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House Divided Causes

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A House Divided: The Causes and Effects of the Civil War in the Institution of Slavery, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Militant Presidency of Abraham Lincoln

The causes and effects of the Civil War will be defined through the institution of slavery and the military leadership of President Lincoln to resolve the uncompromising political position of the South/Confederacy. Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech will be an important primary source that defines the underlying resistance to the expansion of slave states into new territories taken by the U.S. government before the Civil War. More so, the uncompromising and increasingly militaristic aggression of the South in seceding from the Union defines the effects of this political “divide” between …show more content…

During this historical period, The Kansa-Nebraska Act did very little to satiate the demand by southern states to receive more slave state status, which defined the increasingly divided political situation that Lincoln inherited as a free state representative in Congress: “If slaveholders miraculously captured Kansas, then a still more widely diffused and more intense anti-slave sentiment would be awakened.” These are important factors in the causality of the civil war, which was is presented in the increasing notion of a “house divided” in clash between free states and slave states in the new territories offered through western expansion. …show more content…

The institution of slavery was a major cause for the Civil War, since “free states” and Slave states” were vying for land and voting rights in Congress in the new territories in the west that were recently acquired by the United States. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was meant to evenly divided free states and slaves states in the hopes that either side would be satiated, and the two sides could reach a compromise on this issue. However, free states politicians, such as Senator Lincoln, defined the underlying basis of perpetual conflict in the speech “A House Divided”, which would set the tone for a larger military conflict between the North and the South. More so, Lincoln’s presidency shows a massive increase in presidential powers, which allowed Lincoln to unconstitutionally declare war against the Confederacy for seceding from the Union. In addition to this military power, Lincoln also suspended the writ of habeas corpus to deny a trial for soldiers and officers caught in the battles that ensued during the war. Therefore, the Kansas-Nebraska act set the precedent for a divided nation that sought compromise, but it was President Lincoln that utilized the Union’s massive military power to declare war against the South in the Civil War. These factors define the causes and effects of political,

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