Trigger Events of The Civil War Rough Draft The Civil War began because of a series of disputes between the North and the South over the institution of slavery. After the Louisiana Purchase, Congress was forced to establish a policy to guide the expansion of slavery into the new western territory. Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. A line would be drawn through unincorporated western territories to divide the north and south as free and slave states. ”The repeal of the Missouri Compromise effectively settled the question of slavery from 1820 to 1854” (The Civil War in Missouri). This repeal lead to the sectional conflict that eventually lead to the Civil War.
Lincoln was elected in 1860, as a Republican, the anti-slavery outlook his party had scared many Southerners. Everyone knew the Lincoln wouldn’t allow anymore slave-states, so South Carolina led many states to break away from the United States, taking many federal forts, including Fort Sumter in South Carolina, with them. Two years before Abraham Lincoln’s election, he stated that “the nation could not endure half slave and half free, and that it would eventually become all of one or all of the other” (Civil War on the Western Border). During his time in office he greatly contributed to reducing
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Fort Sumter’s troops turned back the supplies and opened a bombardment on them. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to join the Northern army but Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee weren’t willing to contribute. Lincoln was scared that he had too little troops and could be overrun by the South so he tried sending reinforcements. The South saw this as a threat and attacked the fort, easily overrunning it and starting the Civil