Causes of the American Civil War: Sectionalism

By: Sonya Hu; Period 4

April 9, 1865 marked the end of the bloodiest war in American history. The magnitude of
the American loss of life during this war far exceeded the death toll of every other American
conflict, including the two World Wars. 620,000 young soldiers fought and died for their own
respective causes during the four year-long War Between the States, but for what reason? Many
historians have opposing viewpoints on this subject. Some believe that the conflicts over slavery
between the North and South were the true cause of the Civil War. Some scholars think that it
was the Souths desire to be able to choose their own laws for themselves, especially those
pertaining to the issue of slavery otherwise known as Popular Sovereignty. Still others
consider the true cause of the war to be the steadfast determination of the North and the South to
remain loyal to their own interests, rather than the nations. This is commonly known as
sectionalism.
The lands of the North and South were part of one country, but were driven by drastically
diverse economic systems and cultural traditions. Jamestown, paired with the Souths mild
climate and fertile soil, helped to establish a society built upon farming and agriculture.
Plymouth, on the other hand, along with the Norths colder climate and rocky, unfertile soil,
assisted in creating a society based on trade and manufacturing. Although the two contrasting
portions were a single country by name, they essentially formed two separate nations. Each of
the two sought different goals, interests, futures, and neither side would easily surrender their
way of life. Although slavery and Popular Sovereignty had played a major role in the American
Civil War, it was sectionalism that truly amassed immense tensions between the Union North and
Confederate South, and ultimately led to a torn nation readying guns that were to be fired upon
their own former countrymen. Sectionalisms contribution to the start of the Civil War was

readily shown by the conflict between the two halves of the nation over the Nullification Crisis,
the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Nullification Crisis was one of the first incidents wherein the conflicting views and
interests of the North and South resulted in heightened hostility between the two halves of the
nation. The Crisis was based on a constitutional theory that gave American states the ability to
cancel, or nullify, national law. The Crisis first began when the Ordinance of Nullification was
enacted in South Carolina, which allowed the state to nullify the Tariff of 1828 and 1832, the
former of which was also commonly known as the Tariff of Abominations. This tariff hindered
the Souths ability to trade with Europe, injuring their economy. All of the states that approved
of the tariff were located in the Northern part of the nation. Likewise, a large majority of the
states opposing the tariff were located in the South. The most radical of these opposing Southern
States was South Carolina. The state declared that if Congress were to enforce the Tariff of
1828, they would secede from the nation. In order to preserve the nation, President Andrew
Jackson vowed that he would march an army to that state. Just before appealing to Congress for
a Declaration of War on South Carolina for that purpose, the President wrote a letter to his friend,
explaining the Crisis and his intentions for the future. He told him, Was I to sit with my arms
folded and permit our good citizens in South Carolinato be imprisoned and perhaps hung
under the ordinance of South Carolina and the laws that carry it into effect all which are probable
violations of the Constitution and rebellious of every right of our citizens. Was this to be
permitted [by] the government, the confidence of its citizens, and it would endure dissension
everywhere. No my friend, the crisis must be now met [with] firmness, our citizens, and the
doctrine of nullification and secession put down forever. Similar to the President, many of the

Northern states prioritized keeping the nation united over the interests of the Southern states,
which enraged many Southerners.
This frustration is shown by Vice President John C. Calhouns response to nullification.
He wrote that the truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institution of the
Southern states[has] placed them inopposite relation to the majority of the UnionIf there
[is] no protective power in the reserved rights of the States, they must be in the end forced to
rebel, or submit to have their permanent interests sacrificed. His statement effectively
summarized the viewpoint of the Southern states, particularly South Carolina itself, who,
partially due to the Nullification Crisis, would be the first state to leave the nation on December
17, 1860. The South believed that the North had complete control over the federal government,
which prevented them [the South] from having the capability to protect their own regional
interests. Believing that the federal government the North would impede on the pursuit of
their goals and passions, and leave them incapable of protecting them, the South simply could
not tolerate such violation, and would not willingly surrender to the encroachment and
oppression (Calhoun 1) of the North without belligerence.
Aside from the right to nullify laws, another sectional dispute between the North and
South surrounded the equilibrium of the Senate. This conflict was so tumultuous because each
side believed that if the other gained more power within the Senate, the balance of the
government itself would be torn apart. The South believed that the North would push for the
abolishment of slavery, interfering with, perhaps even destroying, their livelihood, and deterring
their pursuit of their interests. The North believed that the South would do the opposite, and
cause slavery to spread throughout the nation, having a similarly detrimental effect upon their
section of the nation. For a time, through the Missouri Compromise of 1828, all had been

