Causes of the Civil War Essay

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Causes of the Civil War 1861 – 1865 Political * Compromise of 1850 * Made up of five bills that temporarily settled issues of slavery * Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 * California admitted as a free state * Mexico’s old land was open to popular sovereignty * New Mexico was given disputed territory and TX paid $10 million * Slave trade prohibited in Washington D. C. * Fugitive Slave Act (1850) * Declared that all runaway slaves were to be captured and returned, even if they were found in free states. This angered abolitionists * Very little regulations as to how much evidence the claimant needed, and returned many free slaves back into slavery * Bothered the abolitionists * Sectionalism * Division of North and South * Balance of power between free and slave states * New states had to come into the Union in pairs * Split Maine and Massachusetts into two free states, to add in Texas as a slave state * Trying to prevent Slaveocracy * Kansas/Nebraska Act (1854) * Stephen Douglas wanted to build railroad across the country to facilitate trade. * Needed to organize Nebraska territory into the states of Kansas and Nebraska * Under the MO Compromise they should’ve been free, however, to get the bill passed by the Southern congressmen he modified it and stated that citizens of those states could decided whether they would be a free or slave state through popular sovereignty * Citizens of neighbouring slave states temporarily moved into Kansas and voted in favour of slavery * Caused small scale civil war in Kansas * Dred Scott Case (1832) * Dred Scott lived in Illinois as a free slave * Angered abolitionists because as Scott was black, he was not considered a citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom Social * Racism * Citizens in free states that neighboured slave states opposed the abolishment of slavery because they feared that large numbers of freed slaves would migrate into their states in search of jobs and housing * Racism was still prominent * Different mentalities of North and South * South were raise/used to slave-based morals, whereas North was not. * Joshua Giddings, an abolitionist, made a strong religious argument that supporting the Fugitive Slave Act was contrary to higher power (moral law of God should be held above man made law) Economic * Slave based economy * As argued by Lincoln in his speech about Free Labour given in 1859, a
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