Civil War Dbq

The Civil War broke out due to southern slave states declaring their independence from the United States to form the Confederacy and states that did not was known as the Union. The main reason the Civil War occurred was over the issue of slavery. The debate about the future of slavery led to the south’s secession which led to war between the north and the south.
Slavery became an important issue between the North and the South. “When southerners and northerners looked at each other, they no longer saw fellow Americans; they saw enemies. The reason was slavery (381).” Slavery plays different roles for the South and the North. “For many white southerners, the journey from the ideals of the American Revolution led naturally to a Slave Republic:

Slavery was another issue for territories, “the West symbolize the hopes and dreams of white American (366).” The South argued that “to exclude slavery from the western territories was to exclude white southerners from pursuing their vision of the American dream (366).” The North disagreed, “they argued that exclusion preserved equality, the equality of all white men and women to live and work without competition from slave labor or rule by despotic slaveholders (366).” In August 1846, David Wilmot offered a bill for the Mexican War, “any territory from the Republic of Mexico… neither slaver nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory (366).” Wilmot explained that he “wanted only to preserve the territories for the sons of toil, of my own race, and own color (366).” The southerners were angry because “it implied that the mere proximity of slavery was degrading and that white southerners were therefore a degraded people, unfit to join other Americans in the territories

Free and slave states were kept balanced to keep war from breaking out, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought on the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act split Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska, where Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free state, but leaving the actual decision on slavery to the residents of the territories. Bleeding Kansas occurred because this act led to violence between pro and antislavery forces. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Comprise because “it allowed southerners to bring slaves into an area formerly closed to slavery (373)” causing northerners to feel threatened. Kansas had “both southerners and antislavery northerners began an intensive drive to recruit settlers and establish a majority there (374).” “The unsatisfying Compromise of 1850, “Bleeding Kansas” and “Bleeding Sumner,” the Dread Scott case, and Lecompton convinced many northerners that southerners were conspiring with the federal government to restrict their political and economic liberties. Southerners saw these same events as evidence of a northern conspiracy to reduce the South’s political and economic influence