The Southerners would trust these ideas because of what had happened in the previous years, such as Lecompton and John Brown’s escapades at Harper’s Ferry and Pottawotomie. In 1855, Kansas elected its first territorial governing body. This body would run a voting poll to decide on the subject of slavery and whether it would be allowed in Kansas or not. Hundreds of pro-slavery believers crossed the border from Missouri into Kansas to cast their vote for slavery to try and balance out the ratio of free and slave states. It is likely that Kansas would have been voted as a slave state even if the Missourians had not crossed the border, but by doing this they flawed the idea of popular sovereignty and cast doubt on the pro-slavery victory. Popular sovereignty was an idea of democracy and everyone having their own say and that say being valued. Lecompton was credible to the Southern slave-owners as they believed they were losing their territories, the fire-eaters became more of a realistic idea as they had proposed an idea to help this problem, they wanted a federal slave code to protect slavery in the territories
Another reason for the fire-eaters being trusted and believed was following John Brown’s antics. John Brown was an enthusiastic abolitionist who wanted to get rid of slavery, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins” brown said, and in May 1856, the blood was shed at Pottawotomie Creek when Brown murdered five pro-slavery settlers in cold blood. The event was concealed in the North and Brown was named a hero, however in the South, the facts of the incident were told more correctly, and the South regarded Brown as an ogre and put a price on his head, The incident in Pottawotomie Creek was followed a few years later by another escapade by John Brown, however this time at Harpers Ferry, Virginia a federal arsenal, the idea was to take the weapons and flee to the Appalachian Mountains where he thought Southern slaves would flock to join his ‘army’, however, this didn’t happen as Brown was unable to update the slaves living in the South of his plan. More blood was shed at Harpers Ferry when the army became involved after Brown captured and held hostage the arsenal, as people were killed on both Brown’s and the army’s sides. The fire-eaters used this to their advantage as they told the people of the Deep South that John Brown was the first in an army of abolitionist attackers. After the attacks by John Brown and the problems in Lecompton, the Southern nationalists were looking for an extreme group to lead them politically and have their points put across to Congress, the fire-eaters realised this and took advantage of the situation the Deep South were in and how worried the slave owners were about what would happen to them and their livelihood. Lots of short term events that ended up increasing intensity which resulted in the fire-eaters pushing for secession, this push for secession produced the problems with Fort Sumter, and then caused the first shots of the American Civil War to become.
However, on the other hand can the American Civil War be blamed all on a group of Southern fanatics, there was a lot of real and deep rooted division between the Northern Republican Party and the Southern pro-slavery followers, such as economic and social factors, political factors, the fight over slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
By the start of the American Civil War, the North and the South had developed into two very different expanses. Different social, economic and political views slowly pushed the two sections further and further apart. Even though compromises had kept the Union together for many years, in 1860 the situation was volatile, Abraham Lincoln was voted president and this was viewed by the South as a danger to slavery and this provoked the war. During the early 18th Century, economic differences between the regions also increased, by 1860, cotton was the widely-produced crop and represented 57% of US exports. The productivity of cotton concluded the South’s reliance on the plantation system and its vital element, slavery. The North at this point was an established industrial society. Labour was needed but not as slaves and this was provided by the hundreds of immigrants fro Europe who worked in the factories and built the railroads across the country. The south resisting industrialisation, manufactured little and instead they relied on imported manufactured goods. Southerners then resisted high tariffs that were placed on all imported goods as it increased the price of the goods. The manufacturing economy of the North however insisted on high tariffs so as to protect its own produce from cheap foreign competition. Economics differences added to the sectional differences which in turn added to the aggression between the two ends of the country.
In the beginning of the Union, the ‘Founding Fathers’ thought that loyalty to one’s state took priority over one’s loyalty to the country, this was the beginning of state rights. As the Northern and Southern patterns of living began to differ more, their political ideas also developed marked differences. The North needed a central government to build an road and rail network to help transport their manufactured goods whereas the South, however, depended much less on the federal government than the North and they therefore felt no need to give extra power to a federal government. Southern pro-slavers thought that a strong federal government would interfere with slavery.
As these differences widened, moderates from both the North and the South of the country hoped that a compromise could be reached over slavery tariffs and all the sectional difference in the Union. A compromise was tried to be reached in 1818, when Missouri sought admission to the Union as a slave-state, which the North did not like as they wanted to try and confine slavery in the states that it already existed within, not letting it spread as they thought it would inevitably take control over the whole county. The compromise was called the Missouri Compromise and consisted of allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state but also allowing Maine into the Union but as a free-state to keep the ratio of slave to free states equal.
Another compromise was reached in 1850, when the North became worried of the newly-acquired states following the Mexican War as they once again were worried about the proportion of slave states to free. The compromise decided on was to admit California as a free state and to let the others to decide whether they would like to be free or to allow slavery. A little over a year after the compromise in 1850, an event shook the nation, the release of a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this told of the horrors of slavery and caused man people to join the abolitionist movement, the content was denied by the South and caused a further division between the pro-slavery south and the anti-slavery north.
A political explosion erupted in the North in 1854, when Stephen Douglas came up with a bill to organise the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, as they were both north on the line established in the Missouri Compromise, the act made possible the extension of the slave system into territory preciously considered free soil. Soon the settlers in Kansas were occupied in a bloody battle to decide the slavery issue. Anti-slavery groups met to form a new political party, the Republicans, to forbid slavery in these territories, however they lost.
In 1857, there was another blow to the ever-further separation between the North and the South; it came as the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave, sued for his freedom on the ground that when his master had taken him to a free territory, Scott was no longer a slave. However, in the Supreme Court, a number of the justices believed that Scott was not an American citizen so did not have the right to sue his master, because as a slave, he was property. The justices continued to attach the Missouri Compromise and classified it as unconstitutional.
By 1860 politics, economic differences had become extremely sectional but this was made worse when one of the most important presidents of American history came on the scene, Abraham Lincoln. He believed slavery was a ‘moral, social and political wrong’, the south feared him greatly as they thought if he became president, and slavery was in grave danger. There was bitter competition between the presidential candidates, but Lincoln won and this caused the first wave of secession starting with South Carolina and being followed by many other states from the Deep South such as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida and calling themselves the Southern Confederacy. As the Southern states seceded they seized and occupied most of the federal forts within their borders or off their shores, only four remained in the hands of the union. Fort Sumter stood guard in the mouth of the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. The troops within Fort Sumter were running out of supplies so when supplies were taken by an unarmed merchant vessel, the Confederacy fired at them, one of the first shots of the American Civil War.
The American Civil War, I think, largely comes down to the sectional problems throughout the years, however, I do believe that the southern fanatics, the fire-eaters played a part in the fall down in communication between the North and South which could have possibly prevented the American Civil War. However, not all can be blamed on the South; the North did play a part in the problems, with extremists such as John Brown and his incidents. However, I think it was the combination of the long-term causes, such as the difference in opinion about slavery, and the problems from both the North and South problems caused the civil war.