The Outbreak of the American Civil War was the result of a concerted campaign of aggression by the Deep South. Discuss.

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The Outbreak of the American Civil War was the result of a concerted campaign of aggression by the Deep South. Discuss.

        The Origins of the American Civil War lay in the complicated set of problems of slavery, expansion, sectionalism and politics of the antebellum era. As territorial expansion forced the United States to confront the question of whether territories were to be slave or free, as the power of slaveholders in Congress decreased, and as the North and the South developed obviously different economies and societies, the disruptive issues of sectionalism propelled the nation into the Civil War.

        During the period 1860-61, it is clear that the Southern Politicians, who represent the Southern people, got their opinions of the North wrong. They thought that slavery was to be gotten rid of and that a Black Abolitionist plot was going to take over the South. Given that the Republicans did not have a majority in Congress in 1860; Lincoln could not do anything to jeopardize slavery right away. Instead he tried to accommodate the views of the South in his speeches which put his position in the North at risk. Between his election and the start of the Civil War, Lincoln acted sensibly and logically. However, this can not be said for the South. Their desire to maintain slavery, a sensible one, did not need the creation of an independent Southern nation, the Confederacy.

        Most Southern people did not agree with the vocal Southern nationalists, like the fire-eaters, who were a minority. However, the tense atmosphere of 1860-61, caused the South to agree with these outrageous ideas. Some Southerners saw, however, the extent of their mistake of seceding and realised this would start a war between the Union and the new Southern confederacy, which was likely to result in Northern victory due to the sheer scale and extent of their man power and the manufacturing strength, which was not available in the South.

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        At Fort Sumter, on April 12 1861, the first shot was fired by General Pierre Beauregard of South Carolina in attack at the Northern garrison situated in Confederate territory. The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War. This shows that the South were the ones who began the war, showing the first acts of aggression towards the North in the Civil War. By being the ones to provoke conflict of the Civil War, the South succeeded in uniting against them what remained of the United States in 1861, by pushing Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky ...

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