Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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The causes of war.

Time will not permit a consideration of the causes which brought on this great conflict. They are to be gathered from remote and far distant times, as well as the epoch of the great event. Echoes of the battles of Naseby and Marston Moor; differences in the mental and religious characteristics of Puritan and Cavalier; divergent interests springing from dissimilar commercial and industrial conditions; conflicting notions as to the purposes of the Federal Government; crimination and recrimination as to the alleged prostitution of its powers for the advantage or disadvantage of the two sections; the institution of slavery; the attempted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law; the nullification by States of this Federal statute; the abolition movement; the John Brown Raid; the growing hostility between the peoples of the North and the South; and finally, the triumph of sectionalism in the elections of 1860.