Causes Leading to War

There were numerous causes leading to the Civil War. The most prominent was the disagreement between the Union, comprised of northern states, and the Confederacy, comprised of southern states, regarding the issue of slavery. Well before the nineteenth century, slavery was a common practice in the United States, having continued in various forms and places since Biblical times. Among the Europeans who first came to America there were "indentured servants," who were poor white Europeans brought to the new land and made to work off the cost of their passage. Sometimes this was a voluntary contractual relationship, but convicts, children, and even people abducted from the streets were forced into servitude. The indigenous people who lived on the continent before European settlers arrived were also forced into slavery, but they proved too difficult to command and too susceptible to epidemics of European diseases. Whites...