settled. However, the dispute was revived in 1850. Three territories California, New Mexico,
and Utah were to enter the nation. However, their entry would disrupt the balance of the
Senate. In order to maintain equal numbers of slave and free states, the Compromise of 1850
was passed, which would allow California to become a free state, as the majority of the
Californians had desired, which benefited the North. Utah and New Mexico were authorized to
determine the fate of slavery within their respective regions through Popular Sovereignty.
Additionally, the Compromise created the Fugitive Slave act, which made it so that
when a person held to service or labor in a State or Territory of the United States, has[escaped]
into another State or Territory of the United States, the person or persons to whom such service
or labor may be duemay pursue and reclaim such fugitive person (Congress 1). Although the
addition of this Act caused most Southerners to sanction the Compromise, nine states in the Deep
South held the Nashville Convention in June of 1850 to determine their course of action if the
Compromise did pass. It was at this Convention that the talk of secession was galvanized in the
South.
The exact antipode occurred in the North. Within the Northern states, the enhanced
Fugitive Slave Laws sparked outrage among the abolitionists. It caused the creation of the
Underground Railroad, wherein both middle and upper class whites and former chattel assisted
slaves to reach Canada and obtain their freedom. This caused the South a great deal of loss of
property and income from the slaves labor, further infuriating them, and heightening the
tensions between the two regions. Also, the Fugitive Slave Act inspired Harriet Beecher Stowes
1851 novel, Uncle Toms Cabin, a narrative following the story of the character Uncle Tom, a
long-suffering African slave. The novel quickly gained popularity and became the best-selling
novel of the nineteenth century, second only to the Bible. It depicted the horrific nature of

slavery, and encouraged many Northerners to join the abolitionist movement. The abolitionists
were slowly transforming form a minority to a majority.
In the end, despite the Compromise, the parity of the Senate was thrown into disorder.
With the addition of California, there were sixteen free states and fifteen slave. The balance of
the Senate had tipped in favor of the North. That, paired with the advancing abolitionist
movement, caused the antipathy between the North and South to continue to escalate.
Another act that further heightened the tensions between these two regions of the nation
was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It stated that the territories of Kansas and Nebraska
would be allowed to determine whether or not to legalize slavery within their own regions
through Popular Sovereignty. This Act caused additional sectional tensions between the North
and South because it overturned the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not
be able to expand into any western territory north of Missouris southern border excluding
Missouri itself. Anti-slavery Northerners were infuriated by this new Act, as they had wished to
block the expansion of slavery to the west; they also felt as though Popular Sovereignty was
merely being used as another tool of the Southern Slave States to gain power. Additionally,
allowing slavery into Nebraska and Kansas would be equivalent to allowing slavery into the
Northern States, which had formally been completely free. This caused many from the North to
be concerned that slavery would eventually spread throughout the entirety of the North, even the
strongly abolitionist New England states. In turn, the Northern resistance aggravated the
Southerners, as they not only desired the spreading of slavery, but also felt as though the KansasNebraska Act had been lawfully passed meaning that the North had no right to complain, as the
Act had been passed in both the Senate and House of Representatives, both of which had a
Northern majority.

Furthermore, the Act led both Northerners and Southerners to surge into the territories of
Kansas and Nebraska, particularly Kansas. There, both sides attempted vainly to influence the
vote to either tip in their favor, which resulted in riots. The accounts of Edward Bridgman, a
Southerner who had been driven to Kansas by a similar motive, wrote a day-to-day account of
the events during the Kansas Border War, also commonly known as Bleeding Kansas. He wrote,
on our way back we heard that 5 men had been killed by Free Statement, the men were
butchered ears cut off and the bodies thrown into the river[.] the murdered men (Proslavery)
had thrown out threats and insults, yet the act was barbarous and inhuman whoever committed
by. Horrifying events such as this were common within the divided Kansas, and amplified
hostilities between the partitioned nation. Even so, this was but a mere foreshadowing to the
abhorrent events of the war that was plummeting towards the nation at dizzying speeds.
In 1856, the animosity caused by the dispute reached the floor of the Senate. Following
his Crimes Against Kansas Speech, a diatribe that attacked the supposedly flawed character of
the Senator of South Carolina, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was brutally assaulted by
South Carolina House of Representatives member Preston Brooks. It would take three years for
the Senator to recover from the ordeal.
This was but another showing of the growing tensions between the North and South that
would soon erupt into a war that would claim the highest number of American lives ever to be
lost in war. Sectionalism was the seed of enmity between the North and South, which grew and
flourished during the Antebellum Period until it finally sprouted into an atrocious weed that
spread throughout the nation, poisoning it and depriving it of all that was good. This weed, also
known as war, was primarily caused by tensions surrounding the Nullification Crisis, the
Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Nullification Crisis established the

basis of the section dispute between the North and South, and would be the first time where the
two sides would be forced to wars front door. It also substantiated the Souths desire to protect
their interests through nullification. This desire was carried on through the Compromise of 1850,
which enraged both the North and South, and upset the balance of the Senate, tipping in favor of
the North. The introduction of this Compromise encouraged a mentality of regional interests
being of more importance than the nations as a whole, which led to the first notion of secession
to occur within the South. Both the Union North and Confederate South were further infuriated
by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, leading to the Kansas Border War. The bloodshed within that state
set the stage for the fast-approaching American Civil War. Even so, the influence of sectionalism
in causing the Civil War was not constrained to merely these events, nor were the causes of the
Civil War itself restricted to only those related to sectionalism. Slavery, popular sovereignty,
even the Constitution itself, played a part in evoking the war. Both the North and South claimed
the ideals of the American Revolution for their own respective sides. The Union held to the
principles of liberty and the equality of all men, as well as the fundamental concept of a
permanent union of states an ideal that Washington himself had so clearly backed. The
Confederacy responded with the notion of individual, rather than governmental, rights, and the
rights and freedom of both states and individuals within the American society to pursue their
own desires, their own interests, all as was sanctified by the Constitution. These opposing
interpretations of the Constitution, the framework of the United States government, was the
driving force behind the Souths desire to pursue their own interests, and either sides
justification for the inevitable War Between the States that was looming just ahead in the divided
nations path.
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