How a tax increase helped spark the American Civil WarIn 1828 the U.S. Congress passed a tariff that increased the rates on imports into the United States to as much as 50 percent. (more)See all videos for this articleThe of the Southern states (in chronological order, , , , , , , , , , , and ) in 1860–61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over . Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture—mostly smaller farms that relied on free labour—remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, along with the telegraph. 1 of 2How the Whitney Plantation teaches the history of slaveryMuseum director Ashley Rogers explains how the Whitney Plantation became the only former plantation site in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on slavery.(more)See all videos for this articleInspection and Sale of a NegroInspection and Sale of a Negro, engraving from the book Antislavery (1961) by Dwight Lowell Dumond. (more)By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as and that relied on slaves as the main . Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners invested their money in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners. 1860 presidential campaign“The Undecided Political Prize Fight,” a lithograph depicting the presidential campaign of 1860 and featuring Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. (more)The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the of 1784. When the slave territory of sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the “peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labour, came to believe, in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated. White Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through compromise. When , the candidate of the explicitly antislavery , won the , seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the . Fort SumterConfederate forces bombarding Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, in a lithograph by Currier & Ives.(more)In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on at the entrance to the harbour of , South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under . Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy., The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union [e] ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union., American Civil War, four-year war (1861–65) fought between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America. It arose out of disputes over slavery and states’ rights..