Political Platforms

The major explanation of the American civil war that took place in April 1961 was slavery. The two national political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the year 1956 build up political platforms that triggered the civil war. The parties build up tension, anger and hatred all over the nation in the minds of the people of the Northern and Southern America. The Northern side was putting up anti-slavery political forces which angered the Southern side who were well-known for this practice and even wanted to expand it to the Western territories. The Northern side was under the Republican Party, while the Southern side was under the Democratic Party (William, Geinapp, Steven and Kushma, 101).

In the year 1956, republicans supported the idea of a free Kansas, just when the fierce democrats had opposed this idea. The republican political platform that year raised a lot of Free State complaints, including the war against slaveholding and a demand for Kansas to be under the new constitution of a free state (Spurgeon, 94). The Southern democrats, however, continued to stand firm on their platform, advocating for slavery engagement and expansion. The Southern slave owners said that a restriction on slavery was a violation of the principal of states right. Tension over Slavery arose with the two sides, seriously campaigning for and against slavery in the region (Spurgeon, 94).

United States of America in those times had become a nation of two separate regions. With the Northern side growing in population more than the Southern, the Southern side was having a hard time influencing the national government. This was a fact that gave Lincoln a win in the presidential elections. Lincoln, however, got no single vote from the Southern side. The Southerners, thus, lost federal concern for the anti slavery demands. The democrats suffered a political decline, due to the increase in population and industrial output of the Southern side. Economic and social differences between the two sides were intensifying in the 1850s, the federal versus the states’ rights also were gaining immense fame. Some argued for greater states rights, while others were for the federal government to gain more control. The other issues in the republican and democratic platforms that caused great division were the abolition movement, the Catholicism stand on slavery and the election of Lincoln (Gienapp, 366). This issue on the political imbalance between the two sides intensified rivalry in America. The imbalance of power and the landslide of political influence contributed to the civil war too.

The war that broke out in the United States in the year 1861 on April could have been avoided things being done differently. Both the republicans and the democrats played a role in the outbreak of this war. While slavery was the cause of this disunion between the Northern side and the Southern side, disunion itself was the cause of the war, it was the one that sparked the war. Through the unity and peaceful negotiations, the war could have been avoided. Had this two sides not have forcefully demanded what they wanted then the war would not have been in the history of America. The politicians showed an example by moderately supporting the anti slavery force in the interest of unity. The two teams, however, never took the example, and thus, the outbreak of the civil war.