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One of the main causes of the American civil war was while the united states were enjoying tremendous growth in the mid-nineteenth century, a fundamental economic divide existed between the country’s northern and southern areas, the northern economy was based on large-scale farming that relied on the labor of colored enslaved people to grow crops, cotton, and tobacco, whilst the souths economy was based on a system of large scale farming that relied on the labor of black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco. Many southerners feared that the existence of slavery in America and hence the backbone of the economy built on the back of slavery was in jeopardy as a result of growing abolitionist sentiment in the north after the 830s and northern hostility to slavery’s development into new western territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by the united states congress in 854, effectively opened all new territories to slavery by emphasizing the primacy of popular sovereignty over congressional fiat. In ‘bleeding Kansas,’ pro and anti-slavery factions clashed brutally, while opposition to the act in the north resulted in the founding of the republican party, a new political body founded on

the basis of opposing slavery’s expansion into the western territory. The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 860 was the final straw, and within three months, seven southern states had seceded from the United States: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. ( (Historytm n.d.))
Therefore, this led to the introduction of the Emancipation proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 862, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free’ declaring that all enslaved individuals in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the union would be freed on January , 863. When he signed the formal emancipation the following January, he didn’t actually release all of the estimated 4 million men, women, and children enslaved in the united states. The document only applied to enslaved person’s confederacy, not those in union-aligned border states. However, despite its primary purpose as a military measure, the proclamation signaled a significant shift in Lincolns views on slavery. Emancipation would change the nation after the civil war, shifting the focus from preserving the union to abolishing slavery. ( (Historytm n.d.))