What led to American Civil War?

Answer 1

Millions of Americans believe the Civil War was fought to abolish the institution of slavery. Because of that mischaracterization we honor President Abraham Lincoln as one of our greatest leaders, a man who had the "vision”“, clarity of purpose" and "morality" to "oppose such an oppressive institution”.
Indeed slavery was "oppressive”, morally wrong and fiendishly conceived. Anyone -- black, white, Christian, Muslim, whatever -- that has ever been "enslaved" would agree, I'm sure. So would most Americans. But to this day there is a disconnect between the reality of American slavery and the war which was ostensibly fought to eliminate it.
Many of you are not going to want to hear this -- and the words following this paragraph likely won't change your mind -- but I'm going to say it anyway: Lincoln, and not the secession of southern states or the institution of slavery -- was responsible for killing over 600,000 Americans from 1861-1865. And here's another bombshell for diehard Yankees who have been lied to like the rest of us for the past 134 years: There were also a great number of willing, voluntary black Confederates who fought and died for their "country”, the Confederate States of America.
A newly published interview in the Southern Partisan speaks volumes on these issues and, in the words of a black Confederate descendent, dispels most of the myths, rumors and outright lies about blacks, whites, and their roles during and after the conflict.
Such truth should be required reading for every liberal race-baiting opportunist, every congressional delegate, and every current and future presidential candidate in this country. Because I'll tell you something: If we don't get a handle on the truth surrounding the Civil War, our country's history before, during, and after the war, the constitutional issues stemming from it, and especially the manufactured racial tensions of the latter 20th century, there's going to be hell to pay in the next millennium.
The interviewee, Nelson Winbush, provided the magazine with irrefutable insight into the life of his grandfather, Louis Napoleon Nelson, who -- at the age of 14 -- volunteered to accompany his master and son, E.R. and Sydney Oldham, into battle in the service of the CSA. The trio were members of the Tennessee 7th Cavalry, Company M, and Nelson himself actually saw combat in the battles of Lookout Mountain, Bryson's Crossroads, and Vicksburg. Winbush said his grandfather told him many other blacks did the same thing.
"... My grandfather has been quoted in newspapers, The Commercial Appeal out of Memphis and the Lauderdale County Enterprise, the county paper there at home," Winbush said, "as saying that if he had wanted, he could have left any time during the War, but he didn't. So I read him to be typical" of most blacks who served the Confederacy.
Winbush also denounced today's pop culture rendition of racism and deep-rooted, "historical" racial tensions between blacks and whites, which, the mainstream tells us, dates back to the Civil War. Not so, he said, according to his grandfather. Winbush said that while growing up and living in the Deep South, "I've had no problem. I've done any and everything I wanted to do at any age. Of course, I wasn't trying to do things out of reason. So, I don't ... the South is not a problem. The problem is with people who are looking for problems or who make problems, I guess. Regardless of color."
He added: "Now if racism had existed (in the 1860s) like the Yankees would like to lead people to believe when the master and his older sons went off to war -- and we're talking about the boys 12 years old and older -- who is left to take care of the missus and the children? Did anything happen to them? No. They were respected, guarded and taken care of. If racism had existed like the Yankees want you to believe it existed, explain to me how in the world all of those white babies lived sucking a black mammy's (breast)."
Of those who see racism everywhere, Winbush added, "The people who are saying that, most of them, where do they live? Where do they come from? And what do they represent? The majority of them?"
"I guess they're newspaper reporters," said the interviewer.
"That's right. And you see, this country is controlled by that old dirty Yankee money that controls the media. That's the electronic media and the printed media. See, all your major networks, major newspapers, are controlled by whom? Yankees!" said Winbush. "They're selling papers and air time. They don't give a damn what happened or what will happen. The more controversy that can be stirred up, the more papers they sell."
And what about the causes of the war and the cause of the Confederacy?
"Well, secession was perfectly legal the way the Constitution was written," Winbush said. "Lincoln decided he wanted to declare war on the South. So, when the South was invaded the Southerners saw fit to defend their homes."
His account is corroborated in an 1899 world history text, "Lee's World History”. At the turn of the 19th century, U.S. historians were still reporting that shortly after southern states seceded, the new southern Congress sent a delegation to Washington, D.C., in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the north. Lincoln gave his assurances that during these negotiations, Fort Sumter -- which was besieged by Confederate troops -- would not be reinforced. He broke that promise, and when Confederate officials discovered that an armada of northern ships, stocked with supplies and men, was enroute to Sumter, they attacked on April 12, 1861.
So much for Lincoln, the man of "principle”.
