The Southerners Responsibility for the American Civil War...

The Southerners Responsibility for the American Civil War The reasons a nation goes to war are usually various and often complicated, and it is no different with the American Civil War. There are many reasons supporting the view that the Southerners are responsible for the outbreak of the Civil War, it has been argued strongly that it was the Southerners hold of the controversial issue of slavery that led to the increasingly differing sections of the United States. However, the counterargument is that the Southerners felt under growing pressure to secede from the Union by aggressive Northern abolitionists and that it was the Northern reaction to the secession that ultimately led to the Civil†¦show more content†¦It was considered that the South lagged behind the North only because the Southerners failed to take advantage of available opportunities. The Northerners called for economic diversification, saying that slaves could be profitably employed in industry and other urban jobs. However the planters of the South ignored such advi ce and continued to invest their profits into land and slavery to grow more of the staple crops. Many Southerners got rich by using slave labour to produce agricultural staples, so would be very reluctant to have to give it up in order to placate the North. However, Northerners were clearly demonstrating that trade, commerce, banking, shipping and manufacturing could be equally or more rewarding. Southern slave owners largely ignored these investment opportunities, leading to increasing sectional tensions, because earning maximum profits was not their primary motivation. However, these Southern slaveholders constantly misjudged other Americans. Apologists for slavery, such as Calhoun and Hammond, were wrong in their assumptions that Northern society was dominated by the Industrial Revolution pre-Civil War, for although industrialism was rising rapidly, there were far too few factories in the North at that time to establish the distribution of political power. The North, like the Sou thShow MoreRelatedFjkhgk1491 Words   |  6 Pages_____________ 1.|Congressmen who favored vigorous Reconstruction measures held that| A)|although particular southerners had erred, the Union itself had endured through the Civil War.| B)|the Reconstruction process outlined in the Constitution should be closely followed.| C)|the president had sole responsibility for Reconstruction.| D)|the Confederate states, by seceding and making war against the United States, lost their status as states and should now be treated as conquered territories.| Read MoreReconstruction During The Civil War966 Words   |  4 Pages Reconstruction is a time period after the Civil War ended in 1877. We view it as something that resembles a transformation, shifts in the southern U.S. after the Civil War. This was when slavery inequality, some political, economic, and social issues were, in some ways, balanced. 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