Critical Essay on Causes of the Civil War

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There have been many civil wars throughout the world illustrated under different names, such as revolutions, uprisings, rebellions, revolts, and mutinies. These have all had similar causes, whether it be political, social, or economic which have all resulted in the country or nation going to war within itself in order to get the result that at least one side was in favor of. Examples of these are the civil war between 1642-1651, The Russian Revolution between 1919-1923, and the French Revolution in 1789.

There have been many different ideas and theories as to why the American civil war occurred from 1861 to 1865. They all paint a different idea for the main reasons and even sub-reasons for the beginning of the American Civil War. Myths have also been created as to why the Civil War had begun in the 1860s, many of them having some root of truth to them though other parts may just be thoughts and beliefs created from facts they have read from books or articles. However, many of these theories, myths, and ideas all lead back to one main cause, Slavery, demonstrating that it was one of the strongest contributing factors to the American Civil War.

I will be splitting my literature review into two main sections: slavery and other causes. The other causes may be split into numerous, smaller sections. Each will demonstrate why these were believed to be the main cause of the civil war, both showing reasons for and against these beliefs against one.

Slavery

Scott Michael Rank ( n.d ), put forth the belief that, due to the South`s refusal to abolish slavery, the slavery found within America during and before 1861 was one of the leading factors of causing the American Civil War. With the abolishment of slavery in many of the northern states and the South’s belief that slavery benefited both master and slave, it would have been made obvious that these conflicting views would have caused tensions between the North and South of America. This was proven in the 1830’s abolitionists were known to attack slavery, with the South trying to justify their means for keeping slavery around by calling masters benevolent patriarchs as well as this, 1853 the Georgian Robert Toombs explained that whenever the two races co-exist a state of slavery is best for [the African] and society. And under it in our country, he is a better condition than he has ever attained in any other age and country, they’re In bondage or freedom ‘ These were both means for the South to justify their reasoning for not abolishing slavery, unlike their northern counterparts. However, it is also known that these opposing views of slavery were said to begin in 1856 with Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institutions. Slavery in the Ante – Belum South was a book highlighting and analyzing multiple facts about slavery, but overall demonstrated the point that slavery was not as good as the South was making it out to be, and was made possible by including the North’s reactions and abolitionist responses to slavery. Rank dispels all myths surrounding these through the use of many different accounts from books about the time to first-person recounts and newspaper articles for the time of the Civil War, explaining which facts are true and which are exaggerations and myths. This overall creates a belief that I agree with when saying that the slavery found within America did in fact contribute a large amount to the beginnings of the American Civil War. These descriptions and beliefs written are mostly reliable, coming from prominent journalists and editors at the time as well as from books written about the Chill War, all of which have come together in a way that showed slavery to be a most prominent cause of the Amer can Civil War.

Marten (2011) states that most historians agree that the causes of the American civil war were split into two different categories; one being the underlying causes of the Civil War and the other being the personal reasons for the Civil War, however, all parties can agree on the fact that it is all led back to Slavery found in both the North and the South as the primary cause of the civil war, but it is not the only cause of it. James M. McPherson ( 2000 ) also agrees with this, stating his agreement with Lincoln’s ‘ slavery was, somehow, the cause of the War ‘. This comes from the fact that the South was known to protect their slave rights using their State rights, which worked successfully until 1860. This protection of their interests was shown through the fact that Congress imposed a gag rule to prevent any anti-slavery protests and petitions in the South along with the post offices banning any anti-slavery literature being sent through the mail. Another way that they protected their interests was through the Fugitive Slave Law which was imposed in 1850 but was nullified in 1855. Both these acts caused the North to have greater opposition to the acts of slavery, which caused more uprising and force from the North in order to abolish slavery, causing the Civil War. This information given has a high possibility of being reliable as Marten specializes in the history of the American Civil War, meaning that this is a topic that is well-known to him and suggests that it is most likely correct and collected from a legitimate source of information. As well as this, James M. McPherson is a well-known American Civil War historian, meaning that this area of history is his specialty, which suggests that the facts he presents within his argument are most likely correct. Because of this, it means that this suggests that all facts related to the topic would have been well read over before being used, ensuring that their argument was sound before usage.

