What Factors Caused the Civil War?
Was the Civil War certain, or could it have been evaded? Was slavery the only, or even the primary, cause of the war? Were other factors similar or more significant? The “irrepressible conflict” argument was the first to dominate historical debate. Henry Wilson’s History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (1872“1877) was a vivid version of this moral explanation of the war, which reasoned that Northerners had fought to preserve the Union and a system of free […]