Slavery Many Consider Slavery to

¶ … Slavery Many consider slavery to be one of the major causes of the Civil War. The background reasons for this include political, economic, social and moral reasons. First of all, from a political perspective, politicians from the North began to run on platforms that encouraged an abolitionist perspective for the entire country and many of the Northern voters supported such an approach.

This would mean that slavery would no longer be allowed as a characteristic of the South, one that was needed to support the economy, but would be eradicated throughout the United States, with dire consequences for the South. The political emulation that followed around the idea of slavery was one of the causes of the Civil War. Second, the economic reasons are even stronger and more obvious for making slavery one of the major causes of the Civil War.

Basically, the Southern states were states whose economies depended heavily on slavery to be competitive, as much as that was possible, on the market. With no labor costs, their overall costs decreases significantly. Free labor meant that industries that were not efficient, such as cotton and tobacco exploitation, could eventually be sold in an effective manner by the landowners.

Other than that, the simple idea of moving from an economy where labor was free to one where money would need to be invested in the workforce was just inacceptable and, in fact, very hard to understand in the South. Other than that, slavery is at the basis of the differentiation between the economies of the North and South, another major cause of the war.

One can argue that most of the industrial economy, as well as the transportation network and overall wealth of the country was in the Northern states. The South had not industrialized or, if it had done so, it was on a very limited manner. With that in mind, the economic interests of the states in the North, as compared to the states in the South, were different.

The North aimed to make its industrial product more competitive on the international markets, the South relied on free labor and had an agrarian economy. With slavery as the base of that, it was difficult to mediate between these differences. From a social perspective, slavery was also a major cause of the Civil War. The people who lived in the North were free, a large proportion of the people living in the South or not.

From a social point-of-view, this created an enormous social differentiation, including in terms of social norms and social perspectives. The people who were free in the South lived from the exploitation of their slaves.