"The Yankee historians want to make people believe that the war was about slavery," Winbush continued. "The war wasn't about slavery. The war was about states' rights and tariffs: they call 'em taxes now. The system was skewed toward the North. See, I grew up less than eighteen miles from the Mississippi River. We used to go down and watch the barges go up and down the river and I never saw a barge break away going upstream. Every barge I ever saw break away was going downstream. But it cost more money to send cotton and other goods and produce up the river than the refined goods and textiles back down the same river. And the money always stayed up North."
Would Winbush have fought for the Confederacy?
"I probably would have been right along there with my granddaddy," he said. "You see, what people don't realize, when the Yankees came south, they were hoodlums. The first thing they did was rape the black women, then they raped the black missy girls, you know those that are approaching young womanhood. Then the jokers went and got drunk before they could rape the white women. Well, now if that was enough to make the white Southerners mad enough to go fight them, then why in the hell couldn't the black Southerners be just as angry? He's had a double dose before the white Southerner had a first dose.
"Then they proceeded to burn the houses to the ground. Now if the house I was living in was burned to the ground, would it make a whole lot of difference whether it was my house or my master's house?" he said.
Can Winbush be believed? That's up to you, but he personally has reams of letters, pictures and old newspaper clippings to substantiate his grandfather's accounts. You won't find any of them in today's pop culture school history books, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
You will, however, find plenty of references to the lie that the War Between the States was fought solely on the premise of southern slavery, buttressed by healthy references to Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Never mind that Lincoln himself never believed the war was primarily about slavery, or that his proclamation was made in typical political fashion: To reinvigorate a northern population that was already tiring of the war, its costs and hardships. The ploy worked, though, and tens of thousands of northern blacks volunteered for military service; Lincoln got the infusion of manpower he needed by using a favorite liberal tactic of this century -- exploiting a minority population for political expediency.
The thing to remember here is that unlike most of today's race-baiters and politicians, Winbush has no political agenda. He mostly travels now, is retired and doing very well financially. When he does speak, he addresses Confederate historical groups and, he says, he gets favorable ratings from -- among others -- fellow blacks.
If indeed there is a "racial crisis" in this country today, it is a manufactured "crisis" for the most part, and its purpose is to prevent unity, not restore it. There can be no other explanation for omitting the truth about the most tumultuous time in our history, nor there is any denying that the “divide and conquer” tactic a well-worn and time-honored practice. It is used mostly by liberal demagogues but is increasingly being adopted by politicos of all stripes. Unfortunately, however, all of us suffer the consequences of such selfish motivation.
As for Lincoln's culpability in starting the Civil War, ultimately you'll have to judge that for yourself. Personally I think the evidence against him is overwhelming and concrete, and not entirely based on Winbush's accounts. History in its most raw form is devoid of bias and agendas -- only those who record it (or rewrite it) are burdened with such humanistic fallacies.
For my money, however, starting a war that ultimately killed over a half million of my countrymen is a burden I would not want to carry. The attempt of latter-day historians to sanitize Lincoln's actions by couching them under the premise of "ending slavery" is cruel, exploitative and a lie. All Americans have suffered for it -- though blacks, again, have suffered most because while they did endure slavery, they have since had to endure endless attempts by political opportunists to use their troubled past for the most selfish reasons.
In my indictment of Lincoln I wish to make one final point: The right of secession was reserved by the original 13 states when ratifying our Constitution and as of 1861 had never been questioned, repealed or otherwise nullified. Lincoln's war settled the issue once and for all; for good measure, the Constitution was amended to solidify the victory. Before the War, neither he nor any U.S. president had the right to attack a state for "opting out" of their original agreement any more than the U.S. government had a right to cheat them out of what was rightfully theirs to begin with.
The irony today is that the true causes of the Civil War had more to do with trade, commerce, and tariffs between the states -- something to think about as we rush headlong into "agreements" with such entities like the WTO.
I applaud men like Nathan Winbush for having the courage to stand up and refute the myth that the Civil War was fought largely on behalf of members of his ethnic community. As a black, that must take more courage than most of us can even imagine. But unless or until more Americans do that, we'll continue to hyphenate ourselves from each other, which will only cause more division. It's a shame that, in the year 2000, Americans are still "fighting" this war -- for all the wrong reasons.
As you can see we used this previously but it is still relevant today, God Bless You and Our Southern People.

