in the american civil war, what were they fighting over?

Answer 1

The American Civil War ( alternatively The War Between the States as I was taught, or The Late Great Unpleasantness as it was referred to in Charleston during reconstruction, or even later The War of Northern Aggression. ) was fought over the right of states to leave(secede from) the United States and form another country.

There were many differences between the agrarian south and the manufacturing north but the final deciding reason for secession was the issue of slavery. Even a superficial reading of the documents leading to secession demonstrates the effect of slavery on the secession decisions.
For example, from my home state of South Carolina:
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. Charleston SC, December 20, 1860

...But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation...

...The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burdening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor...

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Answer 2

Others have said that slavery was not an issue in the run up to the Civil War, that secession was the major issue. However, the two issues cannot be so easily divided.

The Conferate States attempted to secede from the United States because of a rising anti-slavery sentiment in the northern states. Laws had already been passed prohibiting slavery in any new territories acquired by the United States, so the southern states began to recognize that there was a sufficiently anti-slavery sentiment at the national level to threaten their own continued use of slavery. In order to prevent the northern states from imposing their anti-slavery laws on the southern states, the southern states seceded from the United States, thus allowing them to create their own pro-slavery laws.

Thus, the immediate cause of the Civil War was the secession (the United States did not recognize the rights of the Confederate States to secede, and thus branded the move a rebellion to be put down), but the ultimate cause of the Civil War was the question of slavery.

Answer 3

In brief: the Southern states wanted to secede from the Union as they believed their way of life was being undermined by their ties to the North and by the Federal govenment, especially their freedom to use slave labour. However, as there is no clause in the American Constitution which allows for secession the Federal gov stated that they could not do so under any circumstances. So the South went to war to fight for their independence.

Please note I do not in any way support the South's stance on slavery, I'm just trying to be objective about their reasons.

Answer 4

Short and simple answer (but by no means complete!) - State's rights.

And if you want to get this question answered from our friends in Dixie, please call it the War Against Northern Aggression, or the War Between the States, or the Late Unpleasantness.

Answer 5

Same old reason, greed...

The origins of the American Civil War lay in the complex issues of slavery, competing understandings of federalism, party politics, expansionism, sectionalism, economics, and modernization in the Antebellum Period. After the Mexican-American War, the issue of slavery in the new territories led to the Compromise of 1850. While the compromise averted an immediate political crisis, it did not permanently resolve the issue of the Slave power (the power of slaveholders to control the national government). Many Northerners, especially leaders of the new Republican Party, considered slavery a great national evil and believed that a small number of Southern owners of large plantations controlled the national government with the goal of spreading that evil. Southerners worried instead about the relative political decline of their region because the North was growing much faster in terms of population and industrial output.

The U.S. Constitution created a federal government with sufficient powers to both represent and unite the states, but did not supplant state governments. This federal arrangement, by which the central federal government exercises delegated power over some issues and the state governments exercise power over other issues, is one of the basic characteristics of the U.S. Constitution that checks governmental power. However, before the Civil war, it was flawed somewhat.

One major and continuous strain on the union, from roughly 1820 through the Civil War, was the issue of trade and tariffs. Heavily dependent upon trade, the almost entirely agricultural and export-oriented South imported most of its manufactured needs from Europe or obtained them from the North. The North, by contrast, had a growing domestic industrial economy that viewed foreign trade as competition. Trade barriers, especially protective tariffs, were viewed as harmful to the Southern economy, which depended on exports.

In 1828, the Congress passed protective tariffs to benefit trade in the northern states, but were detrimental to the South. Southerners vocally expressed their tariff opposition in documents such as the South Carolina Exposition and Protest in 1828, written in response to the "Tariff of Abominations". Exposition and Protest was the work of South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun, formerly an advocate of protective tariffs and internal improvements at federal expense.

South Carolina's Nullification Ordinance declared the tariff of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina. It began the Nullification Crisis. Passed by a state convention on November 24, 1832, it led, on December 10, to President Andrew Jackson's proclamation against South Carolina, which sent a naval flotilla and a threat of sending government ground troops to enforce the tariffs.

It was this trade war, that fueled the division, and the final catylist was when another dispute over states' rights moved to the forefront. The issue of slavery polarized the union, with the principles espoused by Thomas Jefferson often being cited by both anti-slavery Northerners and secessionists on the debates that ultimately led to the American Civil War. Supporters of slavery often argued that one of the rights of the states was the protection of slave property wherever it went, a position endorsed by the Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. In contrast, opponents of slavery argued that the non-slave-states' rights were violated both by that decision and by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Answer 6

Some say states rights and some say slavery. Mr. Lincoln thought it was about keeping the Union together.There has never been a difinitive answer.

Answer 7

States rights, tax jurisdiction. The federal government decided that the Mississippi was a taxable waterway. This is why the story of the Merrimac and the Monitor was important.

Answer 8

States Right's. The same thing that is going to lead to the next one! Oh by the way it will be the Red's against the Blue's and I will be right there on the front lines. Us Red's will win because we own all the guns and our kids are the ones filling the majority of the ranks in the military. By the way I am THE ALL AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALLY PATRIOTIC REBEL!!!!

Answer 9

Money was it. by 1860 the money genarated by
by the sale of cotton made up 51% of the
government revene

Answer 10

State's Rights.
It's an issue we face today.
Do we want a huge fascist government bureaucracy
in DC to rule everybody or do we want to decide things
at the local and state level?
Lincoln declared war on his own country simply because
of a protest. That would be like George Bush sending
troops into Ohio to kill people because they demonstrated
against the North American Union taking their jobs away
to Mexico, (an event not too hard to imagine knowing this
president).
The slavery issue was brought in later because Lincoln was losing the war, and it was very unpopular in the North.
Sound familiar? So he needed something to get people
stirred up, like the destruction of the WTC towers.
We need to elect Ron Paul president in 2008.
That would start us on the way to getting back all the
freedoms we have lost in the U.S. in the last 100 years.