Without the addition of territorial expansion and the numerous political issues surrounding it, the Civil War would have not been started. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States gained millions of acres of land. From this new land, states were rapidly forming and expansion was in full throttle. An issue that accompanied expansion, however, was deciding whether new states added to the Union should be free or slave. At first, the Missouri Compromise settled this question by saying that anything above the 36 degree, 36 minute N line was a free state, and anything below this boundary was a slave state. However, when the War with Mexico in the 1840s added a drastic amount of land to United States territory, population and expansion exploded. When California applied for statehood in 1850, the Missouri Compromise had to be replaced. The Compromise of 1850 decided that popular sovereignty would decide the legality of slavery in every new state created from former Mexican territory. The idea that slavery could expand along with the country upset many Northerners who found the idea of risking not modernizing the United States frightening. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act declared that the issue of slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty in every state, and immense bloodshed in Kansas and Nebraska resulted. In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Republican Party was formed to stop the spread of slavery as the country expanded. Southerners were naturally opposed to the Republican Party because they believed that their economic and social ideals involving life and territorial expansion were threatened by the Republicans. When Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Southern states finally began seceding from the Union because of Lincoln’s stance on territorial expansion. The economic and social differences alone were not enough for a Southern secession, but contrasting views on the expansion of the country triggered the Civil War.
While economic and social differences between the North and South were incredible, they were not significant enough to create a Civil War. The political problems and developments accompanying territorial expansion were needed to spark warfare.
“Territorial Expansion was the main cause of the Civil War” To what extent do you agree with that statement.
Territorial expansion did indeed occur at the antebellum of the Civil War, and it contributed in creating tension between the North and South. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that this was the main cause of the Civil War. However, a “main cause” is something that is the foundation of all causes – which territorial expansion was not. Territorial expansion, therefore, was only a minor cause of the Civil War because the expansion itself did not fully serve as a compelling cause of the war, nor did it serve as a foundation for the other underlying causes.
Up until the Civil War, America expanded westward, but the expansion itself did not generate a cause of the Civil War. One of America’s earliest territorial expansions was regulated in the late 1700s by the Northwest Ordinance, which outlined America’s expansion into the new territories. This was one of the first outbreaks of tension between the North and the South. This tension did not come from territorial expansion itself, but came from the fact that Congress prohibited slavery between Mississippi and Ohio. If there was no such thing as slavery, then there would be nothing that required compromise as territorial expansion occurred, so no tension would have been created between the North and the South due to it. Therefore, all territorial expansion did was serve as a tool to exacerbate the tension between the North and South, because the North wished to outlaw slavery a lot more than the South did. The Missouri Compromise was another significant act passed by Congress in 1820 that outlined the boundaries of slavery in territorial expansion. The fact that the government needed to issue a boundary to define where slavery could and could not expand to exemplified the main concern of territorial expansion, and the tension it created within the country. Just like before, territorial expansion only became an issue because of the generally differing views on slavery between the North and the South. The westward expansion itself was not a problem, but it disrupted the balance of power between the free and slave states, which necessitated a compromise to avoid conflict. Therefore, it cannot be said that territorial expansion was a major cause of the Civil War, because all it did was merely serve as a catalyst to intensify the debate over slavery. It was only a minor cause because it would hardly have been an issue if the North and South had not been fighting over slavery.
Although territorial expansion contributed as a cause ever since the United States began expanding westward, it was not the root of all other causes of the Civil War. Slavery was the main cause because it nearly sparked every cause of the war. The “main cause” of a war has to serve as a foundation for other causes because the causes were like a chain reaction; one cause lead to another until the tension between the North and South became unbearable a war was needed. An example of a cause of the Civil War was the economic differences between the North and South. The agricultural South presented all-year around labor-intensive work environment where mostly slaves worked, while the North, being more industrialized, had suitable working jobs because of its general ideological opposition to slavery. It was not the territorial expansion that caused the tension, but slavery was what even allowed economic differences to become an issue. Political difference between the North and South was another cause of the Civil War. One would often assume that territorial expansion was rooted in political differences, because the issue of equal admittance of free and slave states into the Union as territories expanded westward cause tremendous tension between North and South. However, if the existence of slavery was eliminated, there would be no need for political differences between the North and South to begin with because what politically separated them was not territorial expansion, but their opposing views on slavery. If territorial expansion was eliminated, political tension would still likely exist because slavery would still exist, meaning the North and South would still have something to fight about. It is clear that territorial expansion was simply one of the minor causes of the Civil War, such as the economic and political differences, because slavery was primarily what influenced nearly all other causes.
There is no doubt that territorial expansion worsened the relationship between the North and South. However, it is nowhere near the main cause for the Civil War. The westward expansion itself would not have been an issue if it weren’t for other compelling forces, such as slavery, and territorial expansion was simply one of the issues that was originated by slavery. The fact that territorial expansion did not serve as the root of other causes underscore how it was only a minor cause of the Civil War.
