Territorial Expansion Was The Main Cause Of The Civil War

I partially agree that the Territorial expansion was the main spark that ignited the Civil War because the civil war is associated with southern succession, slavery, and the Republican Party, all factors which is disputed entailed. The initiation of such conflicts though, lies in the territorial expansion. It pinned Americas against each other whether the new states should be slaves or not, questioned the power of the Federal government in comparison to the state’s rights. And also put at risk United States as a nation. With a vast majority of the land acquired through the Louisiana Purchase it was very difficult to decide whether slavery should spread further west, not to do so, to be equally distributed. This separated the North and the South

Mass influx of settlers to the Kansas and Nebraska territories forced Congress to test the Compromise of 1850 by allowing settlers in each area to determine, through popular sovereignty, whether or not slavery would be permitted in each region. However, the act spurred a mass influx of slave owners and independent farmers into Kansas and both groups went with the explicit aim of voting for or against slavery in the territory. The result was conflict and violence, leading to the events of "Bleeding Kansas" by 1855. The political effects were enormous. It split the Whig Party, one of the two major political parties in the country at the time. Every northern Whig had opposed it; almost every southern Whig voted for it. With the emotional issue of slavery involved, there was no way a common ground could be found. Most of the southern Whigs soon were swept into the Democratic Party. Northern Whigs reorganized themselves with other non-slavery interests to become the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln. Differences between the North and South was again on the rise. The North felt that if the Compromise of 1820 was ignored, the Compromise of 1850 could be ignored as well. Violations of the hated Fugitive Slave Law increased, the trouble was indeed

There are some who feel slavery could have been abolished without a war but the truth of the matter is that all attempts at abolishing slavery had failed. After every step, there were conflicts between two sides. South was so adamant to protect and expand the institution of slavery that it needed to gain more lands which turned into conflicts that were extremely violent where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. But to keep up, the north also expanded and gained more anti – slavery lands. Both had equal number of states to not cause any problems during the voting period. But still, conflicts and disputes kept growing which guided the way towards the Civil