Civil War Dbq

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Through the birth of a young nation, sectionalist tensions among various issues sculpted and shaped the road to the Civil War. Factions between the North and the South arose due to a long-term conflict concerning the issue of slavery and competing ideas in several aspects of society. For the South, slavery shaped and impacted social, political, economical, and laboral facets of society. The South argued to obtain the right to slavery free from federal interference, while basing their argument on the idea of nullification and the doctrine of states’ rights. The nation in the late 18th and early 19th century believed that war was avoidable and therefore, legislators implemented numerous compromises to provide a temporary or immediate solution.…show more content…
The success of many political parties was dependent on their stance or take on slavery. There were many differing opinions from the pro slavery Democrats, to the abolitionist Liberty party, to gradual emancipation by the Republicans to even the Free Soil party “who urged the containment of slavery within existing boundaries” (Meyers 65). The minority of true abolitionists was apparent in that only a “small core of Northerners believed slavery both sinful and un-American and that all Americans shared a duty to destroy it” (Woodsworth 126). Furthermore, the status of the issue of slavery in government would swing like a pendulum. The Antebellum era was marked by one compromise after another as for every slave state there would be a free state admitted to maintain the status quo. In this era arose Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, and the Great Triumvirate between Clay in the West, Webster in the North, and Calhoun in the South. Henry Clay, a Whig from Kentucky, helped provide temporary solutions to the “nation's impending crisis” such as the Compromise of 1820 and 1850 (Boritt 58). These immediate solutions would help please both sides to avoid sectional confrontation. However, the South always found a way to ignite a bomb on the fabric of society as they “fought to preserve its vision of the republic as the founding fathers intended it — a government of limited…show more content…
Altering slavery would tamper with the way of life and cause mayhem. From pre-republic, the southern states were interested in slavery from an economic point of view as “the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1772 petitioned against the traffic, but was resisted by the British crown” and “in the Articles of Association drawn up by the first Continental Congress, October 20, 1774, it was agreed that the United Colonies would "neither import nor purchase any slave" and would "wholly discontinue the slave trade" (Chadwick 5). Thus, we see how the nation was apt to postpone and avoid the situation at hand because “as long as the slave trade was profitable and tolerated, it had no horrors in the sight” (Meyers 76). Moreover, the clarity in avoiding the issue is apparent in the gag rule as its objective was to table any antislavery petitions and in the 20 year ban clause in the Constitution regarding the slave trade. The economic tensions are brought forth by the opposing ideals of the political parties as their “irreconcilable ideologies competed in the 1850s with Republicans believing in the superiority of their dynamic, expanding, capitalistic society with the dignity of labor as a central tenet over the backward, degraded slave labor system” (Woodsworth 134). Thus, it is prevalent that as the North industrialized and technologically advanced with factories such as Lowell and Waltham while

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