How to Start a Civil War

How to Start a Civil War

What caused the American civil war? That's easy slavery caused it. Yes and also no, because slavery was a big issue of the time but it was really just the fuel that Americans used to drive themselves to civil war. Just because you put gas in a car does not make it go. Gas in a car, much like the issue of slavery in pre-civil war America, must be manipulated and have things added to it for the final outcome to be achieved. Although slavery was a large factor of the civil war it was smaller events such as identifying as northern and southern states, drawing borders, and western expansion that drove this country apart.

A state identifying as a northern or southern state is what literally shaped the war. You had the northern states which called themselves Free states. They had a large population in a small area, thrived in factories and business, and industry and immigration boomed here. The south referred to themselves as slave states. Their population was spread thin all across the south, they maintained farms and huge acres of land, and agriculture and slavery were the big markets. The boundary between the north and south when the war started was drawn by which states identified as northern and southern. This state identity led people to be loyal to their side not to the union as a whole. This would cause neighboring states to turn on each other, in one case even break a state apart, and lay down the battlefield where this war was to be fought.

State identification pushed the fuel of slavery onto a new issue though, westward expansion. The problem this caused is how a new state would identify, as free or slave. You see during these times in our young government the senate became a battleground, with slave southern and free northern representatives vying for power. Henry Clay had a solution for this. When a territory would claim statehood it would be, based on its location, a free or slave state. When a slave state like Missouri for example would join the union, Maine a free state would also be made a part of it. This would maintain the balance of power in the senate but would only fuel the feeling of division between the two sides by making them fight over every territory wanting to become a state. Then there came the Kansas Nebraska act which repealed the Missouri Compromise and split the large territory into to smaller states Kansas and Nebraska. Nebraska was too far north to be a slave state but because Kansas was in the middle of America and had great farming soil they left the decision of whether Kansas would be a free or slave state to its people. This would cause southerners and northerners to move to Kansas in hopes of voting for their side. With the help of an abolitionist named John Brown the country would see the first open fighting between parties who identify as north and south.

One of the last major causes of the civil war would be the drawing up of boarders between slave and Free states. The northwest ordnance stating that all states north of the Ohio River would be Free states and the Missouri Compromise stating that all states north of the parallel 36°30? north would be free would only more clearly define the fact that our