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The origins of the American Civil War are primarily rooted in the Southern states' desire to preserve slavery, with historians agreeing on its centrality to the conflict. The political battle over the expansion of slavery into Western territories and the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was feared to threaten slavery's existence, led to the secession of several Southern states. Background factors included partisan politics, nationalism, and economic concerns, culminating in a refusal from the North to accept secession and a lack of foreign recognition for the Confederacy.

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The origins of the American Civil War are primarily rooted in the Southern states' desire to preserve slavery, with historians agreeing on its centrality to the conflict. The political battle over the expansion of slavery into Western territories and the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was feared to threaten slavery's existence, led to the secession of several Southern states. Background factors included partisan politics, nationalism, and economic concerns, culminating in a refusal from the North to accept secession and a lack of foreign recognition for the Confederacy.

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Origins

Main article: Origins of the American Civil War

Further information: Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, Slave states and free
states, Slavery in the United States, and Abolitionism in the United States

The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of
slavery.[16] Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the
conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree on which aspects (ideological, economic,
political, or social) were most important, and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the
Southern states to secede.[17] The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the
principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding
states' own secession documents.[18] After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating,
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of
the world."[19][20]

The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand
into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into
the Union in pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in
the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.
[21]
Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue,
both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of
slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of
the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades.
[22]
The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based
on American nationalism.[23]

Background factors in the run up to the Civil War were partisan


politics, abolitionism, nullification versus secession, Southern and Northern
nationalism, expansionism, economics, and modernization in the antebellum period. As a panel of
historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the
primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."[24]

Lincoln's election

Main article: 1860 United States presidential election


Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, an 1860 portrait of Abraham
Lincoln by Mathew Brady

Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.[25] Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop
slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction.[26] His victory triggered declarations
of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies
were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.

Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded
the South time to prepare for war.[27] Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to
accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy.
The U.S. government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which
the Confederacy claimed were located in their territory.

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