ended. There were two sides to this war the north which was called The Union and the south which was called The Confederacy. This war was going to happen one way or another because at the time our nation had many conflicts within itself. In the following three paragraphs you will be reading about what issues cause this war of four years. Some of those issues are if slavery should continue or be abolished, expansion into the new territories, and economic differences. Slavery was the dominant issue involving the civil war. The northern states wanted to abolish slavery, while the southern states wanted to keep slavery. The northern …show more content…

The north thrived in industry, while the south flourished with farming on plantations with the use of slaves. In the north America relied on manufacturing and employees got paid. The workers salaries did increase, but contents like Asia and Europe where often competing with us for business preventing humongous growth in that field of work. In the south their economy was mostly built off of the labor of slaves. Although according to centralhistory.com the majority of southern families did not own slaves. About 384,000 out of 1.6 million did. Plus, out of all of those slave owners only twelve percent owned more than 20 slaves. Then when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, the cotton industry became a lucrative field for Southern planters and farmers. This invention increased the amount of money the south made. This invention caused bad and good things to happen. The south began to buy more things from the north helping strengthen their weak bond. But then, to make even more cash the south began to purchase more slaves and plant more fields. As previously mentioned the north did not approve of slavery, so this started to cause even more problems. Then in the election of 1860 Abraham Lincoln won. He was against slavery. So the slaves states were afraid of their own downfall. If the slaves were free they could no longer make tons of money without paying their workers. This would majorly impact their economy because it was built off of slavery. Once the south learned of Lincoln's presidency, they decided to split from our country. Thus becoming the confederates in the upcoming war against the union which was the