What led to the division of north and south?

Answer 1

The cause of the quarrel was political power in the senate. The South wanted as many slave as free states in the country. In order to do this they had to voilate the Missouri compromise. By doing this they said the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. So the south left and became known as the confederacy.

Answer 2

NOT SLAVERY!

While that is a question loaded with controversy and personal opinion guided by personal feelings, the real answer is rather simple.

The American Civil War was fought for the same two reasons every war in history has been fought for. Economics and cultural differences in beliefs, or more simply, money and power.

The United States was conceived as a union of separate, but like minded, sovereign states that would have one public face on the international stage to represent all of the states as a whole, based on the theory that all states together could wield more power and influence internationally than a handful of small separate nations could. Basically, the premise was united we stand, divided we fall. By the mid 1800's things were starting to change. Power was starting to centralize toward a federal government while States rights were starting to weaken. Because of industrialization, populations were drastically increasing in the north giving northern states more power in Congress, thereby enabling northern states to effectively control the growing central government and pass whatever laws they were inclined to. The agriculturally based south believed that as more territory was settled, and more states came into the union that this trend would continue until they had no power left at all and were subservient to the northern states. The south felt that their interests were not important to and no longer being represented by the Union, they felt they were losing power in an increasingly powerful central government, and they felt they were losing their rights and identities as states. With Lincoln winning the 1860 election, despite every southern state voting against him, the south saw this as proof that everything they feared was true. The southern states believed that Lincoln was the beginning of the end and the only thing they could do to de-centralize a federal government, retain their power as states, and continue to survive as an agriculturally based economy was to exercise their states rights to dissolve the union and secede from the United States.

To just say slavery is an uneducated answer given by those who have no clue and can't be bothered to find out what was really going on and what really happened, or by those who don't care what transpired to bring this country to war with itself and will ultimately be doomed to repeat history.

Answer 3

the north didnt have slaves but the south did have slaves