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To What Degree Did Slavery Constitute A Cause Of The Civil War

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Mouaadh Bellal Essay Question 2: Slavery and the Civil War To what degree did slavery constitute a cause of the civil war? This is a complicated question that requires us to look at the situation from different points of view. An individual would answer this question differently depending on whether they were from the south, the north, or an American slave. The north supported the abolition of slavery. Their motives for doing this included morality and wanting to have a fair and just country. They recognized that practicing slavery would kill the purpose of being a country built on freedom and revolution. Slaves believed in something similar, except they believed this to a higher degree. Naturally, slaves, being the ones who experienced slavery first hand, were willing to fight and die for freedom if it meant a chance at escaping a life of fruitless labor. Northerners and slaves both justified the war with the same reasons, but it hit closer to home for the average black …show more content…

"Seven states stretching from South Carolina to Texas", that would eventually secede from the union, " were the states of the Cotton Kingdom, where slaves represented a larger part of the total population than in the Upper South" (Foner 496). In the south, the economy depended largely on cotton. The production of cotton depended largely on slavery. Abolition threatened an entire "kingdom" and the livelihood of many southerners. For a southern plantation owner, the American Anti-Slavery society was a group of people who disregarded the southern way of life. In some cases, abolition could mean complete bankruptcy and poverty for a southerner. The civil war was justified to southerners because they believed they had the right to fight for their livelihood. However, many of these individuals were blind to the fact that their

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