What were the causes of the American Civil War?

The Civil War happened due to the many differences between the North and the South. For example economic, social, cultural and political differences. These all helped lead America to a Civil War. But to an extent, the most important cause was the fact there were many disagreements with states' rights versus federal rights.

It was clear that there was always going to be a conflict between the federal government and the state governments because the federal government has the power to discuss bills and proposals for new laws. Whereas the state governments only has power to deal with policing, education and health care. And issues like slavery created tension between the two because the
Due to the fact that trade in the North was more successful made it intense between the North and South because it meant they would have to compete and instead of working together to the make the United States of America a better place there was a clear division.

There was a lot of tension between the North and South and this emphasised the separation of the nation's political parties. The two major parties within the nation, the Whigs and Democrats started to disagree with each other and slowly started to divide. The northerners favoured the Whigs, who became the Republicans. The Republicans were anti-slavery, and they really wanted to focus on education and industrialising the nation. However, the southerners disliked the Republican Party and saw it as a "divisive element and one that could lead to conflict." (http://www.historynet.com/causes-of-the-civil-war) When Abraham Lincoln had won the elections it was a big thing because he was the first Republican to become president. The South were not entirely happy when Abraham Lincoln became president, this was because they were afraid that he was going to abolish slavery as he was a Republican and mostly the northerners favoured him and they were all anti-slavery. This is the reason that there was a massive division