ABSTRACT
The Civil War was not fought to end slavery. However, without slavery, the Civil War never would have been fought. In 1861, under the pretense of defending their individual rights, eleven Southern states seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. The cultures of the North and South had been different for 200 years, and time amplified that difference. Southerners worried that a Northern-dominated, Whig Congress might legislate against slavery, and their fears were stoked by a loose coalition of abolitionists, dedicated to removing the stain of slavery from the United States. Abolitionists like Angelina Grimke targeted the South, gradually driving a deep wedge between the slave states and the free. Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth were living proof in the North that slaves were real people who suffered and that African-Americans contained the same moral, intellectual, and general human potential as people of any other "race".
