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Civil War Dbq Essay

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The Civil war was not inevitable; it was the result of extremism and failures of leadership on both sides. This war was long forthcoming; we see this conflict as a nation divided or as Lincoln put it a house divided (Doc 4). It was a conflict between pro-slavery southerners and anti-slavery northerners. Both sides felt strongly about their position, leading to neither side backing down. However, this war could have been avoided through a compromise of stronger leadership and less extremism. First of all, extremism was evident in both sides. An example of this would be the incident at Harper’s Ferry, in which John Brown attacked a fort and tried to arm slaves with weapons so that they could revolt (Doc 6). Another example would be the fugitive slave act, which allowed for slave owners to get back slaves who had ran way and gone to the north. Two extremes such as arming slaves and having slave owners catch runaway slaves in the north led to a division in our country. …show more content…

Tensions between both sides arose when Douglas passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Senator Douglas felt that Kansas and Nebraska should be subjected to popular sovereignty like other western territories. Although the many temperate politicians like Abraham Lincoln wanted to avoid the Civil War and were fine with allowing slavery to die slowly. But, many influential political leaders of the 19th century were not. The South was interested in maintaining slavery to the new territories to increase their economy and political power. Due to lack of leadership neither side could come to a compromise, as Stephen Douglas put it what applied in the South could not similarly apply as in the north and vice versa (Doc 5), these were two distinct societies, but there was still room for a middle ground. The North had an interest in limiting the spread of slavery into the new territories for both purposes of controlling Southern political

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