Civil War North Vs South Essay

With the expansion of America through the acquisition of new land from the Mexican-American War came the controversial issue of the expansion of slavery. By 1850, America had an equal amount of free and slave states, meaning that the free and slave states had the same amount of Senators. However, the South was paranoid that if they lost the political majority in the House of Representatives and Senate and an anti-slave president was elected, then slavery would be abolished immediately. The North and the South had varying definitions of society. The North believed that society was the culmination of free people, with the ability to make their own decisions, working to achieve self-sufficiency. The South, however, felt that whites depended on slavery in order to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Their definition of property different from the Northerners because the

Northerners did not want slavery to be abolished because they feared that African Americans were move to north and take their jobs. However, Northerners did not want slavery to extend into the new western territories. Some Northerners either hated slavery such as the “free soilers,” which included John Brown, or were racist and did not want African Americas to populate the western territories, which were white man’s land. The Northerners did not want slavery to expand, but they were content keeping it in the South. Only a small percentage of Northerners were abolitionists and wanted to abolish slavery all together. The Southerners mainly heard from this small percentage of Northerners, which fueled their paranoia. The South believed that the best way to ensure the continuation of slavery would be to expand slavery into the new western territories. The Civil War would be a war essentially based on the expansion of slavery, not the existence of slavery