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Expansionism In The American Civil War

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The American Civil War is often reflected as a historical drama with varying viewpoints on one of the most controversial issues in American culture and history. This was a war fought between the Northern states or the Union and Southern states, better known as the Confederacy. In times of controversy comes varying points of perspectives for the causes on one of the most violent wars in American history. Conflict between the two sides rose with deep political, economic and social differences, but it is slavery that is said to be the main root of concern for such a rise in rebellion (Confederacy) and revolution (Union). Due to the Northern states expressing the immorality of slavery, Southerners deemed this an immediate threat and wished …show more content…

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were very verbose in their ideas of southward expansionism. By providing how these two politicians arrived at their stances of expansionism could ultimately lead more into their issues on such expansionism. Abraham Lincoln was a Kentucky native and grew up with his family in a non-slaveholding environment. In Robert E. May’s book, he illustrates one of Lincoln’s most paramount connections with slavery when Lincoln visited Joshua Speed’s plantation in 1841. In a letter to Speed’s half sister, Lincoln writes of two groups of slaves traveling farther south and seemed “remarkably cheerful for people being transported from Kentucky.” May adds that “Lincoln expressed empathy for slavery’s victims noting that they were in the process of being ‘separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers and siblings’ to labor in a region.” (Pg. 20). Other serious impacts on Lincoln’s perspectives came from his parent’s influence when living in Kentucky Nancy and Thomas Lincoln joined a different church in order to acquire an anti-slavery minister. (Pg. 21). Before Lincoln’s public and private statements over territorial restraint, Lincoln even voted against a “resolution that would place the U.S.-Mexico border somewhere between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River rather than somewhere farther south.” (Pg. 49). Lincoln then transcensions and openly expresses his ideas on territorial expansion in his Wilmington speech where he dismissed the popular belief “that this war was originated for the purpose of extending slave territory.”(Pg. 50). May also expresses Lincoln’s points as being

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