? HIST 156 Summer Final Exam The Inevitable War Brad Fitzenreiter HIST 156 7380 History of the United States to 1865 August 10th, 2014 The American Civil War was caused by a big number of conflicting principles and prejudices, ran by sectional differences, and set ablaze by a very unfortunate chain of political events. In addition, the central theme of almost all of the events that caused the Civil War was related to the dispute of slavery. Throughout the nineteenth century, slavery tensions brewed to such an extent, that politicians often took accustom to avoiding the hot topic altogether, because they were too scared of either starting a big political feud, or losing votes from one side of the issue or the other. More specifically, five events that were most instrumental in bringing about the Civil War were the cotton gin, compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Dred Scott Case and the Presidential election of 1860. Because of intense reactions to these events, the Civil War was practically inevitable. However, if the parties wanted to avoid a war altogether, they could have advocated more compromise and popular sovereignty. One of the big causes that encouraged the Civil War was the issue of states rights. Most of the state constitutions in the South accepted the use of slaves because it helped their economy and their agricultural needs. The North thought of slavery as an immoral practice and suggested that the South get rid of the use of slaves and switch to the “free labor” system of the North. The Southern states didn’t want to go by the Northern states because under the Southern states constitutions, slavery was allowed. Also, the Southern states mentality was far different from the North. White farmers in the South thought themselves furrier to African-Blacks and therefore should be their own boss rather then be equal to slaves. The whole issue of slavery wasn’t that much concern for some of the people in the Union, anyways. The Northern people thought that slavery would eventually fade and the South would then be forced to switch to the North’s economic system. The North’s only concern about the South was that they would use their own ideas of “Manifest Destiny” and try to spread slavery into the west. When the North tried to prevent this from happening, the South got infuriated and that was one the first steps towards war. The differences of the North’s and South’s economics also played a important task to the outbreak of Civil War. James M. McPherson terms the South's move to leave the union as a "counterrevolution" which they under took in order to preserve their economic system, which they feared would be destroyed by a "revolution" signaled by the election of Lincoln. In each society they had their own ideas and principles of how the American economy should be ran. The North was primarily a manufacturing, based economy which relied on people to operate their businesses. The Southern economy was predominately agricultural, which relied heavily on the export of cotton that was produced by their slaves. Basically, slavery was what the Southern economy thrived on and it was the only way of life they’ve ever known. When the idea of abolishing slavery came into idea, there was no way the South was going to give up slavery because their economy would not function without it. For example, in Texas’ Declaration of seceding, they declared that the “Northern States and their citizens showed disloyalty” and had “war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens”. Another problem that occurred was the Northern economy was always increasing in population while the South continued to struggle. The South sold relatively low cost cotton to the North and hardly made money from it. If the South decided to raise its prices, then the North would stop buying their cotton and the Southern economy would be ruined, or so they thought. It is true to say that the civil war was a completely avoidable conflict only, however, before the invention of the cotton gin. Eli Whitney's invention changed the stakes and it revived a fading institution and set it in place as king of the southern economy without which the south felt it could not live. "King Cotton" ruled the south and kept industrial innovation and capitalism separated from the south. Therefore north and south did not grow and develop along similar lines. This created an inherent instability in America. Therefore, at some stage the two opposing sections would inevitably come into conflict once all compromises were exhausted or as the event unfolded, once tensions rose to boiling point over what both sections perceived as the attempts by one side to dominate the other via political maneuvers and agitation brought on by extremists. The first event to separate the nation was the annexation of Texas. Texas was settled as a Mexican territory opened to U.S. settler