Describe each causes
Sectionalism
Slavery
States' rights
Describe how the causes related to one another, identifying appropriate legislation, popular sentiments, and economic conditions, among other factors.
Describe how all causes led to the civil war.
Explain how these factors influenced the South's response to the election of 1860.
Sectionalism refers to the division of the United States along regional lines, with different parts of the country holding divergent economic, social, and political interests. This division was largely due to the different economic structures of the North and South: the North was industrialized and relied on wage labor, while the South was agrarian and depended on enslaved labor.
Slavery was a major cause of sectionalism and was central to the economic and social structure of the South. The institution of slavery fueled the Southern economy, particularly in the production of cotton and other cash crops. The issue of slavery caused significant tensions between the North and South, with abolitionists in the North pushing for the end of slavery, while many in the South defended the institution as essential to their way of life.
States' rights refers to the belief that individual states should have the authority to govern themselves without interference from the federal government. Many Southern states argued that they had the right to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders, and that the federal government had overstepped its authority in attempting to regulate the institution.
These causes were deeply interconnected and fueled each other in the lead-up to the Civil War. The economic interests of the North and South were fundamentally at odds, with the Northern industrial economy conflicting with the Southern agrarian slave system. This tension was heightened by legislative efforts such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed for popular sovereignty in determining the status of slavery in new territories, and the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that African Americans, whether free or enslaved, could not be considered citizens.
The culmination of these factors was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which prompted many Southern states to secede from the Union. The Southern states viewed Lincoln's election as a threat to their way of life and their right to govern themselves as they saw fit, leading to the formation of the Confederacy and the beginning of the Civil War.
The South's response to the election of 1860 was largely influenced by these deeply ingrained beliefs in Southern society. The fear of losing their economic and social structures, coupled with their commitment to states' rights and the institution of slavery, led many Southern states to secede from the Union and take up arms against the federal government. This response ultimately set the stage for the bloodiest conflict in American history, as the North and South fought to determine the future of the nation.