Civil War

Avery Benning

Prof. Young

The New Jim Crow

9 February 2017

What Actually Cause the Civil War

In prior years I always learned that the civil war happened because Abraham Lincoln the 16^th president wanted to end slavery throughout the United States, but the south did not. In on of his account he says, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes…” (Singer. 2) Lincoln did not want to end slavery he didn’t even see African Americans as every being equal to white men. We also learn the south was keen on keeping up the production of cotton so they needed as many slaves as they could in order to succeed. The north did not produce cotton and they thought that slavery was unbeneficial and just not right so they wanted to do away with it. Although some of this might be true I have learned in class, from the readings and in the videos that this is not the whole truth and that there are other factors, which lead to the civil war.

To understand the civil war we have to understand the differences between the north and the south. The north was called the industrial north because of all the machines that were being produced. The north was really big on trading their goods with others such as Britain; so in order to make their trade easier new steamboats were invented. What would normally take a few months to trade would now only take a few weeks. The north believed that slavery would die out eventually and that it was wrong and unbeneficial to own slaves and make them do work. The north was more focused on producing weapons and new inventions to make their lives easier and trade more efficiently. The north was known as the American system of manufacturing, which caused them to have a strong economic system.

While the north was using their machines for economic stability the south was using slaves. The south was known for its agriculture and their production of tobacco, cotton, and rice. Since nobody wanted to do the hard labor the slave owners put the slaves to work. Slave owners dominated the nation politically, economically and socially. They thought nothing of it and wanted to produce as much as they could. In 1791, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which made it easier for cotton to be picked apart from its seed. With this new invention the demand for slavery increased tremendously, but because the transportation of slaves was already illegal the plantation had to keep all the slaves and make then reproduce so they could have a lot.

There are numerous reason as to why the civil war started it is apparent that as children we were not taught the full truth about what actually happened. We are only taught the basic top layer which does not hold up. As the video mentioned, there is an acronym SCAR, which stands for slavery, constitution, absolutist, and republican all of these are reasons as to why the civil war started and killed over 600,000 people.