The differences between the Northern and Southern states regarding states' rights issues and industrialization also affected federal policies toward new territories acquired during Westward Expansion. Before the Civil War, the federal government had issued a series of "compromises" designed to appease both northern and southern interests. The Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill were both issued in response to Southern interests but they reflected weakness in the federal government. The Compromise of 1850, for instance, sparked controversy over admitting California to the nation as a free state. Southerners had hoped that new states would at least be able to choose their own policies regarding slavery: to have "the power to choose whether it entered the United States as a slave or free state," ("Causes of the Civil War").
Finally, the issue of slavery itself became a major cause of the Civil War. Southern states prospered as a result of slavery, which permitted agricultural prosperity via free labor. Abolitionists focused not on the economic benefits of slavery but instead on the human rights issues that slavery posed. Golden notes that "beginning in the late 1840's the conflict over slavery began to boil over," showing that the roots of the Civil War ran deep within the nation. Abolitionism became a key political platform issue, dividing the Democratic and Republican parties and increasing political strife in Washington. The Republican Party had developed, by the time war broke out, an abolitionist, pro-unionist platform. At the time of secession, the Democratic...
"A myriad of conflicting pressures, principles, and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences and pride, and set into motion by a most unlikely set of political events," led to the outbreak of war in 1861 ("The Causes). Slavery was one of the ideological issues at the heart of the controversy, but from the southern perspective, slavery was only one aspect a federalist policy viewed as being aggressive and neglectful of southern interests. Moreover, the southern states championed libertarianism and states' rights as being more reflective of American ideals than the policies put forth by the apologists of a strong central government. The Industrial Revolution also exacerbated the preexisting regional differences that led to the Civil War, differences that focused on states' rights, political ideology, economic policy, and the role of the federal government.
References
American Civil War." (nd). Spartacus. Retrieved Sept 17, 2006 at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcivilwar.htm
The Causes." (nd). The American Civil War: The Struggle to Preserve the Union. Retrieved Sept 17, 2006 at http://www.swcivilwar.com/cw_causes.html
Causes of the War Between the States - a Southern Perspective." The Blue and Gray Trail. Retrieved Sept 17, 2006 at http://blueandgraytrail.com/features/southerncauses.html
Golden, R. (nd). Causes of the Civil War. About North Georgia. Retreived Sept 17, 2006 at http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html
Stromberg, J.R. (nd). The War for Southern Independence: A radical libertarian perspective. The Journal of Libertarian Studies. Retrieved Sept 17, 2006 from https://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_3.pdf#search=%22civil%20war%20southern%20perspective%20stromberg%22
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