Causes of the Civil War and Dominant Themes In American History

1.Missouri Compromise
2. The abolitionists movement
3.Nullification crisis
4. Election of Abraham Lincoln ( anti-slavery)
5. Economic and social differences between the North and the South



There are countless numbers of themes in American History from 1607 to 1861. Two of those would be Manifest Destiny and slavery. I chose these because of the significant role they played in forming the America we know today. The Manifest Destiny was a movement among the American people that involved Americans moving and claiming new land. It was said that it was God's plan for them to take new lands. The reason this is significant, is that this gained the land that makes up half of the U.S today. This gain of land also led to the disagreements over free states and slave states, that would lead to the Civil War. Slavery was the backbone of early America. It was a main source of income. Not everyone agreed on slavery though. These disagreements led to the Missouri Compromise. This compromise required that in order for there to be a slave state there had to be a free state to counterbalance it. This worked okay until the U.S. ran out of land to make separate and equal states. This led to the free and slave states fighting over Kansas. This disagreement among slavery would lead to another important theme in American history, the Civil War. As you can see a lot of these themes are related. Each event in American history from 1607 to 1861 caused a snowball effect and led to the big outcome, America as we know it today.