Economic Causes to the Civil War

Although the American Civil War mainly occurred because of slavery, the fact is that slavery had a lot to do with economic and social issues.

By the year of 1860, the North and the South was developed into extremely different sections. There was opposing social, economic, and political points of view, starting back into colonial periods, and it slowly drove the two regions farther in separate directions. The two sections tried to force its point of view on the nation as a whole. Even though negotiations had kept the Union together for many years, in 1860 the condition was unstable. The presidential election of Abraham Lincoln was observed by the South as a risk to slavery and many believe it initiated the war.

In the beginning of the 1800s, economic diversities between the two different regions had also grown. By the year 1860, cotton was the chief crop for the South; it also represented fifty-seven percent of all American exports. The prosperity of cotton fulfilled the South's reliance on the plantation system and its crucial element--slavery.

The North had confidently been recognized as a manufacturing society. Labor was needed, although not necessarily slave labor. Immigration was an encouragement. Immigrants that were from European regions worked in factories, built the railroads in the North, and developed the West. Very little stayed put in the South.

The South opposed industrialization, so therefore they manufactured very little. Much of the manufactured supplies had to be traded in. Southerners therefore opposed high tariffs. The manufacturing financial system of the North, insisted high tariffs to defend its goods from inexpensive overseas competition.

Prior to the Civil War, the North's government key resource of profits was the tariff. There were a small number of other supplies of income. The tariff paid for progress made by the federal government, for example: transportation. To maintain that tariffs were low, the South favored to do without these developments.

The increasing Northwest Territory, which included the present-day Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, was distant from the markets for its grain and cattle. It required inner progression for survival, and so supported the Northeast's demands for high tariffs. The Northeast maintained most federally economic enhancement in the Northwest Territory.

Even though both the South and the West were agricultural, the West linked itself with the Northern point of view. Economic requirements improved sectional differences, accumulating to the interregional opposition.

Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, an antislavery Democrat, introduced an amendment to the appropriation bill prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso passed the house but failed in the senate. Southern militants in the meantime contended that all Americans had equal rights in the new territories, including the right to move their slaves. The northwest sold most of its products to the residents of the northeast and was thus depended on eastern purchasing power. Eastern industry found an important market for its products in the west. STRONG ECONONOMIC RELATIONSHIP was emerging that was profitable to both-- and that was increasing the isolation of the south within the union.

In 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas initiated a bill to arrange the regions of Kansas and Nebraska, therefore opening these vicinities to white settlement. The Kansas-Nebraska Act canceled the Missouri Compromise and offered that settlers in the territories should choose "all questions pertaining to slavery." This policy was known as accepted rule. Because Kansas and Nebraska were north of the line recognized in the Missouri Compromise, the act was made probable that the addition