Why the Civil War started.

Essay by trck65flagJunior High, 9th gradeA, May 2003

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Reasons for the Civil War

On April 12, 1862 southern troops fired at Fort Sumter, an U.S. military post in Charleston, South Carolina. Those shot started one of Americas most remembered wars. The Civil war, a war fought between Americans in the north and Americans in the south, lasted nearly 4 years, ending on April 9, 1865. There are many reasons for the Civil War, but after researching I have found that three main causes were sectionalism, slavery and tariffs. People of America became loyal to the states they lived in and the area around them, which is how sectionalism came about. Sectionalism caused people of the north and south to industrialize differently and differ in opinions and way of life. Northerners did not want slavery opposed to the southerners that did. Northerners found no harm in tariffs, on the other hand southerners did.

Sectionalism caused Americans to grow apart; many people were either northerners or southerners.

Their support of slavery and their plantation way of life united Southerners. Their equal thoughts and emotions of slavery as a sin and their industrialized way of life united Northerners. People of the north saw people of the south as foreigners in a foreign country where American rights do not exist; the people of the south saw northerners the same way. The Union was separated and many people thought the war would some how help to bring it together again.

The issue of slavery brought about many conflicts between the north and south. Slavery started to die out until Eli Whitney's creation of the cotton gin. Southerners, being plantation owners, found this tool helpful even if it required them to have more slaves. They got more slaves to help them grow their cotton. The fact of slavery arising again angered northerners. They found...