The start of the American Civil War can be traced to the inflexible variations between the autonomous anti-slave North states and the enslaved states in the South. The differences resulted in national authority’s power forbidding slavery in nonstate territories (Locke & Wright, 2019). Subjugation had long been a problem that divided the United States politics between the Northern and the Southern states, and in time, the breakups became sectional and non-reconciliable.
The events leading to the American War can be considered to have started in the 1820s. Initially, the warning sign of an upcoming sectional disagreement took place in Missouri in 1821, where debates surrounded the state’s admission (Locke & Wright, 2019). The fault lines continued to grow as the conflict grew even more threatening when the westward expansion managed to seize more lands from the Mexican War. The U.S. seemed to shake ever nearer to a full-throated slavery backing (Locke & Wright, 2019). Nonetheless, between the 1840s and 1850s, the evolution and the shaping of the antislavery alliance, the Republican Party, arose to enclose slavery and close it where it existed already (Locke & Wright, 2019). The fight against slavery by the Northern states became the driving force for the American War.
First, throughout the 1840s and the 8950s, the mainstream of the antislavery motion remained pledged to a nonviolent slavery dedication via efforts considered to foster its ultimate extinction. Second, the original Chesapeake and New England colonies could not tolerate the secession crisis since it worked against their interest, slavery expansion (Locke & Wright, 2019). Therefore, the South decided to gamble on War with the U.S. government. Lastly, the secession raised the possibility of liberation through War, an option well known by the North but hoped would never be necessary (Locke & Wright, 2019). Abraham Lincoln’s election as president affirmed the pledge to keep slavery off, and the legitimacy of the secession was refused by the Lincoln administration and the Northern territories, which led to the gamble of the Southern colonies.
Reference
Locke, J. L., & Wright, B. (2019). The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Vol. 2: Since 1877. Stanford University Press.