Answer 2

Rather than just point you to other sites (which takes no effort or education at all) I will actually write an answer that will help you. Here are eighteen important events that led to the outbreak of the Civil War:

1. The arrival of indentured servants in Jamestown (1619)
2. The writing of the Constitution without banning slavery when they had the chance (1787)
3. The invention of the cotton engine (gin) (1793)
4. The Missouri Compromise (1820)
5. The growing tensions between North and South over tariffs (beginning in 1816 with the post-War of 1812 climbing tariff rates.)
6. The Mexican War which opened up new lands for slave or free status
7. The Wilmot Proviso
8. The Compromise of 1850
9. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)
10. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
11. John Brown and Bleeding Kansas (1855-56)
12. The beating of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks (1856)
13. The Dred Scott decision (1857)
14. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
15. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and his subsequent hanging
16. The election of Abraham Lincoln
17. The secession of South Carolina and six other states from the Union (December 1860-March 1861)
18. Lincoln's decision to restock and resupply Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens (April 1861)

Answer 3

The South was too large and had a booming economy due to
free slave laborers. They wanted to be a separate nation which
would have put a detrimental effect on the northern states.
There was fear not only for minorities in the north that slavery
would progress to these areas, but also northern whites felt
that their economy and way of life would be abolished by
southern aristorcracy. Abraham Lincoln with genius forsight
was able to see that the separation would lead the United
States as we know now, vulnerable to intrusion from other
countries as well. Therefore a unified government or what
he described as preserving the union was led by the downfall
of the south. A lot could be attributed to the great
General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Answer 4

Slavery was, of course an issue. An economic one for the South; a moral one for the North. But the real reason for the Civil War was economics. Who was going to control the rich lands of the West? Would it be the agrarian South or the Industrial North. I think any war boils down to economics. The Civil War was no different. Another big issue was states rights versus federal government control. The feds won that one and the federal government continues to dominate the states even today.

Chow!!

Answer 5

North and the South developed into two very different regions. Widely different social, economic and political points of view separated these two sections of the country.
The main debate between the North and the South before the war was whether slavery should be allowed in the Western territories, including New Mexico, part of California and Utah. Opponents of slavery were concerned about its expansion, in part because they did not want to compete against slave labor. Proponents of slavery saw its exclusion as an infringement on state's rights.
Although compromise on both sides had held the Union together for many years, by 1860 the situation was very tense. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president was a catalyst, viewed by the South as a threat to slavery.

Answer 6

Slave owners maybe killing some of their slaves? Also lots of villages were burned down in the south. A lot of things happened during the Civil War.

Answer 7

M.r Lincoln felt that slavery was not an acceptable situation. He felt that black folk were human beings and was tired of seeing them mistreated. So, he made a move to release them. The south counted on slave labor to keep there economic base in tact. They did not want to loose their property, and felt that the north had no right to tell them what to do. So, instead of acquiescing, they fought. The north won and the rest is history.

Answer 8

Simply put ,, Slavery and its legal ramifications. As the other speaker said its too vast and area to try and answer here. For many years I did my own research on slavery and I found it not only horrifying but deplorable. Its hard to look back and see the ignorance and inhumanity of our ancestors during this period.

** To Alexis above... the author was Harriet Beecher Stowe. Great acount of slavery!

Answer 9

The book Uncle Tom's Cabin was one contributing factor. I think Abe Lincoln once said to it's author (drawing a blank on her name) something like "so you're the little lady who started this big war"

Answer 10

The issue of states rights and whether we could hold together as a republic.

Answer 11

Too many things to talk about in such a short time. Check out this link...
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761567354/Civil_War.html#p53