Download Conflicts Ooer

TAKS OBJECTIVE 4
8.t8.8
Conflicts Ooer
Staies' Rights Issues
I-earning Objectioe Describe the historical conflicts arising over the issue of states'
rights, including the Nullification Crisis and the Civil War.
Tf,e summary bielo* describes how the conflict over states' rights led up to the Civil,
War. Review the summary before answering the questions on the next page.
States'Rights and the Civil War (1861-1865)
E(lJ
a
o
o
.c
(')
:
U
c
At the root of the Civil War were differences between the Northern and Southern
states over the issue of slavery. The question of whether to allow slavery in the territories had divided the North and the South for years.
The Southern states, which depended on slave labor to produce cotton, wanted
slavery allowed in the territories and in new states formed from the territories. They
did not want free states to become a majority in Congress because the balance.of
power would shift to the North. The Northern states did not want slavery to expand.
Abraham Lincoln, a Northern Republican who opposed the expansion of slaveryinto
the territories, won the presidency in 1860.
With Lincoln's election, Southerners feared that Northern antislavery Republicans
would dominate national politics and submit the South to federal government control.
They believed a Republican administration would work to end the slave labor. system
on which their economy and way'of life depended.
The Southern states had threatened to slecede if Lincoln won the presidency, They
argued that the states had voluntarily joined the Union and fud the right to leave it.
South Carolina seceded ftrst. Mississippi, Florida,.Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Texas joined Sotrth Carolina in secession, and together they formed the Confederate
States of America in 1861. The Confederacy adopted a constitution that supported
states'rights and slavery. The Confederate states regarded the struggle over slavery
partly as a states' rights issue. They believed the states had the right to self-determination. With secession, the issue of states' rights came to mean complete independence
of Southern states from federal gbvernment control.
Many Northerners, on the other hand, considered secession unconstitutional. They
argued that states did not have the right to withdraw from the Union because the federal government-not a state government-was sovereign, or the supreme authority,
under the Constitution. The North went to war to hold the Union together and assert
the authority of the federal government.
CJ
=
6
f
o
@
IAKS Objective 4: Review 65