Causes
of the Civil War| 1. The North and the South had different attitudes toward slavery. |
| 2. Confederate troops bombarded a Union stronghold, Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina, April 12, 1861. |
| 3. Ways of life were different for both sides: plantations versus factories. |
| 4. Ideas of the use of free labor (paid) versus slave labor (unpaid) differed. |
| 5. On state's rights the North argued no state had a right to secede from the Union, the South argued a state could leave the Union if it voted to do so. |
Were there any attempts to resolve their differences?
Attempted Compromises: The Missouri Compromise (1820), kept a voting balance of a slave state (Missouri) and a free state (Maine). Compromise of 1850, California was a free state, Southwest territories would decide about slavery. Kansas-Nebraska Act, popular sovereignty decided the issue of slavery in the state.
Republican Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President on March 4, 1861.
Southern states feared there would be no new slave states.
Southern leaders thought their power in the House would decline as free states joined
Southern states wanted the right to declare any national law illegal.
Northern states wanted the national government's power to be supreme over the states.
Click to look over each document and then answer the questions.
1. Which attempt was a law that divided Nebraska into two territories and provided that the question of slavery in the territories to be decided by popular sovereignty?
2. Which attempt was a plan proposed by Henry Clay to keep the number of slave and free votes equal?
3. Which attempt was an agreement over slavery that admitted California to the Union as a free state, allowed popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah, banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and passed a strict fugitive slave law?
Following Lincoln's election, the southern states seceded from the Union, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, in South Carolina, marking the beginning of the Civil War. Lincoln and many Northerners believed that the United States was one nation that could not be separated or divided. Most Southerners believed that states had freely created and joined the union and could freely leave it.
