4.The Civil War was fought to the exclusion of any other reason, solely to end the evil institution of slavery. The unresolved constitutional issue of “States Rights” was not the major underlying factor. In other words, the Civil War was fought only to

4 .The Civil War The Civil War Question : 4 .The Civil War was fought to the exclusion of any other reason , solely to end the evil institution of slavery . The unresolved constitutional issue of States Rights ' was not the major underlying factor . In other words , the Civil War was fought only to end slavery and not to preserve the Union FALSE Thought historians seem to agree that no single underlying cause of the American Civil War can be readily identified , historians also agree that issues regarding disparate and culturally specific interpretations

of the United States Constitution , issues of States rights , and issues of industrial expansion played as much of a role in the outbreak and ultimate purposes of the war as the issue of slavery

Although the aforementioned specific issues played crucial roles in provoking the Civil War , the issues which divided the North and South culturally , lay deeper , perhaps , even than those of constitutionality or economic disparity . In the eyes of some historians "The ultimate cause of the Civil War was simply human disagreement , which could not be , or rather was not , resolved by non-violent means . Its roots went at least as deep as the American Revolution , and could be traced even deeper into human history " -- the implication in this statement is that the cultures of the North and South were , themselves , at odds with one another (Basler , 1967 ,

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The cultural disparities which led up to the Civil War can be quantified to an extent , they include a disparity in economic and industrial capacity many historians view the war as a consequence of "Western social development from medieval agrarianism and feudalism to modern industrialism " with the South "possessing a system of forced labor , overwhelmingly agrarian pursuits , and a plantation-owning ruling class " which basically made the South "premodern in the mid nineteenth century (Collins , 1981 ,

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On the other side , the North "bourgeois , liberal , more entrepreneurial than the South , and straining to industrialize and to reduce the backward-looking Southern influence in Washington given these very real and quite specific differences in economic and political interest it seems obvious to conclude that "a clash between these two societies had to occur " and it seemed likely , given the further strain of violently opposing interpretations of Constitutional law between the two sides , that the conflict would be sooner than later . The most important Constitutional dispute was over the issue of "whether a state had the right to leave the Union . Whereas the Articles of Confederation had proclaimed the Union to be perpetual , the Constitution contained no such statement in fact , even Lincoln acknowledged that "the language of the Constitution was not decisive (Borrit , 1996 ,

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While it is true that the issue of slavery formed a "hot-spot " for the divided sides and a catharsis for the abolitionists movements and teh secession movements , equally important was the fact that "Northern industrial interests sought to subordinate the agricultural South and its political leaders to their own need for tariffs...