Who Were Some of the Individuals That Contributed to the Coming of the Civil War The Civil War was brought about by many important people, some that wanted to preserve and some that wanted to eradicate the primary cause of the war, slavery. Therewere the political giants, such as Abraham Lincoln, andStephen Douglas. There were seditious abolitionists suchas John Brown, escaped slaves such as Dred Scott, andabolitionist writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thesewere the people who, ultimately, brought a beginning to theend of what Lincoln called “a moral, a social, and apolitical wrong”(Oates 66).Southern states, including the 11 states that formedthe Confederacy, depended on slavery to support theireconomy. Southerners used slave labor to produce crops,especially cotton. Although slavery was illegal in theNorthern states, only a small proportion of Northernersactively opposed it. The main debate between the North andthe South on the eve of the war was whether slavery shouldbe permitted in the Western territories recently acquiredduring the Mexican war, which included New Mexico, part ofCalifornia, and Utah. “Opponents of slavery were concernedabout its expansion, in part because they did not want tocompete against slave labor”(Oates 15).In 1851, a literary event startled the country. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American writer and abolitionist,wrote an antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that waspublished serially in a newspaper and in book form in 1852. “It was a forceful indictment of slavery and one of themost powerful novels of its kind in American literature. The success of the book was unprecedented, selling 500,000copies in the United States alone within five years, and itwas translated into more than 20 foreign languages”(Oates29). It was widely read in the States and abroad, andmoved many to join the cause of abolition. The Southindignantly denied this indictment of slavery. ...
