Summary Of Why The War Came By David Donald

The general argument made by David Herbert Donald in Why the War Came: The Sectional Struggle over Slavery in the Territories is that the issue of slavery in the national territories started the Civil War. More specifically, Donald argues that the Kansas-Nebraska Act, crafted by Stephen A. Douglas, revived the issue of slavery in the territories and divided the nation into hostile sections which turned the great forces that once cement American unity into a tool that further divided the nation.

Donald points out that North detested slavery to the conception of slavery as being un-American and was the main reason why the South was lagging behind. In order to abolish slavery, the North, who held the majority in the national government, acted on the regulation of national territories. The national territories were one of the few areas that the North could act against slavery since they did not have power over slavery within the states it existed. The South, on the other hand, believed the North was out to destroy them and

The Missouri Compromise had excluded slavery from the region but Southerners defeated a proposal to organize the territory as a free state. In response, Stephen A. Douglas sponsored a bill and was willing to add any amendments concerning slavery in order for it to pass. The act of pleasing both sides, which had worked in the Compromise of 1850, did not work for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Pressured by Southerners, President Pierce endorsed it and pressured Northerners in Congress to vote for it. As a result, many Northerners, who were against slavery, banded to form the Free-Soil Party which beliefs would coalesce into the Republican Party. Consequently, this event destroyed national parties and created political parties based on sectionalism with Democrats in the South and Republicans in the