Civil War Research Paper

Submitted By Mdy1mahek
Words: 453
Pages: 2

The American Civil War, even over a century after it ended, remains one of the most closely studied, and disputed events in American history. While the results of the war are clearly apparent, many of the factors that sparked the beginning of the Civil War remain in debate to this day. Again, specific events are not in question, but the driving factors behind those events are sometimes murky at best. In the modern day, there are still many who simply classify the American Civil War as a battle over the issue of slavery. While it is true that this issue was pivotal in the conflict, there were other significant differences between the Union and Confederacy that fueled the fire of the conflict. In this paper, some of the other major factors that fueled the fire of a war that nearly destroyed a new nation and set the tone for an entire generation of Americans will be presented and briefly explained.
The Issue of States' Rights
One of the key issues, in fact probably one of the major issues that led to the American Civil War was the dispute over the rights of the individual states. Not being too far removed from the war against Britain that created the independent United States themselves, it is likely that the mindset of being able to chart one's own political, social, and economic future still existed in the individual states, all of whom were controlled to some extent by the central federal government (Paludan, 1998).

First was the issue of taxation, which once again, was one of the factors that led to the fight to create an independent United States in the first place. Each of the individual states was required of course to collect taxes and forward that revenue to the coffers of the centralized federal