TheRealCauseoftheCivilWar——美国南北战争的真正原因.doc

TheRealCauseoftheCivilWar美国南北战争的真正原因JennyAmerican History Culture（14)Mr.Reiss2011/12/25The Real Cause of the Civil WarGenerations have been told that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. However， is that so? We should not deny that slavery was one of the causes but it was not the primary one since Lincoln did not promulgate The Emancipation Proclamation until a year after the war started and slavery was not completely abolished when the war ended. So I think slavery was more like a catalyst and the main reasons which led to the Civil War were the differences between their economy system and politic ideas and also the interference of Europe.At that time， the North was an industrialized area but their factories lacked free workers. Meanwhile, the Southern economy was relying on crops and enough slaves guaranteed the prosperity of their plantations. Thus if the slaves were freed， factories would run well because of sufficient labor while the economy of the South might be ruined because of the loss of their huge work force。 In those days， people cared more about their interest so both sides argued to win slaves to win workers. Also， because the Northern industry was still in the process of development， it needed a great many consumers to support their market. However， in order to save more money, plantation owners preferred cheap European goods. Therefore， the Tariff of 1828 was passed， which put high government taxes on imported goods。 Congress thought that more people would start buying American-made products but this enraged the Southerners so much that the tariff was known as “the Tariff of Abominations” and some of the states were even on the verge of declaring their independence. Finally a compromise was reached but the hatred remained。 The conflict between the economic systems caused the North and the South to quarrel bitterly and it made their politic ideas different as well。Since the North was basically in-developmental capitalism， it desired a strong central government which could manage the order of business and trades。 By contrast, the South was somehow still insisting on feudalism and to bring fortune to their later generations, slaves were constant valuable. Besides， since the Southern farmers had nearly nothing apart from their land they extremely relied on import goods。 To decrease tariffs successfully, which was good for the South but hurt the North， they wanted powerful state governments so that the states could decide tax rates on their own and allow them to have slaves. And as I said, interests were what most people were thinking of. Jefferson Davis， as a senator, had once said, the North limited the development of slavery so that they could be the majority in the Congress。 They were willing to sacrifice the profits of the South to develop New Englands industrial。 His analysis was reasonable。 So in this way, the Civil War can be considered as nations rights versus state rights, new social structure versus old one and Northern interests versus Southern interests。One other factor which could not be ignored was the involvement of Europe. As Bismarch said， “it was obvious that dividing America into two weak unions was predetermined by European financial powers before the Civil War had begun。 America was the only country at the time which supported democracy and they did not want her to succeed and to be too powerful. And more importantly， there were always great profit waiting for bankers during warfare！ As far as I am concerned， slavery was the ideology of the Souths economic system which was probably the most important cause of the war。 People have long been used to associate Southern plantations with slavery and many arguments before the war were seemingly about slave fares while it was actually the economic interests which really mattered. However， the masses were easily misled by public opinions and few of them would feel obliged to analyze whether it was true or not. A sentence in Lincolns Second Inaugural Address goes like this: “All knew that this interest(slavery） was somehow the cause of the war。” Isn't he telling his people that slavery was the cause of the Civil War? Nowadays, the misconception remained still。 The reason for this is that we now view slavery as more of a moral dispute and naturally think that people then thought the same which neglected the fact that most conceptions have been changed throughout the years。 In todays logic， a war starting for the abolishment of slavery was a war fighting for justice。 Thus people did not think much about it and readily accepted it。The definition for “history” in the Devil's Dictionary was: “An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant， which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools。” Winners who wrote the history would not tell anything unfavorable to themselves and they were oftentimes good at concealing the facts。 Most of the truth was hidden somewhere we probably would never know as well as the definite answer to this question. After all， there were so many things which were dealt behind closed doors！ReferencesWhat was the Tariff of Abominations?: Information from A. A: Wiki Q&A combined with free online dictionary， thesayrus， and encyclopedias。 N。p。， n。d Web。26。Dec.2011http：/Ge， Wu. "rainbowplan.” Cause of the Civil War. N。p.， n。d. Web. 26 Dec. 2011. http:/www。rainbowplan.org/bbs/topic.php？topic=144183&select=ion/104986847.html?an=0si=2.