Cause of the Civil War

While there is considerable debate about the influence of individual events that led the states to this civil war, the following events are often cited as contributing:

Widening abolitionist sentiment in the North had been influenced by:

Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1852
Dred Scott case, 1857
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, resulting in Brown's capture and execution. Abolitionists paid for his legal defense, deeply offending the South.
William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society

The issue of whether new states would be slave states or free states:

Missouri Compromise of 1820
Compromise of 1850
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

The rising of the Republican Party:

Created in 1854, it was against expansion of slavery territory and composed of Conscience Whigs, Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Know-Nothings, and Nativists
Election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (Lincoln had no electoral votes from the South)

Earlier expressions of states' rights against federal authority such as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which supported the doctrine of nullification and preceded the doctrine of succession.
Economic issues including taxation and imbalance of trade.

There is little question that the salient issue in the minds of the public and popular press of the time, and the histories written since, was the issue of slavery. Slavery had been abolished in most northern states, but was legal and important to the economy of the Confederacy, which depended on cheap agricultural labor. State sovereignty (for the South) and preservation of the Union (for the North) have both also been cited as issues, but both were reflections of the slavery issue, i.e., could the Federal government force southern states to end slavery or could the southern states leave the Union to preserve slavery?

Although the war was also known in the South as The War Between the States, The War of Northern Aggression, The War of Southern Independence, Mr. Lincoln's War, or simply as The War, these names are infrequently used today. More obscure names for the war include The Second American Revolution and The War in Defense of Virginia. Northerners often referred to this conflict as The War of the Rebellion or The War of Southern Rebellion, The War to Save the Union, and The War for Abolition.

The states which seceded consisted of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Three 'slave states' did not secede: Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. Although Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral in the conflict. Delaware and Maryland were garrisoned by Union forces throughout the war to prevent their secession. Missouri's government split, with a Unionist government in the capitol and a secessionist government-in-exile run from Camden, Arkansas and Marshall, Texas. The state of West Virginia was created by the secession from Virginia of its northwestern counties, and added to the Union in 1863.

The Union was led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Confederacy by President Jefferson Davis.

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Cause of the Civil War