Question

Was slavery the main and most important cause of the Civil War? Why or why not?

Answer 1

The popular reason for this is that the Civil War was waged over the fundamental issue of slavery.

In reality, fundamental to the struggle was the economics of slavery and the political power of that regime.

One key issue has been the rights of states. The Southern states wanted to assert their authority over the federal government so that they could abolish federal laws they did not support, in particular laws that interfere with the right of the South to keep slaves and take them wherever they wished

Slaves were used by the agrarian south to tend his large plantations and conduct certain duties. Some 4 million Africans and their descendants labored in the South as slave laborers on the eve of the Civil War. While only a comparatively limited portion of the population still owned slaves, slavery was interwoven into the Southern economy. Slaves may be rented, traded, or sold for debt payments. Ownership of more than a handful of slaves gave respect and contributed to social status, and slaves, as the property of individuals and businesses, represented the largest portion of the region's personal and corporate wealth, declining cotton and land prices and rising slave prices.

The North states, meanwhile, had progressively abolished slavery one by one. A steady flow of immigrants, particularly from Ireland and Germany during the potato starvation of the 1840s and 1850s, assured the North of a ready pool of workers, many of whom could be hired at low wages, diminishing the need to cling to the slavery institution.