Historical
Overview
In the decades before the Civil War, diverging economies contributed to growing sectional differences between the North and South. Between 1790 and 1860, commercial agriculture replaced subsistence agriculture in the North, and household production was replaced by factory production. Massive foreign immigration from Ireland and Germany greatly increased the size of cities. In the South, slavery impeded the development of industry and cities and discouraged technological innovation. During the 1850s the nation’s political system became incapable of resolving sectional disputes between North and South. The acquisition of vast new territories during the 1840s reignited the issue of whether slavery would be allowed to expand into the western territories.
The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to solve this problem by admitting California as a free state but permitting slavery in the rest of the Southwest. But the compromise included a fugitive slave law opposed by many Northerners. The Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed to solve the problem of status there by popular sovereignty. But this led to violent conflict in Kansas and the rise of the Republican party.
The Dred Scott decision eliminated possible compromise solutions to the sectional conflict and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry convinced many Southerners that a majority of Northerners wanted to free the slaves and incite race war.
