Causes of the American Civil War

State’s Rights

Who is responsible for the legal, moral,

economic, and social laws of the country?

Absolute Monarchy

• Absolute monarchy is a form of government where the king has the power to rule his or her land or country and its citizens freely, with no laws or legally-organized direct opposition in force.

Popular Monarchy

• The first and only task of political society was to name an individual or a group of individuals as sovereign. This sovereign would then have absolute power, and each citizen would owe him absolute obedience

Popular Monarchy

• Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, published 1651, claimed that the first and only task of political society was to name an individual or a group of individuals as sovereign. This sovereign would then have absolute power, and each citizen would owe him absolute obedience

Military Dictatorship

• A military dictatorship is a form of government wherein the political power resides with the military

Communism

• Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the means of production.

Matriarchy

• Matriarchy is a form of society in which power is with the women and especially with the mothers of a community

Patriarchy

• Patriarchy is the term used to define the sociological condition where fathers have supreme authority within families and male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power;

Theocracy

• Either government by immediate divine guidance or, more commonly, as government by or subject to religious institutions and priests.

Aristocracy

• The Ancient Greek term aristocracy meant a system of government with "rule by the best". – By wealth – By family name– By education

Direct Democracy

• John Locke in his writings, Second Treatise of Government, published 1690, claimed that the legislative was only empowered to legislate for the public good. If this trust was violated, the people retained the power to replace the legislative with a new legislative.

Representative Democracy• Representative democracy is a form of democracy

founded on the exercise of popular sovereignty by the people's representatives. The representatives act in the people's interest, but not as their proxy representative—i.e., not necessarily always according to their voters' wishes, but with enough authority to exercise initiative in the face of changing circumstances.

• The representatives are usually chosen by voters in free, secret, multi-party elections. As a representative democracy involves significant powers given to the legislators, there are usually constitutional or other measures to balance representative power.

Anarchism

• Anarchism is the name of a political philosophy or a group of doctrines and attitudes that are centered on rejection of any form of compulsory government and hierarchical authority (such as the state) and support its elimination

The North’s Interpretation with Regards to the Civil War

• Preserve the Union – The Constitution is a legally binding document that each state signed at ratification, and it must be enforced to guarantee the survival of the country as a whole

• A supreme law of the land, legislated and enforced by those elected, must be created to have a unified country

The South’s Interpretation with Regards to the Civil War

• Popular sovereignty is the notion that no law or rule is legitimate unless it rests directly or indirectly on the consent of the individuals concerned.

Tariff Issue

• In 1828, Andrew Jackson raised tariffs to discourage foreign imports and to encourage American manufacturing. This, of course, benefited the North and hurt the South.

Southern State’s Response 1• South Carolina appealed the federal law

raising tariffs, on the argument that state’s had the right to judge when the federal government had exceeded its authority under the Constitutional checks-and-balances system.

• States could nullify, or reject, federal laws they found to be unfair or unconstitutional?

The South and the US Constitution

• The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Southern State’s Response 2

• South Carolina also believed that because it was the state’s themselves that create the elected federal government, state’s then have a right to secede, or withdraw, from the union if they wished to do so.

The South and the US Constitution

• The 1st Amendment to the Constitution states that Congress shall not prohibit “…..the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition to Government for a redress of grievances.”

The South and the Declaration of Independence

• ….that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….

Federal Government’s Response 1

• An individual state’s ruling cannot supersede the will of the majority.

• Passage of the Force Bill, which gave the federal government use of whatever force necessary to execute laws, including the use of federal troops.

Federal Government’s Response 2

• In 1869, Texas v. White, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for state’s to secede from the Union.

Slavery Issue

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) – the Supreme Court repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska the right of “popular sovereignty”, or the right to choose their fate as a slave or free state.

The US Supreme Court

• As part of the Dred Scott Decision, the US Supreme Court declared that Congress had no power to ban slavery anywhere due to the fact that slaves were private property.

Northern Response

• Outraged over the notion of slavery in the northern territories; popular sovereignty by the majority should not deny the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the minority

The North and the US Declaration of Independence

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

Southern Response

• Pleased with the opportunity to expand their economic opportunities into the northern territories without restrictive laws placed on them, or their property

The South and the US Constitution

• Amendment IV

• The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…….

The South and the US Constitution

• Amendment V

• …..nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Northern and Southern Response

• “Bleeding Kansas” – in effort to fill the state with slave and non-slave voters, tensions in the state grew to the point of violence as outsiders from both the North and the South moved to the state in huge waves