Gerald Gunderson ( December 1974 ) states that there were three important findings to the American Civil War, each of them related to slavery. One was that slaves were profitable investments to the Southern States in America, another was that slavery was viable and the final one was that slavery was an attractive employment of capital. This all meant that slavery was a property right, meaning that the slave owner had the right to own, sell, lease, rent, compel, direct, and expropriate the returns of another individual’s labor. However, over time this became seen as an abnormal arrangement that was not accepted in the structure of the workings of society. This soon led to slavery becoming an all-or-nothing decision, with Northern elements believing it to be wrong and eventually eradicating it, while also advocating for the prohibition of slavery in the Western territories. This in turn would have led to many conflicts due to the South’s hesitance to release slaves from their slavery due to their reliance on them, which would have caused much tension between both parts of America. This would have been a starting point for the conflicts between the North and South that would enable the start of the Civil War when the tensions became too much. The reason that this is trustworthy information is due to the fact that Gunderson is a Professor of American Business and Economic Enterprise, which is what slavery in America is linked to in terms of the South, making it more realistic to work with.

An article by Team Planet Mag ( n.d. ) states that through research, the main reason for the Civil War in America had been, yet again, traced back to slavery being the cause. It was linked to the divide between the North and South, with the North being against the issue of slavery while the South supported it. The reasoning for this is due to the fact that the North’s economy was based on free labor and industrialization while the South’s economy was reliant on agriculture, or more accurately they put dependence on slave-based agricultural crops, which resulted in the South being heavily dependent on their allowance to have slaves in their states. This became worst with issues and incidents such as the works of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Fugitive Slave Laws, and John Brown calling for general slave rebellion which helped to further the divide between the Northern and Southern states. Some of these were pieces of work written to make people aware of the unfairness of society and the lives of the slaves, whereas others were events that were used in order to promote and justify the reasons to keep slavery within America. However, due to this source being taken from a magazine website, it is possible that this is not all accurate or is missing out some vital piece of information about the rest of the causes of the American Civil War with the fact that this could not have just furthered the divide between the North and South states, there must have been some other factors that were caused by slavery that helped to start the Civil War. But this still does support the idea that the source is correct in the fact that the main cause of the civil war was slavery.

Peter Fitzgerald ( Aug 15, 2011) also agrees that Slavery was the main cause of the American Civil War. It was said that, while slavery was slowly being abolished, it was still causing issues within the USA. These issues included the fact that many of the states were joining the Union, but there were still many that carried on with slavery, resulting in tensions between the slave states and the free states. A solution to this was to try and mitigate the states, having an equal number of slave and free states, however, this did not work out well. Another issue that rose was with the Slave states themselves, which were mostly directed at the treatment they were receiving as they believed it was unfair. The slave states in the South wanted laws to be put in place for them that protected their interests after California joined the Union as a free state, nonetheless, this did not happen, and the number of free states continued to rise. This added fuel to the obvious divide between the Northern and Southern States, while also causing unease to the slave states as they perceived there to be an uneven number of states leading to free states having a majority. This makes it obvious that the slavery found within America did have a major role in the American Civil War, whether it be due to the other issues it led to through slavery itself. This article, however, was written in order to give the reader an idea of how the American Civil War came about which means that the focus of it makes it a reliable source. As well as this, Fitzgerald has written many other articles all on topics based around other wars that all appear to be factually correct which demonstrates the fact that this is a reliable source. The only downside to this source is that it is unclear where all the facts to support this opinion came from, meaning that while all the facts may seem correct, it is unclear if they actually are and if they came from another reliable source, meaning that all facts would need to be double checked before being deemed useful. On the other hand, this source can also be deemed useful as the argument used to state that slavery was a main cause is clear and backed by facts and reasons as to why this is the case, even if the facts may be slightly off in some cases.

Rebecca Beatrice Brooks ( March 15, 2017 ) argues that it was the states leaving the Union over the matter of slavery that caused the Civil War. This is shown by the fact that between late 1860 and early 1861, several states seceded from the Union. Four of the states that seceded, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina, were only four of the 11 states that seceded from the Union, but they issued documents that gave the reasons as to why they left. Two of the major themes that were seen in these documents were slavery and state rights. Each of these documents included at least one line that was claiming they wanted to keep their slaves, for example, ‘ We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. ‘ Taken from Mississippi’s declaration to leave the Union on January 9, 1861. This demonstrated that the issue of slavery was the main cause of the civil war as it was the reason for so many of the governmental and state divisions that were occurring throughout America. This source may be seen as less reliable due to it being written by a freelance journalist and blogger, however, the use of faces that are easy to check, such as the quotations from the declarations, makes the source reliable in the given argument. As well as this, being a freelance journalist would mean that she is used to having to double and triple-check the facts given before using them, suggesting that the facts used are most likely correct

