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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWe\u2019ve restocked ! <\/em>Causes of the Civil War<\/a> is back in our bookstore! To celebrate, we are offering 25% off individual copies and sales on all <\/em>classroom bundles<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Check out our <\/em>bookstore<\/em><\/a> today for more details!<\/em><\/p>\n This volume of primary documents on the causes of the Civil War presents the history of the American political order during its most tumultuous and challenging time. More than a century and a half after the crisis came to an end, Americans remain fascinated by it, as they should be. The Civil War is the defining event in American political development. It put to\u00a0the test whether the \u201cone people,\u201d as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence<\/a>, would remain one.<\/p>\n The documents selected for inclusion in this volume range from a\u00a0little-known 1819 congressional speech<\/a> by James Tallmadge Jr. on the future\u00a0status of slavery in the territories to Abraham Lincoln\u2019s widely\u00a0read First Inaugural Address in 1861<\/a>, in which he tried to prevent civil war as Southern states seceded. In between, the reader will discover the central political, constitutional, moral, social, and economic themes that\u00a0shaped the nation\u2019s history during its most critical period, as told by those\u00a0who lived through it.<\/p>\n The documents trace these themes from both the Northern and Southern\u00a0points of view. In their famous debate in 1830<\/a>, Senator Daniel Webster (Massachusetts) and Senator Robert Y. Hayne (South Carolina) argued over two\u00a0radically different understandings of the origin and nature of the American Union and the legality of secession. William Lloyd Garrison<\/a>, John C. Calhoun<\/a>, and Abraham Lincoln<\/a> discussed the proper relationship between the Constitution and the\u00a0Union, and its effect on understanding secession and the dissolution of the\u00a0government. George Fitzhugh<\/a> and James Henry Hammond<\/a> argued that the slave system of the South was superior to the free labor system of the North, while William H. Seward<\/a> and Abraham Lincoln<\/a> defended free labor. Speeches and resolutions before Congress; interpretations of executive power by Abraham Lincoln<\/a>; and arguments\u00a0in the\u00a0Dred Scott\u00a0Supreme Court case<\/a> addressed the\u00a0use and abuse of the legitimate powers under the Constitution of the three\u00a0branches of government. Finally, and most important, Lincoln<\/a> and Stephen A. Douglas<\/a> argued over the limits of popular sovereignty, and thus over the\u00a0connection between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.<\/p>\n Despite these different perspectives, however, all of the documents in this\u00a0collection revolve around one central idea that is at the heart of any attempt\u00a0to understand the basis of the Civil War: slavery, or perhaps more rightly,\u00a0the extension of slavery into the territories. As territories organized into new\u00a0states and came into the Union, each entered with the power either to protect or to disallow slavery forever by constitutional amendment, depending on\u00a0whether proslavery or antislavery forces dominated in Congress and in the\u00a0state legislatures. It was in the territories, therefore, that the future of slavery,\u00a0and thus the future of the nation, would be decided.<\/p>\n No one can read these documents today without sensing the overwhelming significance the debate over slavery had in the minds of the people of\u00a0that era; it was the only serious issue that threatened to divide them and\u00a0destroy their political existence. South Carolina\u2019s Declaration of the Causes of Secession<\/a>, like similar reports issued by each of the states\u00a0that eventually left the Union, identified the protection of slavery as the primary justification for secession. From all points of view and all walks of life,\u00a0the core argument always came back to slavery. From these documents the reader can come to understand and appreciate not only the history of the United States during the Civil War era, but\u00a0also something about the challenges Americans have faced and the progress\u00a0we have made as \u201cone people.\u201d If we are to remain one and dedicated to our\u00a0defining proposition\u2014that all are created equal\u2014every generation of Americans must understand the time and the reasons why we almost ceased to be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Causes-cropped-portraits-only-1024x219.jpeg\")