West Virginia Split Rail

The slavery and the Civil War

Although the south states that seceded the Union at first of the Civil War claimed often that "declares rights" was the problem that had for result the secession, the it was a thin argument; the truth was that the South, depending since the colonial times on the work of slave, felt the discontent of North growing with the position South as a threat, a threat to their wins bread and their manner Life.

The slavery problem did not begin being suddenly problematic with the election of the President Abraham Lincoln anti- slavery in 1859. As every state was acknowledged the Union, a raged of fight of if the this would be a free state or of slave (despite the Fact that the slavery was in legal fact to the United States of 1654 until 1865), as the precarious balance of free states and of slave determined that divides would dominate Congress.

The beginning of end of slavery began in fact around the time of the War of American independence, when a lot of white persons were still in the country also engaged under contract the servant and even as the slaves. Between 1780 and 1804, almost all states of the north passed the emancipation laws that liberated slaves - without taking account of the color - and the African slaves granted limited rights.

The south states, had nevertheless, a need a lot more irresistible one for the work of slave. While the states on the edge of the north of the region of the south had the least need for the slaves, the gin of cotton of the Whitney of Eli had done the cotton culture in the rich ground of the Deep South and the plains of lucrative Deltas; nevertheless, the it was the work so exhausting that demanded a lot of hands. The rice plants in the coastal sectors demanded African Labor in reason on account of the fact that most of the African slaves were immunized to the malaria that did the functioning in the rice receives a dangerous work for the white and even some Africans that had not immunity. By 1860, on the three quarters of the slaves held were been anxious the United States in cotton and the rice producing states of the Deep South.

The slavery created an almost insular illusory corporation in the South. Southerners defended their "the special institution" on the basis that the African-American slaves could not defend for itself if liberated, and would not want to be liberated in fact. They declaimed their brotherly love for their slaves, for this whole time there to polish on the hard realities of the commerce of slave, the slaves that were beaten in submission, and railed against the north abolitionists that refused to support the Act of Slave of Fugitive, that demanded that the slave in escape returned to his or his owner.

Not thing astonishing, the states in the Deep South that held the most of the slaves - Caroline of the South, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas - were the first one to secede after the election of Lincoln to the presidency. Lincoln had not done secret of his loathing for the slavery, and these states knew that the slavery abolition would be financially disastrous for the plants that were the vertebral column of their states. Also not to astonish was as the states with the less than slaves - as Caroline of the North, as Arkansas, and as Tennessee - were late to the secession. The border states like Kentucky and Missouri, that had sectors that heavily counted on the slavery and the where few sectors or no slaves were held of the all, were protested through the war, claimed by the Union and the Confederacy.

Virginia split in fact on the decision of secede; the counties of the northwest of the state that is refused of secede and is detached to become Western Virginia.

Apreds the creation of the Confederate States of America and the beginning of the Civil War, the hundreds of thousands of slaves began escaping the North of the states of border; nevertheless, little changed in the states of slaveholding in the Deep South to the Proclamation of Emancipation of 1863. Although the proclamation of Lincoln in the gasoline liberated all slaves to the United States, the Confederacy refused naturally to honor the proclamation, and the slaves in the South were not liberated until attains by the troops of Union. In some sectors, this took until the end war, when the Federal occupation of the South removed most of the politicians of the south of the strength.

While the desire to preserve the Union on the north side, and the desire to support their own laws on the south side contributed without any doubts to the Civil War, the it is indisputable that the need never would be presented had itself the slavery problem did not split the two regions in two. As Lincoln said during his country for the presidency, "a house divided against not himself can be held".