Governmental Issues

Arun ( 2018 ) highlights many different factors that would have played a part at the beginning of the Civil War in America, as mentioned earlier on. These causes can be split into several different categories, though the main one, other than slavery, issues in the Government played an important role. For example, State Rights was a cause of the Civil War. There had been many different political debates over what power belonged to the Federal government, which were the northern states and free of slavery, and what belonged to the Sovereign States, which were in the south and were known as slave states. This became a power struggle between the two political parties created, one for each power, The Democratic-Republican Party representing the South and favoring State Rights, and the Federalists which represented the North and believed in a centralized national government with strong fiscal roots. On the other hand, it is believed that one of the main root causes of these power struggles was Slavery as the South believed that slavery was a State issue and therefore it should be up to the states that slavery was in to deal with it, making them extremely unwilling to accept any outside influences intervention, especially from the Federal Government. This example shows that while there were other causes of the civil war in America, most of these smaller causes had, in some shape or form, a link to the slavery arguments that were running through the whole of America. However, while this source seems to be reliable, Arun is not only an educationist but also a fantasy writer and so, from the information found about him, he isn’t a well-known or well-regarded writer, which makes his assumptions and his writings questionable.

Moreover, whilst Slavery was a major issue in the Civil War, it was not the only issue that pushed the county into conflict with itself, is Trumann (23 March 2015). He states that while Slavery was a major issue, it became intertwined with other issues, such as state rights, the power of the federal government, and the South’s ‘way of life’. The South heavily relied on its agriculture and, as a result of this, many of the plantation owners relied on having slaves in order to run. This meant that the South’s economy heavily relied on having its slaves and the run-up to the civil war was a threat to their way of life. On the other hand, the North was filled with industries and welcomed entrepreneurs. There was a mixture of nationalities and religions with no slaves, though the low-paid workers lived lives like the slaves in the South. The conflict between the two in terms of power became worst when the North tried to intervene in how the South ran itself, an example being when South Carolina passed a bill that prevented the Federal tariff legislation of 1823 and 1832 to be enforced on their states and, after February 1833 making it so that the tariffs would not be recognized. This, as a result, brought both South Carolina and the Federal government into direct conflict before Congress pushed the Force Bill through that allowed the president to use the Military to force the state of South Carolina into line. This resulted in South Carolina promising it would be the last time that this worked. This piece of information is most likely reliable as this was written for a history learning website, but it is unknown where this information has come from, which means that it may not be as correct in terms of the facts. However, what remains clear and reliable is the idea that it was not just Slavery that resulted in the American civil war breaking out, but also the tensions between the North and the South.

As previously mentioned, Martin Kelly also puts forward the argument that it was also the problems caused within the government of the Americas that caused the American Civil War which allowed it to become a war due to the divided desires on both sides. Governments have tried to create an equal number of both states, but this has become increasingly difficult. As a result of these new states, things like the Fugitive Slave Act were created in order to protect the best interests of both the North and the South, but problems continued to occur, one in the form of a violent race in Lawrence, Kansas into something that became known as Kansas’ Bleeding. This has also led to struggles within the Senate. Kelly also raises the point that America’s federal and state rights also played an important role in causing the civil war. As pointed out, there have always been two sides to America, the independent states and the federal states. Although attempts had been made to alleviate the animosity between the two, such as the Constitution, problems were still encountered that led to the creation of the United States Constitution. This ignored the rights of states, which should have had a choice, but instead, it led to even greater problems. One such problem was the idea of annulment which would have granted states the right to declare federal acts unconstitutional, meaning that they should not have followed them and could eventually have them removed. However, this was rejected, with the result that the southern states felt like they were no longer respected and had very little power and leaving them to contemplate succession thoughts. Other reasons Kelly raised as main causes were The Abolitionist Movement and The Election of Abraham Lincoln, both of which fall under the

causes of the government due to their political side of the argument. Kelly’s argument about there being more than just one reason for the beginning of the American Civil War is a compelling one, with all of the problems in America showing some form of leading factor to the Civil War, however, they all have one common factor, Slavery. This could mean that even though there could be other major causes, they are all connected to one major cause, or it could mean that while these causes do have a similar start they are all separate from one another in terms of reasons for the War to start. Kelly’s works by Lui are majorly reliable due to his occupation by Lui as a history teacher that specializes in America History, which means that he does in fact know what he is talking about as it is what he has mostly learned about in great depth.

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Critical Essay on Causes of the Civil War

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