FCLLI5_the_civil_war

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The Civil War 
 
Historians continue to debate why the country's tradition of compromise broke down 
in 1861. Several factors contributed to the outbreak of civil war. One was a growing 
divergence between the North and South - economically, socially, and ideologically. 
At the new nation's founding, the two regions were superficially quite similar. Slavery 
could be found in each of the thirteen states and each region had a predominantly 
agricultural economy. But except in parts of Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New 
York's Hudson River Valley, slavery was a marginal institution in the North, and 
following the Revolution, each Northern state either abolished slavery or adopted a 
gradual emancipation plan. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What were the causes of the Civil war? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The polarization of political opinion contributed to the coming of the civil war. The 
most vivid signs of polarization could be seen in the eruption of violence in the mid-
1850s in Kansas and even in the halls of Congress, where South Carolina 
Representative Preston Brooks attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a 
cane. The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision aggravated this situation by ruling 
that certain possible compromise solutions to the slavery issue, including the 
doctrine of popular sovereignty were unconstitutional (Dred Scott, was an African 
American slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom He did 
the same for his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 
1857, popularly known as "the Dred Scott Decision."). But perhaps the deepest factor 
that contributed to war was the way people perceived and interpreted events. By the 
1850s, a growing number of Northerners were convinced that a Southern Slave Power 
was willing to stop at nothing to expand southern slavery and that it would undercut 
the civil liberties of Northerners if necessary to achieve that end. Meanwhile, a 
growing number of white Southerners became convinced that their way of life was 
threatened. In the months preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, there were a 
number of major efforts inside and outside Congress to forge a compromise that 
would avert war. President-Elect Lincoln was willing to compromise, but not if it 
required the Republican Party to retreat from its commitment to blocking the 
expansion of slavery.