Causes of the civil war. The American civil war was a war that was fought between 1861 and 1865 in the United States of America.

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Causes of the civil war

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Causes of the civil war

        The American civil war was a war that was fought between 1861 and 1865 in the United States of America. The war was between the southern slave states and the Northern free states.   Reports show that about 620,000 soldiers were killed in the war and in addition to that, was the death of an uncertain number of civilians. Other reports claim that the number of the soldiers who died in the war ranges from 618,000 to 700,000. From these reports, one thing is certain, the American civil war saw the death of more than 600,000 soldiers and an alarming number of citizens, thus showing the severity of the war.

        The American civil war was indeed a deadly war that left behind a history that can never be erased for centuries to come. There are a number of causes that led to the war. The major ones being; the election of Abraham Lincoln in the year 1960, slavery, differences between the South and the North, abolitionism, electoral fear, fight for new territories, fight for state rights, “bleeding Kansas” and slavery and control of the government. Of all these causes slavery is viewed as the major issue behind the civil war. This paper will look in depth at the causes mentioned and bring to light the factors that qualify them as the major causes of the civil war.

Slavery

        The issue of slavery began in the year 1619 in Virginia, United States. Most of the states at the North had already put a stop to the practice towards the end of the American Revolution. On the other hand, slavery continued to flourish in the Southern parts of the states due to the plantation business. Conflicts about the issue of slaves began to emerge a few years before the war began. The debates over the anti-slavery gag rule, the Compromise of 1820 and 1850 among others began to fuel the conflicts between the North and the South. Based on this, then it would be valid to conclude that the civil war was almost inevitable, seeing the mounting grievances between the Northern states and the Southern states.

Differences between the North and the South

        There were economic as well as social differences between the north and the south. With the cotton gin invention by Eli Whitney, which cut down on the time taken to separate the cotton seeds from cotton, the cotton business soon became highly profitable, and in turn led to an increase in the number of cotton plantations, thereby creating a greater need for labor, and cheap labor at that, therefore the demand for slaves increased as well. The economy of the north, on the other hand, was more industrial than agricultural, in that the industries at the North were purchasing buying raw cotton and developing it into well finished goods. This economic difference gave rise to a difference in the societal life of the two, in that the North became more culturally diverse with the coming together of people from all walks of life, and therefore had a more urban city life, while the South, due to the cotton plantation business based on slavery, continued to hold on to their old way of life.

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        These social and economic differences became a cause of the civil war due to the fact that the industrial North soon controlled about a large share of the industry, as well as two thirds of the money supply and the army. This success of the North was not welcome by the South and hence the bitter rift between the two expanded further.

 Electoral fears

As mentioned earlier, the gap between the North and the South was getting wider due to the changes that were occurring in the individual regions. The south was still devoted to the agricultural way of life, ...

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