Civil War Dbq

714 Words3 Pages

President Lincoln's election in 1860 threatened slave labor in the south. The southerners feared their slaves and way of life would be taken away from them, thus, they decided to secede. Their dissolving of ties with the Union was actually a peaceful action, however, the Union did not like the fact that the country was separated. This division and separation of the country weakened the nation, which made the country vulnerable to outside invader. The United States refusal in accepting the confederate secession caused a rather large conflict between the two regions. There were several reasons on why the Confederate states wanted to protect slavery, but the main reason was because they wanted to protect their way of life. Back then, slave labor …show more content…

Many people in the north opposed to slavery for religious purposes, they believed that slavery is a sin and is practically the same thing as rape and murder. Others believed that it was morally wrong and felt it was not necessary to have slaves. In addition, the northerners believed that if the south expanded slavery, congress would pass laws favoring the south and slave …show more content…

When president Lincoln got elected in 1860, however, the southerners felt intimidated and believed his election threatened slave labor, thus, they exited the Union. As mentioned earlier, their secession was peaceful and its only purpose was to preserve the southerners’ way of life. The Union, on the other hand, realized that their secession was not as simple as the southerners have thought, they knew that if they did not return to the Union, it would cause deep conflict in the near future. Before the secession, the country was already torn over the issue of slavery which weakened the nation, when the states left the union, the dividing of the nation was even greater and the Union was now at a great risk of having foreign invaders invade the country. At that time, the president did not realize how serious the Confederate states were, he thought he could easily convince them to come back with a compromise. However, the confederate states said it was too late for a compromise and that they will not reenter the Union. This was the main cause of the Civil War. Prior to that, however, the president was lenient on the southern states because he did not want to cause more conflict. In fact, he offered the confederate states to keep slavery in the south if they came back into the United States, but the Confederates