The initial causes of the outbreak of the Civil War:
The Civil War began after the Ordinance of Secession in South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860. Southerners clung to slavery since it was responsible for the production and wealth of their economy. The North declared slavery "the great moral, social, and political evil of the day." The North’s Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln winning the election in 1860 directly caused the ensuing secession of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—even before Lincoln took office.
On April 12, 1861, the bombardment at the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina and its surrender by Brig. General P.G.T. Beauregard officially start of the Civil War
The deeper, underlying causes of the Civil War:
1. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
Eli Whitney 's cotton gin in 1793 made cotton very profitable. Many plantations moved from other crops to cotton increasing the need for cheap labor—slaves. The southern economy strengthened as a one crop economy depending on slavery.
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The North’s industrial economy meant that society evolved as people of different cultures and classes had to work together. The South, however, continued to hold onto a social order of planter aristocracy.
2. States versus federal rights.
Since the nation’s founding after the Revolution, people argued for states’ rights versus more federal government control. After the Constitutional Convention and the US Constitution, leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry felt the constitution ignored the states’ rights of states. This resulted in the idea of nullification, giving states the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied nullification, so states began to move towards secession.
3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State