But the real causes are more complex: indeed, this war began because of political, economic, social, religious and philosophical factors.
By the 1860s, the United States weren’t a homogenous society: some areas had different outlooks and values.
Indeed, it was the North and the South that created the two sides of the war.
The North was industrial, protectionism, abolitionist.
Stimulated by the inventions of the industrial revolution, it is also more industrialized and little agricultural and knows a extraordinary economic growth whereas The South was agricultural, proslavery and free trader.
First of all, the civil War is due by slavery.
In the North of the United States, many people wanted to end slavery because they were opposed to the fact that someone could be bought and belong to someone else, so the political power brokers in Washington were planning to abolish slavery throughout the Union.
However Southerners disagreed because they said they needed black people to work in their plantations, and so, were against the abolition of slavery.
Indeed a huge part of the South’s wealth came from the fact that the plantation owners oriented the work on their plantations around slave labour.
Slavery was simply seen as part of the southern way of life.
Moreover, at that time, the economy was different in the North and in the South because factories were developing in the North while there were cotton plantations in the South.
So, the Southern plantation owners relied on slave labor for economic success and their crops were sold in England to cotton mills against manufactured goods produced in Europe.
Northern politicians passed heavy taxes on imported goods from Europe in order to force Southerners to buy goods from the North.
This generated tensions between North and South.
but also, there is another reason of the civil war. when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, South Carolina issued its "Declaration of the Causes of Secession." They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests.
Indeed The southern states, who had announced their secession if Lincoln was elected, lived as a declaration of war.
The choice of new states and territories of the West became decisive.
Hoped to find in the South West to support the maintenance of slavery.
The North wanted at least block the spread of slavery in other states.
The Civil War was then ready to explode.
The antagonism between the two Americas will increase throughout the nineteenth century, so much so that in 1860 the North more than twice as many people as the South and 90% of industrial resources of the country.
February 2013
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