Perhaps the most important difference that led to the outbreak of the Civil War was the social difference, where the south deemed it acceptable and legal to utilize Africans as slaves and the North saw it as inhuman and unacceptable. The North constantly tried to abolish slavery in the South, by attempting to attain more power in the federal government to therefore abolish the use of Africans as slaves. “[In the North] society evolved as people of different cultures and classes had to work together. On the other hand, the South continued to hold onto an antiquated social order”(Martin) In the south where there was a three-part social structure aristocrats were at the top followed by the middle class farmers and at the bottom were the slaves. As opposed to the North where everyone was relatively equal.
When Missouri submitted its constitution in hopes of being admitted into the union as a slave state the North was outraged feeling that admitting Missouri as a slave state would create an imbalance in Congress therefore tipping the scales in favor of the South. The government resolved to admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state to maintain the balance in Congress between the North and the South all while drawing a geographical line of division known as the Mason Dixon Line, which divided the North and the South. Any state above the Mason Dixon Line was a free state and any below was a slave state, a compromise known as the Missouri Compromise. To this compromise Thomas Jefferson responded that “for the moment being considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and