Mr. Thomas
US History, Period 7
4 December 2014
Causes of the Civil War
All through history our nation has faced many problems that has helped build the country we have today. Throughout time we have inserted many laws that we felt would help our society and better the people. Everyone has different opinions on everything, which always causes conflict. One of the major conflicts in our country's history was slavery, which soon became the main tensions between the northerners and southerners. One of the main causes of the Civil War was from a women named Harriet Beecher Stowe. She published the famous Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1851 in an anti-slavery newspaper and was written in book form the next year. It later became a nationwide and worldwide best seller within the next two years. This novel definitely got Stowe's point across trying to show the evil of slavery in a way the nation and world hasn't seen before. It succeeded at trying to start a wave of anti-slavery attitude across the nation. It became so popular to when Stowe met President Lincoln he greeted her with, "So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." The northerners saw this as an eye opener as where the southerners thought her work was wrong. This grew even greater tensions between the north and south.
All the controversy going on through this time period influenced others such as a popular slave known as Dred Scott. Scott sought for his citizenship in the American legal system and eventually ended up in the Supreme Court. The famous Dred Scott decision in 1857 also known as the Dred Scott vs Stanford case of 1857 denied Scott's request stating that no person with African blood will become a U.S citizen. This decision also resolved in the overturning of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had restricted slavery in certain U.S territories. The whole Dred Scott case ended up bringing more anger to the northerners, but ruled in favor of the south.
Another major cause of the tensions between the north and south was the Fugitive Slave Act. This law came along around the 1850s and mainly focused toward the north because it forced them to finally face slavery instead of ignoring it. This was made so that the north would have to return all the runway slaves back to the south and gave the people the power of an police officer. This gave them the power to basically turn in any black person they feel looks like a slave even if they were free. This grew a lot of tension between the two regions.
Yes our country has had many decisions to make to try and help better the people, but without all the controversy our country would have no differences. These are just a few reasons that caused the civil war. Even though they are small they are still a big part of how our nation formed today.
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