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 * What caused the Civil War, and could/should it have been avoided?[[image:fspc1003k.gif align="right"]]**

Before the war the government was growing powerful and so was the northern and mid-western states, because their population was incressing in a large rate, but the southern states weren't growing in population as fast as the north so they were losing power in the government. Now that one side of the country was getting more powerfull then the other people were calling it sectionalism and this is what split our country into two. The south wanted out of the federal system in Washington and wanted to be free from them. The southern states thought that the state laws were more powerful then the federal laws so they wanted to follow the state laws and not the federal laws. Probally the biggest and most emotional quary agaist the north and the south was the topic of slavery. The south needing some help getting their cotten together so they had slaves to do this. Before the invention of the Cotten Gin, it would take a full day to process just 2 pounds of cotten by hand. The south needed the slaves for their work. The north hardly ever used slavery. Some northernerns thought that slavery was uncillized and not a good thing to be a part of. So some northerners would arguee with southerens about slavery. These people were called abolitionists. The south was proteted from the abolitionists by the state laws and even by the federal laws so the north really couldn't do anything about slavery. When the nation started to grow in size they started to move westward. And their were arugerments on what the new states such as Kansas and Mousri would by slave states or non-slave states. There was a battle called "Bleeding Kansas" where people fought and even a brother vs a brother or a father vs son. This was a very sad time for the south and the north. A man named John Brown wanted to go to the federal informery to steal some guns and ammo for some slaves in Kansas who wanted to fight back agaist their masters. Some men were captured and some killed, and John Brown was corned with 7 of his men and Colonel Robert E. Lee and some of his men captured Brown and his followers. Then Brown was tried and found guilty to his crime and he was hanged in Charlestown. All though John Brown didn't get the guns to the slaves he still was a man who tried to free some slaves and the slaves and other abolisitits were now fired up to do something about the slave promblem. The south allready didn't feel like they were being heard in congress. Then Abraham Lincoln was named president and the south really didn't like that because he wanted to keep the south and the north together as a united country, and he said all the new states that would come to the union would be slave free. This really ticked off the south and some of them really wanted to break away from the country. South Carlina was the frist state to declare that they were not part of the country anymore and then several others followed them and the union was starting to break apart. Those states came together and started the Confederate States of America, and they elected their own president and he was Jefferson Davis. On April 12, 1861 the Confederate States of America came down to Fort Sumter and attacked it. The fort was really damaged and not in good shape, but nobody died or got injured. Major Robert Anderson surreded and gave the Confederte the fort and all that was in it. This was a big win for the south. This made alot of people mad in the north and they started a little army to go and take care of the rebellion of the south. The war that Licoln wanted to avoid came anyway. This civil war would last 4 long years and killed 620,000 lives. The north won and our nation stayed United and slavery was abolished, but many familys were broken up because of this war and they will never be the same again.**
 * The north and south had a lot of differnces and issuse with each other. They would fight with each other and aurgure about taxes and tirffs and they would not agree on stuff. One thing they aurgured about was how much tax they would have to pay on the goods that they make. The southernerns thought this was really unfair because the south made a ton more stuff then the north and they didn't want to pay all of that tax.

this is where i got my info on [|The cause of the Civil War]