Origins of the American Civil War

The origins of the American Civil War lay in the complex issues of slavery, expansionism, sectionalism, and political party politics of the Antebellum Period.

External links

• State by state popular vote for president in 1860 election
• Tulane course - article on 1860 election
• Tulane course - article on Fort Sumter
• "Making Two Nations: The Origins of the Civil War" by Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. In this 2003 speech, delivered at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, he offered his observations on federalism, nationalism, and the foundations of the American Civil War. Recorded for Talking History/University at Albany.
• The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• CivilWar.com Many source materials, including states' secession declarations.
• All Declarations of the Causes of Secession
• Alexander H. Stephens' Cornerstone Address
• An entry from Alexander Stephens' diary, dated 1866, reflecting on the origins of the Civil War.
• The Arguments of the Constitutional Unionists in 1850-51