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Why Was The South Seced To The Civil War

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The decision to seced by the South was a decision which was made with careful planning and consideration. The south saw their options as either letting their economy crumble under their fingers, or taking action through succeeding. The South's dependency on slavery, the increasing understanding of the North's antislavery opinions, and the changing tone of the debates over slavery from a passive tone to one of having to take action all influenced the South to seced, thus causing the Civil War. The reasons for the South's increasing awareness to slavery being attacked in the North varried from protests to congressional decisions. The first of many obvious criticisms of slavery from the North came in the form of the Wilmot Proviso, a law which called for slavery to be banned in the territory gained from the Mexican-American War, by David …show more content…

The law came from angry members of the Whig Party - that later formed the republican party - its members saw the pro-slavery nature in the Polk administration, and wanted to put an end to it. Although the law was not passed after its second round in the Senate, it proved to the South that the North was not messing around when it came to getting rid of - or at the very least preventing - slavery. The next form of northerners rebelling against slavery came from the Personal Liberty Laws. These laws were enacted by Northern states to counteract the first Fugitive Slave Act by granting rights to escaped slaves and free blacks. Regardless of the fact that this was countered with another Fugitive Slave Act, as well as the congress ruling, it showed that the North would do anything possible to prevent slavery from spreading to their states. The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher was another obvious attack on slavery by the North. The book which showed the evils of

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