Causes of Secession

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Bang! The first shot of the Civil war has been fired. The war was fought as a result of secession. “But, what caused secession?” you ask. Well, you are about to find out. Before you understand the rest of the story, you must know the definitions of some words. Secession is one of those words, and it means, in this case, to withdraw from the Union. To be interdependent means to depend “…on one another for various needs…” (pg. 177, The Georgia Studies Book) Another key term is fundamental causes which are problems that develop over a long period of time. The last term that you must be familiar with is immediate causes which are issues that “…come into being just before the major event itself occurs.” (pg. 188, The Georgia Studies Book) There are multiple causes of secession, and they all seem to be related in some way. Geographic differences between the North and South were a minor cause of secession but a cause nonetheless. The South had cultivatable and arable soil; the North had rocky and infertile soil. The difference in the soil made the two regions interdependent. The North depended on the South for crops, and the South depended somewhat on the North for items that were manufactured in factories. These geographic differences led to population differences. The North had a larger population than the South because of all of its immigrants. Immigrants went to the North because it was easier to make a living there. In the South, who your ancestors were had everything to do with your social status; whereas, in the North you could rise and fall on the social ladder depending on what you did in your life. Another reason that immigrants went to the North was because the North had more factories and job opportunities than the South. An additional cause of secession was economic differences, the most important of which was the Tariff of Abominations, an immediate cause.
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