The Civil War was based on a disagreement on slavery, but slavery was not the main issue. The Union opposed the South's economic system (slavery) and the South was not too happy about that so they began seceding from the Union. President Lincoln's main goal was to preserve the Union and to get the Southern states to come back. Slavery was just something that had gotten taken care of during the Civil War.
Answer:
04/12/2011
On this date, a century and a half ago, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, on an island off the coast of South Carolina. The Confederate States of America asserted not only their right to secede but also to claim federal property within their borders. The newly inaugurated U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, rejected both claims and refused to evacuate Sumter.
“Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy,” Lincoln had said in his somber inaugural address a month earlier. “A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.”
The Civil War, to Lincoln, was never technically a “war” but an illegal and unconstitutional rebellion and a fight to put down the rebellion. The details of the events leading to the firing on Fort Sumter have much to do with this attitude and with his total rejection of the possibility of secession.
By attempting to resupply Sumter, Lincoln succeeded in forcing the Confederacy to fire the first shots. Lincoln had to accept the loss of Sumter soon after. But he was successful, so to speak, in forcing the other side to start the shooting. Lincoln believed that justified the military actions that he subsequently ordered to put down the rebellion.
Answer:
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American, and his court case for freedom raised hostility between the south and the North.
Explanation:
Dred Scott was born inside slavery, and from 1833 to 1843, he resided in Illinois, where slavery was forbidden. Upon coming to Missouri, Dred Scott appealed for his freedom from slavery, insisting that his residence in non-slavery territory gave him free. As the case reached the Supreme Court, the tension further increases between North and South. Since the 1820s, two parties had compromised on the issue of slavery's expansion (the Missouri Compromise). The North was not happy with the court decision as they believed the case gave Southern slaveholders growing power. The Southerners pleased as they believed the North had no right to interfere with matters related to slavery.
