American civil war!

It was a war between the federalist/industrialists in the north and the anti-federalist/agrarians in the south.

The northern industrialists favored a strong central government and a tariff to ensure their finished goods were sold ahead of European goods in America. The southern agrarians favored states rights… a minimalist central government that would mainly uphold the constitution and bill of rights and little else.

Most agrarian states maintained slaves and states rights to ensure their livelihoods wouldn’t be stripped by a powerful central gov’t. For this reason southerners demanded that new territories be divided evenly between slave-holding and free states… so that their interests would be evenly represented by the new legislators from the newly formed states. This was the main result of the Missouri Compromise.

The Kansas-Nebraska act that followed stopped the division of slave/free states and placed the issue in the hands of settlers… Northerners and southerners rushed to settle the areas… Northerners held Nebraska… a bigger fight broke out in Kansas but the Jayhawkers won out and both Nebraska and Kansas became free states.

This shifted the balance of the senate to the federalists and they quickly passed the northern tariff on european goods. This was a blow to the southern economy that sold raw goods mostly to Europe.

Southern states seceded form the union and national troops were sent into the south to maintain the union. Confederate forces in Charleston South Carolina fired on one such garrison in Fort Sumter and the war had its official start.

Although abolitionists were part of the north… it is unfair to say this was a war about freeing the slaves. This war was over power. Northern businessmen had no need of slaves… farms in the north were small and managed by families. Slave traders were typically northerners. They had taken money acquired in the slave trade and built small businesses that had grown over time. Once slaves became a self sustaining commodity… traders could no longer look to it for much capital. So these traders became industrialists. These industrialists required cheap labor and newly freed slaves were compelling. Industrial abolitionists were driven more by financial demand than righteousness.