Sectional Conflicts and the American Civil War: Slavery, Economy, and Politics

Abstract

Sectional conflicts and the Civil War Slavery serves as the major reason behind the sectional conflicts experienced by the Northerners and the Southerners. According to Brinkley (1993), starting in the early 1850s, Northerners expressed their hostility to the idea of slavery on moral grounds while the Southerners continued to accept slavery as a potential fact of their lives. The North advocated for the need to stop the spread of slavery to the western states as the act proved evil and inhuman. Contrary to the Northern urge to terminate slavery within the United States, the Southerners' desires for unpaid workers to enhance cotton picking at their disposal strengthened this state's desires and need for more slaves, thus supported slavery in totality. Such differences defined sectional lines on slavery between the North and the South. The North and the South can be defined as two Americas that existed within the same soil based on their economic differences, among other distinctions. Based on Brinkley (1993), the Northern economy primarily relied on manufacturing. Every industry boom boomed in the North and made its populace enjoy vast labor availabilities with prompt pays for work done even for the slaves. On the other hand, the Southern economy depended on cotton production, whose demand for immense labor was not questioned. In the South, the origin of slavery as a strong backbone of the American economy becomes defined. Unlike in the North, where the industrial work respected the availability of slavery labor thus offered some little incentives for them, the Southern desired to misuse the slaves by exposing them to the demanding cotton picking for no pay to gain the economic advantage therein. Cotton furnished the Americans foreign exports and provided raw materials for Northern textile-mill owners and merchants under the expense of the labor availability from slaves. Such achievements lead Southerners to resist the Northerners idea of abandoning slavery within American states. The abolitionist feeling grew stronger in the North, leading to the development of the free-soil movement, which vividly opposed the extension of slavery to areas that were not yet formed as states or were newly formed as states. Southerners highly opposed such movements where slavery was...