The American Civil War resulted from divisions between the North and the South as a result of the moral issue of slavery. While the North detested slavery, the South glorified it as a social system and depended on its economic benefits. The ensuing war had been gathering momentum since the 1820s, even before Abraham’s Lincoln election as president. The endless tortuous debate over slavery resulted in the inevitability of the American Civil War.
One of the primary events that contributed to the inevitability of the Civil War was the Compromise of 1850, which jeopardized the delicate political balance between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. Antislavery Northerners saw the compromise as a surrender, while pro-slave Southerners saw it as a prelude to further future Northern aggression. Additionally, people doubted the long-term durability of the Compromise of 1950 since it was only a truce (Maizlish, 2017). Four years after the Compromise, its critics were proved right after its unraveling, which further sowed the seed for the Civil War.
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Another event that led to the inevitability of the American Civil War was the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854. This Act revoked the Missouri Compromise, hence eliminating the only restriction on slavery in the territories. The concessions made in the Act shattered the Compromise of 1950 since slavery could be allowed anywhere as a result of popular sovereignty (Corbett et al., 2014). This concession further strained the delicate political balance between anti-slave and slave states.
The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 was closely followed by the Dred Scott Case of 1857, an event that further deteriorated relations between the two opposing sides. The Supreme Court ruled that Southerners were allowed to take their slaves, who were considered property by the court, into any territory. This decision undercut the popular sovereignty policy that featured in the Nebraska Kansas Act (Corbett et al., 2014). Consequently, political havoc ensued, making the Civil War inevitable.
Conclusion
The subsequent events following the Compromise of 1950 made the American Civil War inevitable since they upset any concessions made by anti-slave and pro-slave states in prior compromises and Acts. Consequently, the Compromise of 1950 became the last one before no compromise was possible.
References
Corbett, P. S., Janssen, V., Lund, J. M., Pfannestiel, T., Waskiewicz, S., & Vickery, P. (2014). U.S. history . OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/1-introduction
Maizlish, S. E. (2017). The Cholera panic in Washington and the Compromise of 1850. Washington History , 29 (1), 55-64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90007375
