Explain the ways in which controversy over the extension of slavery into western territories contributed to the causes of the civil war from 1800-1860.

The American Civil War, took place in the United States between the Northern and Southern States from 1861 to 1865. This conflict began when the Southern states separated from the Union and formed the Confederate States of the United States. America. The Civil War was motivated by the divergence between the two groups regarding the abolition of slavery and the extension of the new territories that were being occupied in the west.

During the 1850s, the United States was a “divided nation” between the northern states and the southern states. Although there was some agreement and similarity between the sides regarding US imperialist policy, there was also a huge disagreement about of the model of society with which the new territories would be populated.

The North was characterized by the development of a strong industry, a defender of wage free labor and a strong urban middle class. The South, on the other hand, had a largely agricultural economy, focused on cotton production in the plantation system, with extensive use of slave labor.

The great divergence between the two sides during the 1850s revolved around the question of the policy to be adopted in the new territories that had been conquered. The South defended the extension of the slave model to the new territories, and the North defended that the new territories should be constituted with the prohibition of slavery.

This North-South dispute over the use of slave labor intensified after the occupation of Nebraska and Kansas. US President Franklin Pierce was in favor of extending slavery to Kansas, and this generated great dissatisfaction in the abolitionist wing. The dispute in Kansas even led to minor armed conflicts between abolitionist and slavery militias in the late 1850s.

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