Before reading This Great Struggle, I always viewed the Civil War as just a war that sprouted out of nowhere and just sort of happened over the single reason of slavery. But after reading this book I found that my misconception of the Civil War was extremely inaccurate. While reading this book I learned many new things about the Civil War that I had never known about before and I believe that it has given me a completely new outlook on the Civil War. Although he demonstrates how the war was not caused only by slavery, but he also proves the concept that slavery was a major cause of the Civil War. While reading This Great Struggle, I found that the war was, although commonly avoided and excused, fought over slavery. He also demonstrates the war’s crucial sector as between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River and that despite the Union’s conventional …show more content…
He says that this is often avoided and many people say it is over reasons such as states’ rights, which is true, but he makes it very clear that the primary reason for the war was because of the heated debate over slavery. He says that southern leaders, such as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens claimed that slavery was the “heart of conflict.” The Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed the capture and return of fugitive slaves to their rightful owners, was pushed by Southerners, but was “a slap in the face of state rights” because when a slave escaped his owner and entered a state that was considered a “free state,” that slave should considered free, right? Wrong. According to this Act, no matter where the slave was in the United States, a slaveholder had the right to retrieve his slave. Although many try to argue that slavery is not the primary cause of the Civil War, they use other reasons such as states’ rights and tariffs, which are ironically linked to