Editing American Civil War (section)

== Origins ==
{{Main|Origins of the American Civil War}}
{{Further|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War|Slave states and free states|Slavery in the United States|Abolitionism in the United States}}

The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the [[Southern United States|Southern states]] to preserve the [[Slavery in the United States|institution of slavery]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=M. E. |date=August 20, 2012 |title=What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas272 |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |volume=99 |issue=2 |pages=415–439 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jas272 |issn=0021-8723}}</ref> 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 [[Union (American Civil War)|North]]'s reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede.<ref>Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks", ''Civil War History'' (2005) 51#3 pp. 317–324</ref> 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 [[Ordinance of Secession|secession documents]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Loewen |first=James W. |date=2011 |title=Using Confederate Documents to Teach About Secession, Slavery, and the Origins of the Civil War |magazine=OAH Magazine of History |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=35–44 |doi=10.1093/oahmag/oar002 |jstor=23210244 |issn=0882-228X |quote=Confederate leaders themselves made it plain that slavery was the key issue sparking secession.}}</ref> 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."<ref name="Coates-2015">{{cite news |last1=Coates |first1=Ta-Nehisi |title=What This Cruel War Was Over |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/ |work=The Atlantic |date=June 23, 2015 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20171031234944/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/ |archive-date=October 31, 2017 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. |work=The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#South_Carolina |via=American Battlefield Trust |access-date=September 12, 2024 |year=1861}}</ref>

The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially [[United States Congress|Congress]] had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, [[Slave states and free states|one slave and one free]]. This had kept a sectional balance in the [[United States Senate|Senate]] but not in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]], as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.<ref name="O'Brien2002qs">{{cite book |author=Patrick Karl O'Brien |title=Atlas of World History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-521921-0 |page=184 |access-date=October 25, 2015 |archive-date=September 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905202421/https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |url-status=live}}</ref> 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 [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition]] had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] was the development of [[white Southerners|white Southern]] nationalism in the preceding decades.<ref>John McCardell, ''The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860'' (1981)</ref> The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on [[American nationalism]].<ref>Susan-Mary Grant, ''North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era'' (2000)</ref>

Background factors in the run up to the Civil War were [[Second Party System|partisan politics]], [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionism]], [[Nullification (U.S. Constitution)|nullification]] versus [[Secession in the United States|secession]], Southern and Northern nationalism, [[Manifest destiny|expansionism]], [[Panic of 1857|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."<ref>[[Elizabeth R. Varon]], Bruce Levine, Marc Egnal, and Michael Holt at a plenary session of the organization of American Historians, March 17, 2011, reported by David A. Walsh "Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Houston, Texas" [http://www.hnn.us/articles/137673.html HNN online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111204081355/http://hnn.us/articles/137673.html |date=December 4, 2011 }}</ref>

=== Lincoln's election ===
{{Main|1860 United States presidential election}}
[[File:Abraham Lincoln 1860.jpg|thumb|''Portrait of Abraham Lincoln'', an 1860 photograph portrait of [[Abraham Lincoln]] by [[Mathew Brady]]|alt=Portrait of the middle-aged Abraham Lincoln the year of 1860 by Mathew Brady]]
[[Abraham Lincoln]] won the [[1860 presidential election]].{{sfn|Potter|Fehrenbacher|1976|p=485}} Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=254–255}} His victory triggered declarations of [[secession in the United States|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.<ref name="NegativesPrints">{{Cite web |title=1861 Time Line |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-war-glass-negatives/articles-and-essays/time-line-of-the-civil-war/1861 |access-date=January 22, 2022 |website=Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints |publisher=Library of Congress}}</ref> Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the [[Confederate States of America|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.

According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the [[American Revolution]] and [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]] and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic. Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, where its government was selected based on the people's vote, given ongoing internal attempts to destroy or separate from such a system.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jaffa |first=Harry V. |title=A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War |year=2004 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8476-9953-7 |page=1}}</ref>