If you went out right now and asked 100 people, what caused the Civil War; the majority would say “slavery.”
Well, lets get 2 things straight.
1. The North and the South did not go to war over slaves and slavery.
2. The North and the South did not go to war over slaves and slavery.
Got it!
Okay, so now I’ve got your attention and really got you thinking. What was the cause of the American Civil War if it wasn’t slavery? Let’s recap what was going on in American at that time and it will clear things up.
The North and the South didn’t like each other. They were like fighting siblings.
The North and the South had different personalities. The northern states developed differently than the Southern states. The northern states were much more industrial than the southern states. Manufacturing dominated the northern economy, where as agriculture, especially plantation agriculture, dominated the southern economy.
The northern manufacturers hired mostly cheap labor to work the production lines, and mines. South plantation owners, on the other hand, used slave labor to work the massive cotton and tobacco fields. Oddly enough, the two regions actually needed each other. The North needed the raw materials like tobacco, cotton and sugar from the South to process in their factories. The South didn’t have factories like the North and, at least until the cotton gin came a long, needed the North to manufacture finished products like textiles from their corps.
If they would have realized they needed each other it could have been a whole different story. Northerners did not understand why Southerners insisted on using slave labor, of which the North disapproved. Southerners did not understand why Northerners didn’t understand the reason behind slave labor.
So, the two regions acted like jealous siblings, they blamed one another for everything. The two regions had different social and economic interests as well. When it came to making laws, North states wanted legislation, tariffs, and other things that favored northern industry. On the other hand, the Southern states wanted legislation, tariffs etc that favored the southern agriculture. Makes sense, right? Every time a law was introduced that favored one side over the other, people started to point fingers.
Every time a new state was admitted into the union, the big question was, is the new state going to be a slave state or a free state? The North had a bit of an advantage because the population was larger. (For voting) But, as long as the number of slave states and Free states stayed equal, the South had a chance in the Senate because each state had two votes there.
So, as you can see slavery didn’t really cause the Civil War but it sure did contribute to it. The Southerners were always afraid if the North took control of the House and Senate and they passed a legislation that would end slavery, then the entire southern economy would be in jeopardy and could collapse. Basically, the South had become very dependant on slave labor.
Did everyone in the South own a slave or support slavery? Of course not. Did everyone in the North condemn slavery? Nope. But slavery certainly was a wedge that helped divide the two regions.
As you can see The Civil War was not caused by slavery, it was really an issue that the South did not want to be bossed around by the North. They lived different lives, they didn’t want laws and rules and legislation that would hurt there economy. We all know how this turned out. You know the north won, right? We don’t have slaves anymore.