What factors caused the South to secede?

Question

Besides slavery, what other reasons cause the South to secede from the country and create their own confederacy?

Answer 1

I guess the received view on the matter would stress five points. 1.- Congress had to make a decision concerning Kansas: putting it or not in the free territories would influence the balance between North and South; 2.- Senator Douglas. proposal (Kansa-Nebraska Act), the so-called popular sovereignty concept...it would give Kansas political power in the Congress; 3.- The rise of the republican party as opposed to the woes of the Whigs and the Democrats; 4.- The Dred-Scott decision with Chief Justice Taney lighting the fuse; 5.- The John Brown's raid.
Whichever way you look at it, the slavery issue is behind it all. And you could add, Uncle Tom's cabin, the election of Abe Lincoln or whatever else.
Of course, Southerners might also stress economic disparities, cotton economy vs industries and the North's growing intolerance. But the slavery issue is never far behind everything. Claude.

Answer 2

Slavery wasn't a primary reason at the time. There were more then several reasons.
A) The North had the mechanization, the factories, they wanted control of the raw goods, the prices etc.
B) The south held the farming lands, the great fields of cotton, they were also trading with foreign countries.

C) In Virginia the people were told factions from Washington were going to confiscate their properties and spread it out among the Northern peoples to equalize it. This is where the Civil war really started, at Fort Sumter.

Answer 3

There was growing sectionalism.
There was the big debate over states rights verses the national governments rights. That was probably the biggest factor!
The cultures were also very different. The economy in the North was doing better, they had more opportunities, and more technology than the South.

Answer 4

It was slavery, pure and simple. A president had just been elected on an anti-slavery platform, and that is when the Southern states began to secede.

The "States' Rights" being protected was the right to own slaves.

Answer 5

The primary reason the south seceded was not slavery but states rights issues.

Good website: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_South_secede_from_the_Union