What were short term causes of the American civil war?

Question: What were short term causes of the American civil war!?
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Slavery
Union
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~Short term causes!? There were none!. The seeds were planted in 1787 and had been festering ever since!. Assuming you refer to the conflict in 1861-65 between the USA and the CSA, it was not a civil war!. Thirteen independent nations were created in 1783 by the treaty of Paris!. Those nations allied together in a confederation called the United States of America, first under the Articles of Confederation and later under the Constitution!. They never surrendered their sovereign independence!. Read James Madison's notes of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, the pronouncements of Madison, James Mason, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington on the subject for more detail!. Check into what the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution themselves said about the right to secede when the New England states threatened to secede in 1803 and in 1812-14!. Read what John C!. Calhoun and Daniel Webster said about it when South Carolina threatened to secede in 1837!. Although both would reverse their positions in later years, with each to take up the former side of the other, their arguments are nonetheless valid!. Read what the intent of Article IV of the Constitution was intended to mean and what Amendments IX and X were intended to guarantee!. In the minds of most honest statesmen of the antebellum years, there was little question that a state could secede when the central government no longer protected its rights or served its interests!. New York, Massachusetts and Virginia expressly reserved the right to secede when they acceded to the constitution and the delegations of the other ten nations of the alliance assured those three that the right was a given!.

By 1860, the federal government had grown into the very beast the Framers had tried to prevent!. However, that beast served very well the interests of the north, or more particularly, the interests of the northern industrialists, bankers, railroads and northern money!. Although 75% of federal taxes were raised in the south, a like portion was spent in the north!. Northern industrialist and bankers prevented industrialization in the south!. Northern congressmen consistently passed revenue and tariff laws that made it all but impossible for the south to trade in international markets and northern business interests then set rock-bottom prices on southern goods!. The southern economy was in a shambles because of northern trade practices as enforced by (northern) congressional fiat!. The south was going bankrupt, as were the southern aristocrats!.

The last straw was the election of 1860!. Lincoln was elected without carrying a single southern state!. He wasn't even on the ballot in several!. That was proof positive that the south had been disenfranchised and had no voice in the federal government!. This time, South Carolina had had enough!. She didn't just threaten to secede!. She passed the first Ordinance of Secession!. Others followed!. Tennessee realized that if secession culminated in war, Tennessee would be invaded by the CSA, so she seceded!. North Carolina was surrounded by CSA states and had no direct link to the USA so she seceded out of self defense (but likely would have eventually in any case)!. Virginia was opposed to secession at the time but felt more kindred to and linked with the south, so she seceded!.

The USA, especially New York, and the New England states forgot or conveniently buried their won histories and said their was no right to secede!. Pennsylvania and New Jersey ignored what their delegations had said at Philadelphia in 1787 and said now that secession was not permissible!. Delaware and Maryland didn't really address the issue and, stayed neutral!. South Carolina ordered the USA to remove its troops from sovereign SC territory!. The USA refused!. After a minor skirmish, SC took back its property and removed USA troops from Fort Sumter!. The USA responded by invading the territory of the independent nations who had formed their own alliance known as the Confederate States of America!.

The right of secession could have been easily resolved by the Supreme Court!. The CSA did not recognize the jurisdiction of the Court, it being a foreign tribunal!. The USA used force of arms to cause the government of the people, by the people for the people of the CSA to perish from the earth!. Why try diplomacy or litigation if guns will do!? After the war, Jefferson Davis was charged with treason!. He demanded a trial, intending to defend on the basis of the legality of secession!. The Republicans could not afford an adverse verdict at trial or, worse still, and adverse decision on appeal by the Supreme Court!. Davis was never tried!. No one was!.

Right, I did not mention slavery!. Only a fool or one ignorant of US history (factual, not mythological history, that is) would consider it as cause!. Slavery was a non-issue, although it was a focal point of the State's Rights debate!. Slave ownership was a right guaranteed under Article I, section 2 and Article IV, section 2!. Congress couldn't abolish it and neither could the president!. Lincoln said repeatedly that he not only lacked the authority to abolish slavery where it existed but he lacked the inclination!. He repeated that assurance in his First Inaugural Address!. Even with his illegal, unconstitutional Emancipation Proclamation, he did not purport to abolish slavery and never even used the term abolition!. The EP was redundant in any case!. It simply repeated what congress had done months earlier in the Confiscation Acts, equally illegally and unconstitutionally!. Emancipation was a tool of war, not a humanitarian gesture and the EP specifically continued slavery everywhere in the US where it existed other than in areas expressly identified in the proclamation!. Even in the identified areas, a slave owner could keep his human chattel simply by renouncing the CSA and swearing a loyalty oath to the USA!. West Virginia was (illegally and unconstitutionally - Art IV, sec 3) admitted into the union as a slave state months after the EP!. Why secede and risk war to keep what was guaranteed to them by the very government from which they were seceding!? Dumb idea!. Really dumb!.

No such amendment was proposed in the antebellum years!. It could not have been ratified in 1860 because there was insufficient support in the north, forget the south, and wouldn't have been enough support for at least another generation, if not two!. The war changed that!. Amendment XIII was ratified by coercion in the south during the readmission process (if they couldn't secede, why and how could CSA states be readmitted!?) and in the north as a weapon by which the Republicans insured that the southern economy, social structure, fortunes and way of life would be so utterly destroyed that the CSA would never rise again!.Www@QuestionHome@Com