Civil War Causes

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The Civil War is known as the bloodiest war in American History. Robert E. Lee may have said, “This war is not about slavery.”, but slavery was a major cause. The war was mainly caused by the diverging society between the North and South due to their different goals. Some of the goals they couldn’t agree on were economic policies, the righteousness of slavery, and political decisions. The difference in economic policies is one reason the North and South went to war. The North was growing commercially and industrially. They were able to export manufactured goods while the South was dependent on agriculture and produced manufactured goods only for their consumption. The South had to purchase a lot of manufactured goods such as textiles, guns, and supplies from the North because they had no factories. This meant that the South had to pay a tariff or tax on everything they received from the North basically making it seem as though the North was making laws. This caused the South to threaten to secede …show more content…

Lee saying “This war is not about slavery,” slavery played a major role in causing the Civil War. The South depended on slaves to work on their plantations in order for them to prosper. Their economy depended on slavery. The North thought slavery was a disgrace to the Union and wanted it abolished. Several compromises were proposed such as the Missouri Compromise which made Missouri a slave state and Maine a free state as well as everything north of the Louisiana territory. The Compromise of 1859 was also able to solve the dispute between pro-slave and anti-slave states making both the North and South happy for a short while. Other compromises and acts were also proposed but they only served as a band-aid on the slave issue between the North and South. The southern states were unable to legally leave the Union to form their own country and the North continuously did everything in their power to keep forcing the South back into the