Civil War Dbq

Inarguably, there are many factors that contributed to the division of America and ultimately the initiation of the American civil war. The issue superseding all other contributing factors is undoubtedly slavery. This still remains a controversial subject that incites much debate. A number of people are reluctant to believe that Southerners were willing to fight and die in America’s most devastating war in order to uphold such an appallingly unjust and morally abhorrent institution. The South, through its secession, demonstrated that it was prepared to sacrifice the Union in order to protect their ‘peculiar institution’. As the United States Military Academy History Professor, Colonel Ty Seidule, states “the Confederacy’s Vice President clearly

The North did not solely oppose the clause on moral indignation but also political terms. The declaration that slaves were only 3/5ths of a person widely undermined the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that ‘all men are created equal’. For a country boasting liberty, freedom and independence greater than any other nation, through the ‘Great Experiment’, the existence of slavery in the South widely undermined these claims, particularly when slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire by 1833. Despite the fact that many Southerners- including slave owners such as George Washington who denounced the institution as repugnant and evil- opposed slavery, Colonists relied on it to continue producing vast amounts of cotton and tobacco. This difference in opinion regarding the necessity of slavery divided America and caused tensions that would spark many disputes, which collectively incited the civil war, throughout the years

Justly pointed out by Colonel Ty Seidule is the fact that this argument evokes the question: the states’ rights to what? America had regarded itself as consisting of sovereign states since the Declaration of Independence but was run by a weak central government. The system of government in America allowed for states to control their own laws but certain individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, were imposed across the entire nation. The south disapproved of the central government because it believed states should govern themselves and also that congress wouldn’t listen or create laws with the Southern states’ best interests in mind. The North held the dissimilar view that all disputes should be dealt with in Congress and that a strong central government was crucial for creating a united nation that functions as one. The main cause of secession was the South’s desire for control of its own states’ rights but the idea of what these states rights were has been disputed. Some people argue that the south seceded because of tariffs. A commonly presented cause of dissatisfaction with tariffs is the economic factors. It is argued that it was the fact that foreign raw materials (the South produced predominantly raw materials such as cotton, tobacco, sugar and rice) were free from tariffs whereas foreign manufactured goods