why did the north and south fight?

Answer 1

Causes of the War
Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events
Secession was caused by the coexistence of a slave-owning South and an increasingly anti-slavery North. Lincoln did not propose federal laws making slavery unlawful where it already existed, but he had, in his 1858 House Divided Speech, envisioned it as being set on "the course of ultimate extinction". Much of the political battle in the 1850s focused on the expansion of slavery into the newly created territories. Both North and South assumed that if slavery could not expand it would wither and die.

Southern fears of losing control of the federal government to antislavery forces, and northern fears that the slave power already controlled the government, brought the crisis to a head in the late 1850s. Sectional disagreements over the morality of slavery, the scope of democracy and the economic merits of free labor vs. slave plantations caused the Whig and "Know-Nothing" parties to collapse, and new ones to arise (the Free Soil Party in 1848, the Republicans in 1854, the Constitutional Union in 1860). In 1860, the last remaining national political party, the Democratic Party, split along sectional lines.

Other factors include states' rights, modernization, sectionalism, the nullification crisis, and economic differences between the North and South.


Note on causes
When the Civil War began, neither civil rights nor voting rights for blacks were stated as goals by the North; they became important afterward during Reconstruction. At first, though there was pressure to do so, not even the abolition of slavery was stated as a goal. According to McPherson,[8] while controversy over the morality of slavery could be contained, it was the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories that made the conflict irrepressible. Slavery was at the root of economic, moral and political differences that led to control issues, states' rights and secession of seven states. The secession of four more states was a protest against Lincoln's call to invade (from the Southern point of view) the South.

From the North's point of view, Southern secession and formation of the Confederacy greatly increased the risk of war prior to the opening of hostilities, as it was regarded as an act of rebellion, treason, and more importantly, the seizure of national territory. Thus slavery caused secession which in turn made war likely, irrespective of the North's stated war aims, which at first addressed strategic military concerns as opposed to the ultimate political and Constitutional ones. Initially, the North did not attempt to use military force to put down the rebellion, and actual hostilities began as an attempt, from the Northern perspective, to defend the nation after it was attacked at Fort Sumter. Lincoln's war goals evolved as the war progressed. He did not emphasize national unity during the 1860 campaign, but brought it to the front in his March 1861 inaugural address, after seven states had already declared their secession. At first Lincoln stressed the Union as a war goal to unite the War Democrats, border states and Republicans. In 1862 he added emancipation because it permanently removed the divisive issue that caused secession. In his 1863 Gettysburg Address he tied preserving democracy to emancipation and the Union as a war goal.

Answer 2

The north which is the United States fought the south which the Confederacy because the United States wanted to preserve the south in other words the U.S. wanted to keep the south and north as 1 so that every where in the U.S. would have equal right that was 1 reason the and the south fought in civil war battle 2 reason is because the was against slavery so they also end slavery that's why the and south fought against each other under same soil

Answer 3

if you're talking about the civil war, well, everyone thinks it was because the south wanted to have slavery and the north didn't. Not exactly! This is true up to an extent. President Abraham Lincoln was the president at this time. he was what was known as a free soiler, and he was against slavery to an extent. because Lincoln was somewhat against slavery, the south didn't want him to become president. well, he was elected so South Carolina said they were going to secede (break away) from the Union. Lincoln did not want them to secede! That's pretty much how the war started. Lincoln kept the issue of slavery strictly out of the war because his #1 priority was to keep the nation together. Lincoln didn't bring slavery into the war until after the battle of Antietam, Maryland, when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Answer 4

The south wanted to leave the union and keep slavery, the north did not.

Answer 5

Slavery was at the bottom of it, but there was a lot more to it.

Objectively, the North went to war in 1861 in order to prevent Southern secession, not to end slavery. Lincoln could not possibly have made that more clear and even said so after the war ended. However, it is also clear that he regarded slavery as an anachronistic and dying institution.

As a practical matter, the issuance of the emancipation proclamation in 1863, so far as popular sentiment was concerned, had the effect of turning the war into a crusade to end slavery as well as to preserve the union. Prior to 1863, the North was faring poorly in the campaigns against Richmond, and was having a lot of trouble meeting it's troop requirements. The immediate effect of the emancipation proclamation was to give the war a moral as well as political significance in the minds of many Northerners. It did not free even one slave, but it did carry a great deal of moral authority.

The South seceeded in order to preserve the independence it required in order to maintain the institution of slavery. The articles of secession of the various confederate states make this abundantly clear. The South then went to war in order to enforce its perceived right to seceed and to protect its territorial integrity from perceived encroachments by the federals.

Much of the cause of the war centered around a theory of government common throughout the south which viewed the Constitution as a compact or contract between the individual states. If you read Article Four of the Constitution, you will see the crux of the matter. Article Four appears to make southern slavery a constitutionally protected institution. The legal theory which justified secession in the South was that the North was arguably violating the terms of Article Four, in part because many northern states were refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

Also, much of the problem was demographic. The North was growing more quickly than the South. The census of 1860 was a major contributing factor leading to the war. By then it was apparent that even with the 3/5 compromise in place, the South was not going to maintain parity in the House. This meant that in order to be able to force compromise, proportional representation in the Senate was critical. Even with such stopgaps as the Kansas Nebraska Act and the Missouri Compromise, it had become clear that the South was about to lose its proportional influence in the Senate. This would leave the South with only the Executive veto standing between them and a politically dominant North. This is what made the national election of 1860 such a flashpoint. The game was up when Lincoln won. In other words, in macro, the South seceeded because the alternative in many southern minds was eventual submission to a dominant North, whose interests were antithetical to those of the South. In the minds of many in the South, the constitution had both been breached by the Northern states and had failed on a political level to protect what Southerners regarded as their liberties and interests to such a degree that many no longer felt themselves bound to it. In the law of contract, this is referred to as a failure of consideration, and can result in the legal voiding of the contract. It would not be too far out in left field to suggest that many southerners felt that the constitution HAD been voided in this manner.

From a Nothern perspective, secession itself was widely believed to be unconstitutional, and that to allow it would be to end the United States itself. In other words, both sides tended to view the war as an existential conflict.

Anyway, it's a complicated question, as you can see, but slavery was at the core of it.

Now why did the North and South fight? Well, before that war, people often said, "The United States ARE....." After the war, that changed to, "The United States IS..." Slavery aside for a moment, I think that the general acceptance of the concept of the US as a single nation rather than a loose collection of largely autonomous states is the greatest legacy of that war.

Answer 6

it was over slavery the north fought against it and the south for it

Answer 7

they fought over slavery
the north wanted to get rid of slavery but the south wanted to keep it and well its pretty much what caused it

Answer 8

Slavery, Equal rights..