very hard US history question relating to south and north civil war.?

Question

What rights had the north violated from the south , other then slavery (to begin the civil war, meaning what did they violate right before the civil war..

The reason this question exists is because when civil war was enacted (began) only 10% of the south owned slaves.

Answer 1

They didn't fight the civil war because of slaves (although that was behind it). they fought the civil war because some southern states seceded from the union... the norfth says you can't do that ... and because they fired cannons at the u.s. fort sumter, s.c. when somebody shoots at your fort, you go to war against them

Answer 2

It was mostly a question of states rights being superceded by the U.S. Government. The south felt that the country was founded upon states having a certain sovereignty as far as ecomomics, taxes, laws, etc. Owning slaves did not violate any federal or state laws until the north (which, by the way, had more slave OWNERS than the south ever did) decided to abolish slavery and demanded states follow suit without any recourse to consideration of economic impact to the non-industrial south. The last straw was the election of Lincoln as president -- the south saw this as a slap in the face so to speak and felt they could never be represented fairly, even though Lincoln publicly stated he would support slavery if it meant keeping the union intact. The south, feeling their backs were against the wall and were no longer treated as a member of the United States, decided succession was the only alternative.
Too bad cooler heads did not prevail. The leaders in the southern states knew full well slavery had to end but when faced with the ruin of the southern economy drastic action was taken. On the other hand, if the leadership in the northern states had devised a plan that would have allowed a tactical transfer of slave labor based economy to worker based all of this mess could have been averted as steam power farm equipment was just around the corner anyway.

Answer 3

the war was not about slavery - that only got tossed in the mix later.

It was basically an agrarian economy in the south fighting an industrial economy in the North.

Slavery was not illegal at the time, however Jefferson (a slave owner) argued to stop it long before the Civil War.

The first slaves were in the North, and at one time NY State had more slaves than any slave holding state in the South.

There are so many "interpretations" of the civil war that studying them and coming to a sound conclusion about the war is near impossible.

Some slave owners took their slaves with them into war and the slaves fought with the south. I had an uncle who did just that.

Most of the people who look at the Confederate battle flag and see 13 stars have no reason why there are 13 and not 11 - the number of slave states.

If your teacher is trying to convince you that the CW was fought for slavery, then she (or he) ain't got a clue.

States rights was a major issue and that is probably a left over from the Articles of Confederation prior to the Constitution where the national government was super weak and had no authority over the states to speak of.

Answer 4

I think most of the people who have already answered did a fair job, but one part of your question needs to be corrected--slavery was practiced by far more than just 10% of the southern population; more like 25-30%, which might still seem small, but that portion of the population pretty much controlled the economy of the region. Furthermore, the slave population in the southern states constituted around three-eights of the total, or 6 million out of around 16 million people.

The stated reasons southern leaders gave for rebelling were the protection of their rights as southerners--the only right they had that was distinct from the northern states was the right to own other human beings as chattel slaves. And despite the contrary claims of pro-South advocates even up to today, slavery was the only dominant issue at stake in the war; everything else revolved around that.

Answer 5

Prior to the Civil War, the US south had a disproportionate amount of power and hegemony over the US Republic as most of the US Presidents and Supreme Court Justices in particular were southern slaveholding states.

All arguments for the cause of the Civil War melt away under close examination outside the issue of slavery.

It is true few Southerners owned slaves, but the plantation owning elites did have a great amount of power over the entire south and were able to manipulate the middling masses into war.

Many areas of the south were decidedly pro-union and these were non slave/non-plantation area such as East Tennessee, East Kentucky and what was to become West Virginia.

The 3/5 Compromise allowed the south to have additional "states rights" that their northern counterparts could not have. Bonus population figures for purposes of legislative allotments, electoral college and future determination of state slave determinations.

The States Right argument perpetuated by revisionists fails to note that southerners rights and actions were beginning to intrude on the rights of northern citizens.

There was no equal representation in congress, the White House or the Supreme Court.

The southern pro-slavery crusade had persuaded the Supreme Courth in Dred Scott decision that slavery could de facto exist in any state.

In Kansas-Missouri, pro-slavery factions could force slavery compromises by force of arms.

Abraham Lincolns 1860 election was really the first real threat to southern hegemony over the republic and the uncompromising pro-slave state governments and leadership decided to secede rather than relent.

Answer 6

The South felt that the North hurt their cotton trading by enacting high tariffs (see the nullification crisis between Andrew Jackson and South Carolina.) They also felt that the Federal government was becoming too strong and that states were no longer able to make as many decisions as they once could.
But make no mistake about it, the war was over slavery. While it was true that only about 10% owned slaves, the people making the decision on secession, the state Legislatures, was comprised of those wealthy slave owners who were inclined to secede. In state's that did hold referendums, counties that voted to secede had a large population of slave owners, whereas counties with smaller populations of slave owners generally voted to stay in the Union.

Answer 7

The Civil War was fought over STATES RIGHTS... and the way the Federal Government wanted to dictate what to think or how to act to the several states in the union.

Slavery was just a side issue and not a very important one, although you would never know that now after the way the history re-writers have clouded the truth.

Answer 8

Do you, perhaps, mean "States Rights", the right of individual states to make laws independent of federal oversight?
"Nothing but bitterness and bad feeling could come of it. From such a position it was a short step to the proposition that if a state or section of the country no longer felt itself represented in, or fairly treated by, the Federal Government, then it had the right to dissolve its association with that government. It could secede from the Union. The use of force to stop a state from seceding was, the argument went, unconstitutional, since the Union itself was a creature of the states. It had been wholly created by them. Moreover no provision had been made for such an eventuality in the Constitution.

The Unionist response was that the Preamble of the Constitution stated that the Union derived its power from the people as a whole, and that they alone could dissolve it. President Andrew Jackson, himself a Southerner, had threatened in 1832 to send troops to force South Carolina to allow the collection of the Federal tariff if that state persisted in its assertion that it could “nullify” any Federal law it did not agree with. Jackson’s message to the people of the offending state read, “Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent the execution of the laws deceived you. The object is disunion. Disunion by armed force is treason.” On that occasion South Carolina had backed down.

We see this same State’s Rights argument brought forward again in the 1860’s to justify secession as a solution to what amounts to a sectional inferiority complex. The section I refer to, of course, the deep South as whole. Please note that it feels itself to be a “section”, not because of simple geography, but because its society is based upon slavery. So the problem, once again, came down to that “peculiar institution.”


Secession was based on the idea of state rights (or "states rights," a variant that came into use after the Civil War). This exalted the powers of the individual states as opposed to those of the Federal government. It generally rested on the theory of state sovereignty-- that in the United States the ultimate source of political authority lay in the separate states. Associated with the principle of state rights was a sense of state loyalty that could prevail over a feeling of national patriotism. Before the war, the principle found expression in different ways at different times, in the North as well as in the South. During the war it reappeared in the Confederacy.

Answer 9

Although slavery was an issue, it was not the cause of the war. The cause was states' rights, of which slavery was one. However, the biggest states' rights issue dealt with tariffs. Southerners depended on trade with European nations, since they were their main buyers. However, the North passed tariffs, which made European goods much more expensive than Northern goods. The tariff benefited the North and hurt the South, so of course, Southerners were angry.

Answer 10

The Democratically controlled congress (northerners) put high tariffs on cotton, the main cash crop of the South and this impacted just about everyone in the South, where as very few people in the north were affected. The South decided that they no longer felt that the north could represent their needs.