Pros And Cons Of The Civil War

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it” (Lincoln). The United States was divided and on the razors edge sat one of the most debated subjects in US History, slavery. The anti-slave Union was locked in combat with the pro-slave Confederacy which was outnumbered two to one and losing men in events like the border wars later named Bleeding Kansas (Civil War Facts). The North had many advantages including larger populations due to large cities, and larger industrial and production capacities. They also produced ninety seven percent of the nation’s firearms, ninety four percent of the nation’s cloth and ninety percent of the nation’s footwear and had an army that had over two million

After a series of tariffs were passed to protect the industry of the North, the South started to realize that these tariffs left the price of manufactured goods high and did not allow them to fluctuate with the economy as the raw materials of the South did. Some Southern states had derived the idea that if a law was deemed unconstitutional, then the states are able to nullify that law. South Carolina deemed these tariffs were unconstitutional and told Jackson that they were not going to pay them. Fearing that other states might follow and secede from the nation, Jackson prepared the military to mobilize and said that the tariff would be paid, even if at the barrel of a gun. This event was called the Nullification Crisis of 1832, and it would light the fire that burnt in the hearts of states’ rights activists during the prelude to the civil war and would open the door to Southern succession. This was the main catalyst of the Civil War because it demonstrated the political superiority of the North, the political inferiority of the south, and showed that abuse of power by the Northern

At the time, states were divided on the line set by the Missouri Compromise and the states had to be evenly added, if a slave state wanted to join the Union, then a free state had to join as well, or vice versa. This made equal representation in the government possible because as states were added, they were added in equal amounts. The South had thought of an ordinance, “The ordinance is founded, not on the indefeasible right of resisting acts which are plainly unconstitutional and too oppressive to be endured, but on the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution; that they may do this consistently with the Constitution; that the true construction of that instrument permits a State to retain its place in the Union and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional” (Richardson). This ordinance would never make it through congress. When the Tariffs of 1832 were passed, invoking more taxes, South Carolina decided that they would not pay this tax, calling the tariff unconstitutional and standing against the Government of the North. The south wanted to stay the political equal of the North, and when their “law” was not even considered by congress, the felt that the days of “equal” representation were numbered. When President Jackson caught word of this, he told the governor of South