Was The Civil War Worth It Essays - Slavery In The United States

Was The Civil War Worth It? Was the civil war worth it? I believe that the civil war was worth it. Even though a lot of negative consequences came out of it, the positive changes outweighed the negative. To get a full understanding of why it was positive, one will have to understand what were the causes of war, changes resulting from war, and the consequences. The largest cause was the differences in thoughts about slavery. The North and South had contained their differences over slavery for sixty years after the Constitutional Convention. Compromise in 1787 had resolved the questions of slave trade and how to count slaves for congressional representation. Although slavery threatened the uneasy sectional harmony in 1820, the Missouri compromise had established a workable balance of free and slave states and defined a geographic line (36*30') to determine future decisions.(361) Each apparent resolution, however, raised the level of emotional conflict between North and South and postponed ultimate settlement of the slavery question. (362) The Compromise of 1850 which admitted California as a free state, ending the balance of free to slave states. Territorial governments were organized in New Mexico and Utah, allowing the people to decide the question of slavery. Slave trade was also abolished in the District of Columbia. The Compromise of 1850 was the last attempt to keep slavery out of politics, but the compromise only delayed more serious sectional conflict. (364) In 1854, Kansas held a vote as whether to allow slavery in the territory, twice as many ballots were cast as the number of registered voters, a few months later another vote was held to settle the debate. What resulted was two separate legislatures were formed. One, banning slavery, the other allowing it. Civil war looked imminent in the near future of Kansas, and eventually violence broke out. In May of 1856 a mob smashed offices and presses of a Free-Soil newspaper and destroyed homes and shops. Three nights later John Brown and few of his men hacked five men to death, the same week Charles Sumner lashed out against pro slavery and in return was beaten by a cane two weeks later. The New York Tribune warned ?We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people of Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable.? As the rhetoric and violence in Kansas demonstrated, competing visions of two separate cultures for the future destiny of the United States were at stake. Despite m any similarities between North and South the gap between the two sides widened. (374) Each side saw the other threatening its freedom, as hostilities rose, the views each section had of the other grew steadily more rigid.(376) Five major reasons Two days after James Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court finally ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The decision was the blacks were ?beings of an inferior order [who] had no rights which white men were bound to respect ,? It also stated that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. (377) Lincoln's election of 1860 was possibly the greatest sectional divider. The American nation, he said, was in a crisis and building toward a worse one. ?A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free,? Lincoln said he did not expect the Union to be dissolved or the house to fall but rather that it will become all one thing or all the other. He believed in white superiority, opposed granting specific equal civil rights to free blacks and said that differences between whites and blacks would forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality, colonization was the best solution. He also believed that blacks were entitled to the natural rights in the Declaration of Independence, blacks were his equal.(378) These statements enraged differing ideas of slavery and the rights of blacks. John Brown, unlike Lincoln was prepared to act decisively against slavery. On October 16, 1859 he and a band of 22 men attacked a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He had hoped to provoke a general uprising of slaves throughout the upper South or at least provide arms for slaves to make their way to freedom.