The common belief is that the Civil War
was caused by moral indignation over the issue of slavery.
While it is true that there was a concern over the oppression
of human beings, it is only partially true that this caused
the Civil War. A major cause of the war was economic in
nature. Following are some factors that played a part in
causing the Civil War.
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In 1798, the Federalist-controlled
Congress passed a series of laws called the Alien
and Sedition
Acts which, on the surface, were designed to
control the activities of foreigners in the United
States during a time when war was looming. Beneath
the
surface, however, the real intent of these
laws was to destroy Jeffersonian Republicanism that
promoted an agrarian or farming society. Ninety-two
percent of the nation’s industrial resources
were located in the North.
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Concern for states’ rights
and thoughts of secession were not exclusive
to the South. As early
as December 1814, a gathering of New England
Federalists met in Hartford, Conn., to call for
states’ rights.
They drafted the Hartford Convention. The Constitutional
amendments that were proposed reflected the delegates’ hostility
toward the South and West, as the previous War
of 1812 was very unpopular in commercial New
England.
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The Southern states had lost control
of the House of Representatives because the population
growth
of these states was slower than the growth of
the Northern states. The North had a population
of
22 million. The South had a population of 9 million,
of which 3.5 million were slaves. New territories
in the North also gave an advantage to free states
in the Senate.
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Missouri asked to enter the Union
as a slave state in 1819. A bitter debate arose that
was
not resolved
until the following year when Maine requested
entry as a free state. Senator Jesse B. Thomas
offered
an amendment that produced the Missouri Compromise.
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The
Missouri Compromise is the result of a battle in Congress
to have an equal number
of slave
and free states. It brought about a power
struggle to get control of Congress.
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Missouri was admitted
as a slave state (1821) after Maine was admitted as
a free state
in 1820.
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From the beginning of the Union,
individual states had conflicts with the federal government.
Generally
these were economic or philosophical
in nature, where either the North or the South
thought
that the federal government was giving
preference to the other side. The
Tariff of 1828 was
an example
of this.
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The Northern states wanted Andrew
Jackson to win the presidency in 1828 over the
current president, John Quincy Adams.
Democrats, including
Southern
Democrats, devised a scheme to discredit
the Adams
administration by drastically raising
the tariff rates. The plan backfired
and Congress
passed
the bill. The Tariff of 1828 was
also called the “Tariff
of Abomination” and was widely
protested in the South.
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The Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions attacked
the Federalists’ interpretation of
the Constitution, which extended
the powers of the
federal government
over the states. The resolutions
declared that the U.S. Constitution only established
an agreement
between the central government and
the states, and that the federal
government
had no right
to exercise powers not specifically
delegated to it.
Should the federal government assume
such powers, its acts under them
would be void. It was the
right of the states to decide as
to the constitutionality of such acts.
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The
South saw tariffs imposed by the
national government on foreign imports
not for general
revenue purposes
but to help domestic manufacturing
industries located mainly in the
North. At the same
time, there were
depressed cotton prices and a reduced
demand for raw goods from the South.
