Many have claimed there are multiple causes of the Civil War, ranging from socio and economic differences to states' rights. At the core of the entire conversation, however, resided slavery. The first slaves arrived in the United States in 1619, when 20 Africans landed by ship in Virginia. By 1860, the slave population in the United States had reached nearly four million. Slavery in the northern section of the country dwindled, while it rapidly spread in the southern portion where fertile soil allowed cash crops to be mass produced. The north developed into an industrial economy providing a balance to the agricultural economy in the south.
Many northerners, however, began to see slavery as an evil institution, the “sum of all villainies,” and an active abolitionist movement spread across the country. Animosity towards slavery was fueled by Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, which depicted harsh conditions for slaves in the south. Political debates over the expansion of slavery intensified as new states were added to the Union. The Missouri Compromise in 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 all attempted to settle the issue of slavery’s expansion in the United States. Each compromise, however, caused additional turmoil which eventually led to the outbreak of violence along the Kansas-Missouri border.
