The Causes of the Civil War


The Causes of the Civil War


The Civil War saw the most American casualties than any other war fought in American history up to this point. This was because the Civil War was the one war where both sides were citizens of the United States. This war was caused by not just one problem, which most people think, but by many problems. Slavery was indeed one of the main reasons behind the Civil War, but there was already unrest between the two regions even had their not been an issue of slavery. There were social, economical and even political differences between the South and the North that would fuel the anger between the two. Slavery, the Abolition Movement and so on were only the catalyst that began the fight within the United States of America.

The growth of the Abolition Movement in the North created a lot of anger and resentment with both Southerners and Northerners and maybe began the threat of harmony between the two. The first movement towards abolishing slavery began way before the Civil War back in 1688 when a couple Quakers wrote a paper condemning the act of slavery. This paper eventually resulted in a couple of the Northern states banning slavery, which would be the beginning of the concept of having “free states” and “slave states”. Soon, a line was eventually established where every state north of it would be considered free states and any state south of it would be a slave state although some slaves would still be held in these so-called free states until around the end of the Civil War. Once the concept of free states and slave states were established, slaves began wanting to be able to escape to the North for freedom. However, unsettled by the fact that they were losing labor especially in the border slave states due to the policies in the North, the South called for a law that would require the North to return all runaway slaves to the South and that anyone caught with an alleged runaway would have