Civil War Causes

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of the worn-out farmlands they were on.

In the nineteenth century, the United States consisted of distinctive competing groups. Anglo Americans would fight to establish their rights and claims as citizens using ridicule and exclusion to call attention to racial and ethnic differences. Minority groups would build strong support networks and political coalitions. Since groups found safety in numbers, they would gravitate to certain industries like the Mexicans as vaqueros. Principles of individual rights were differing between the North and South. Some believed that rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence applied to men as well as women. The Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Convention is one example where women got together to demand the same rights as men.

The Political Party System was in disarray. Free-Soilers would challenge the notion that the Whigs and Democrats would continue to smooth over the question of slavery. Southerners were concerned ...

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They supported the non-extension of slavery into the territories while accepting the constitutional right of existing southern states to retain slavery. Lincoln would emerge as a leader within the Republican Party.

Conflict would deepen over slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), sold over a million copies. The book would illustrate the sufferings of an enslaved couple, Eliza and George. To Northerners, slavery had become an Evil way. Violence began to erupt especially in the western territory of Kansas. In 1856, Ohio Abolitionist John Brown, with his four sons and two other men, massacred five proslavery men at Pottawatomie Creek. Brown would lead a failed ...

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