The North also had more able bodied men than the south allowing it to raise a larger and better equipped army, if not as well a trained army. A larger army, trade, and manufacturing all contributed to the Union’s overwhelming military victory in the civil war. Politically President Lincoln said that he was only going to war to save the Union. President Lincoln believed that the United States Constitution did not give him the power to free slaves, it did give him power to preserve the Union. He only issued the Emancipation Proclamation
In contrast, Northern society evolved around the Calvinist religious ideals of industriousness, and placed great importance on the gathering of wealth. As a result, the great majority of the United States Army’s officer corps was Southern aristocrats and a large number of the common soldiers were Southern as well. These soldiers and officers near unanimously left the US Army to create and lead the core of the Confederate armies. Among the officers that defected to the South was Robert E. Lee, who would be one of the greatest reasons for Confederate longevity in the proceeding four years. Repeatedly throughout the early stages of the war, vastly outnumbered but highly organized Confederate armies turned circles around the much larger and largely poor-led Union forces.
President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico at the time, started to move the governmental system of Mexico towards a dictatorship. This in conjunction with the annulment of the constitution of 1824 early in the year of 1835 cause compelled large numbers of federalists to revolt. Though Texas was a part of Mexico at the time, many of its residents were used to a federalist government paired with vast amounts of freedoms. One of these freedoms that these residents missed the most was freedom, and the right, to own slaves. The Texians became quite displeased with Mexico’s shift towards centralism and their abolition of slavery in 1831.
Additionally, the verdict had many political and social implications, provoked angry resentment in the North and led the country a step closer to civil war. After the Civil War and the introduction and passage of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment finally brought about the overturning of the decision. Adopted in 1868, this amendment granted citizenship to former slaves and their descendants and gave them the benefit and protection of their civil liberties. Dred Scott was an illiterate slave born in 1799. He was born as the property of the Peter Blow family since his parents were both slaves.
Needless to say, southern slave owners were not willing to abolish slavery because of the money they stood to lose. The North, on the other hand, was experiencing an industrial revolution. This area of the United States had five times more factories than the South. However, unlike the South, work in these northern factories was carried out by immigrants. Since the North controlled the majority
‘The American Revolution and the Irony of Slavery’ The American Revolution redefined economic, political and religious freedom in colonial America and around the world. Americans of the revolutionary generation were preoccupied with the social conditions of freedom. The contradiction between freedom and slavery seem so apparent that it makes it difficult to understand the obstacles to abolition. During the revolutionary era slavery became the focus of international debate for the first time in world history. The United States changed dramatically in a very short time after the Revolution, the transition was not an easy one, militarily, politically, and culturally.
Seeing as though the Confederacy initially had an advantage over the Union as far as better generals and espiritu morale, the South seemed highly likely to win the war. In the book, Why the Confederacy Lost, the idea that the South had any chance of winning is combatted, while also proving why the North won. Although the North did not possess the knowledge of the land on which they fought, their ability to win was based purely on slaves, the South's demoralization and lack of ideology, their uniforms, and their odds against the South altogether; if the North had not have won, the end of slavery and even a civil war would have been inevitable with time. In the beginning, Grant wanted to mobilize every available man and apply pressure on all fronts. What was a better way to utilize every available man than to utilize slaves?
After the War of 1812 many problems over keeping the balance between slave and Free states, arose which contributed to the growth of sectionalism in America. Thomas Jefferson referred to the Missouri Compromise as the geographical line that would cause more irritation in America every time an issue came about (Doc F.) Although the Missouri compromise created a new slave state in Missouri and a free one in Maine, this did not totally resolve the conflicts about allowing slavery in certain parts of the nation. Jefferson feared that the nation’s perseverance would be affected due to this dividing line.“The agriculturists bear the whole brunt of the war and taxation, and remain poor, while the others run in the ring of pleasure, and fatten upon them.” (Doc. A). The Tariff of 1816 placed a high tariff on manufactured imports in order to place a protective veil around typically northern businesses.
There was a dispute between free-states and slave states over the new territory, California, though the issue was temporally fixed with the Compromise of 1850. Another dispute was over the rights of the states; this argument resulted in the idea of nullification, allowing states to have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The last spark was ignited when President Lincoln, who supported the abolitionist movement, was elected in 1860, thus, creating South Carolina to issue its Declaration of Independence, generating the Confederacy, and later led to the American Civil War. The single most important reason war was averted for so long was the many compromises made in the years before that attempted to keep the south and north content in the house and senate. With the United States expanding its territory to the west, balancing the free and slaves states, as well as the growing conflict over slavery generated more problems.
What Lead to the Civil War. From the beginning of the United States, war was inevitable between the North and the South, over the issues of slavery. Ever since Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gins in 1790, the South has been on a completely different economic path from the North. In the 1850’s political developments, the Fugitive slave act, the Dread Scott decision, and the John Brown raid, eventually all drove the regions further and further apart. Even though the North and South tried to reconcile their differences on the issue of slavery by implementing compromises in the 1820’s and 1850’s, both attempts failed, leading up to the Civil War.