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Causes of the Civil War

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Causes of the Civil War
December 20, 2013

In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States found itself trapped in a land of brutality and warfare. A nation plagued with slavery, racism, political conflict, economic strife, and conflicting presidential preferences had come to its breaking point. While the states in the southern region of the United States had adopted the idea of slave labor, those in the north had not. These states relied on industrialization. Deriving from the initial conflict of slavery, many problems arose. The southern states were predominantly Democratic. The northern states, however, were exclusively members of the Republican party. Their contrasting views inevitably led to a great complication. With the new stance on expansion, copious problems struck the United States. The battle over Free v. Slave states reigned on throughout this time period. With these factors at hand, America entered a barbarous Civil War.

In the 1800s, slavery was disputed heavily between the northern and southern states. People living in the south embraced the fact that they demonstrated slave labor. Plantations were placed all over the United States, each having an unspeakable number of slaves. Not only were the slaves forced to work on these plantations, but they were also treated extremely poorly. According to Frederick Douglass, “ ... the children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them… When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance day.” The South saw no fault in their way of life. Their economy was booming because of the slaves’ laborious time spent on plantations. And, concurrently, so was the economy of the northern states.
Much earlier in 1794, a man named Eli Whitney created a device that would change the economies of both the South and the North. This new piece of technology made the tiresome chore of picking cotton slightly less laborious. Before this miraculous technological

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