Evaluate the multiple causes of the Civil War
Question I: Evaluate the significance of the multiple causes of the Civil War.
Answer I: The Civil War was caused by a myriad of conflicting pressures, principles, and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences and pride, and set into motion by a most unlikely set of political events. In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the Constitution, differences between the North and the South were dwarfed by their common interest in establishing a new nation, although sectionalism steadily grew stronger. Throughout the early 19th century, the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the cash crops, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth. The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always more advanced commercially, and was also exponentially expanding industrially. Through these basic economic differences, including the institution of slavery, the sectionalistic and nationalistic tensions of the two regions derived its roots. Hostility between the two sections grew perceptibly after 1820, the year of the Missouri Compromise, which was intended to solve the question of the extension or prohibition of slavery in the federal territories of the West. In addition, difficulties over the tariff, which led Calhoun and South Carolina to nullification and to an extreme states rights stand, and troubles over internal improvements were also involved, although the territorial issue nearly always loomed the largest. Since slavery was inadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which eventually would be admitted as Free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. This initial anxiousness led to a period that might be called the era of compromise, although with each compromise and apparent resolution, however, raised the emotional conflict between North and South and postponed the ultimate settlement of the slavery question.
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress in 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slaveholding interests and Northern Free-Soilers and abolitionists. One cause of conflict between the Southern slave states and the Northern Free States was the lack of assistance given by northerners to southern slave-owners and their agents seeking to recapture escaped slaves. Southerners interpreted this as support for abolitionism and a refusal to respect Southern states’ rights. The Fugitive...