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Riley Elder
Intro to Writing (English 1010)
Instructor: Keith Wood
9/3/2014
The modern day United States citizen looks back on the Civil War with disdain and
disgust, theyve been taught the Southern States that made up the Confederate States of America
were full of morbidly evil taskmasters that brutally beat innocent human beings to death. Indeed
the federally-mandated and often state-mandated curriculum minimums make a serious effort to
burn this vision of the Civil War Confederacy into the minds of the American people. The
standard lesson thats repeated in the classrooms from elementary school, to higher education
institutions is--that the Southern States left the Union in order to maintain their ability to beat
their slaves and control the lives of others. This is a very dogmatic and narrow view of the reality
of the Southern states secession. Although many of the southern states had slave owners within
their boundaries, and slavery was a key element of the escalation of political tension between the
Northern states and the Southern states before the war, slavery was not the fundamental cause for
the American Civil War.
Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely, these famous words of Lord
Acton ring true throughout history. The kings of old Europe would never have willingly stepped
down from their positions of authority, the Czars of Russia had to be overthrown and killed
before theyd allow the people to govern themselves, the same is true for a slave master. History
continually shows that it takes a violent and bloody conflict for selfish rulers to part with their
long held positions of Influence. Prudence indeed will dictate that when a person, government or
organization gains power through control of others, the greatest thing it fears is the loss of that
recently attained power. The complete control over another person is the ultimate manifestation
of power, and it would seem that this absolute control over slaves obtained by Southern

plantation owners would lead to much conflict due to their refusal to give up such power. This is
why some people would argue slavery as the fundamental cause of the American Civil War.
However, though these history proven lessons do have some bearing on the causes of the Civil
War, the slave masters of the Southern states were not the only cause.
One of the many reasons for the Souths secession was the time period of Bleeding
Kansas, which took place in the newer western states and caused a series of mini civil wars along
the western border. Tensions throughout the nation weren't helped when news of the beating of a
very outspoken Senator became wide spread. Charles Sumner, a respected man of the North,
after giving a fiery and insulting speech about slavery, was beat to unconsciousness by a proslavery member of the House of Representatives whose relative had been personally insulted by
the senators speech. Actions and events like these, predating the war, undisputedly helped spur
its beginning.
Another alternative cause of the Civil War stemmed from a young idea recently debated
in the Constitutional Convention about 70 years prior, that of states rights. The United States
Constitution, recently ratified and amended with 10 Amendments known as the Bill of Rights
was one of the founding ideologies of the Southern Succession. The tenth article in particular
was the number one justification. The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people. These powerful words were written and agreed to by the people of the United States and
should therefore be followed with the utmost sternness. The power to dictate whether States
could have slavery was NOT delegated to the United States by the Constitution therefore, the
right to choose slavery was guaranteed to every state within the Union. When the Northern States
attempted to force, through the federal government, acts that would limit or prohibit the act of

slavery, they were breaking the political limitations set on the federal government by the people.
The South recognized this and in retaliation, to defend their rights guaranteed by the
Constitution, attempted to leave the North controlled corrupt government, beginning the terrible
war for States Rights.
The final and most often forgotten cause of the Civil War was the mutual agreement
between the ratifying states that if the Government became corrupt it would be their duty to
remove themselves from it and attempt to start anew. This same type of idea is repeated all
throughout the American Declaration of Independance from the British Crown. The American
people held the truths self-evident that the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
being the most necessary to a free people, ought to be protected by governments, which were
established for that one specific purpose. It was also held as truth that whenever a government
became destructive of those ends it was the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
establish new guards for their future security. The people of the Southern States, knowing their
obligations, altered the government by leaving it and when attacked, performed their
responsibilities the best they could to abolish that corrupt government entity the founding fathers
warned of. It cannot be denied that the ideas of the Founding fathers of the United States
transcribed into the Declaration of Independance, shining forth in their later generations beliefs,
were some of the constitutive catalysts of the American Civil War.
The issue of slavery, in all its moral corruption, was indeed a partial cause of the
American Civil War as was seen in the bloody events in Kansas predating the war, and did lead
violence between individuals over their stance on the issue, however, it is absolutely not the only
one. While some will always claim that the Southern states left the Union and formed the
Confederacy in order to keep their slaves and to subjugate the African American populace, the

alternative reasons they left the Union stem from pre-war unrest in the western states, and a
responsible, intelligent, and inherent urge for freedom, justified through the Constitution and the
Declaration of independence, and manifested through the defense of States Rights.