As early as 1787, American leaders had known that they could not settle the differences between the states committed to slavery and those oppossed. The three–fifths rule, the constitutional promise not to halt the international slave trade until 1808, and the banning of slavery in the Northwest Territory were all attempts to avoid confronting differences between the North and South.

Some Northerners thought Southerners would recognize the inefficiency of slavery and end it voluntarilybut that hope faded by the cotton boom and the South’s recommitment to slavery. Many Southerners thought that an agrarian coalition uniting the South and West could keep Northeastern commercial interests from running the country. They realized that hope when a South–West coalition elected Thomas Jefferson presid

Congress tried to come up with compromise measures in early 1861, but there was no way of compromising in the argument over secession. The seven states of the lower South (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) formed themselves into the Confederate States of America. Their Constitution was nearly identical to the Constitution of the United States, although it affirmed state sovereignty, guaranteed slavery, and limited the president to a single six–year term.

But by the 1830s the market revolution had tied Northeastern factories and Northwestern farms into a roughly unified, commercialized North. Most Northerners were committed to free–market capitalism, individual opportunity, and free labor, and many contrasted what they believed to be the civilizing effects of hard work and commerce with the supposed laziness and barbarism of the slave South.

Some topics in this essay:
Civil War, South Carolina, North Northerners, Confederation Constitution, Secession Lincoln, War American, War United, Northerners Southerners, Thomas Jefferson, North South, civil war, south carolina, north south, war slavery, mexican war, december 1860, slave labor, war american,