Aside from death and paying taxes, few things in life are truly inevitable. Each event occurs in response to another and is connected in a chain that leads to a certain conclusion. In 1776, the Southern United States felt no need to leave the Union to which it had willingly joined. But in 1861 it seemed inevitable that the Southern way of life could not exist in a society intent on destroying it. What provided the catalyst for such a dramatic turn of events? Slavery – a cornerstone of Southern society – existed peacefully within the Union since the National Declaration of 1776. Thus it was not slavery that fueled the secessionist flames in the Deep South, but contravention on the political, economic, and social levels. Secession occurred as a reaction to the North's vast violation of Southern ideals—a reaction that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the entire institution of slavery. The rift between the political ideals of the North and South grew as the Civil War approached. Many Southern politicians felt that their interests became less important as Northern liberals dominated the political arena. As the years passed and more and more states were accepted into the Union, it was clear that citizens of the North and South had different interests that needed to be satisfied in different ways. The 1820s brought the emergence of the territorial question – which states would be accepted into the Union, and under what provisions – and mass sectional politics (as Northern and Southern ideals drifted apart). Southerners felt that their needs were not represented in Congress, as although the Senate was balanced, the House had slightly more Northern representatives than the South. In 18… half of the document… about including the institution of slavery, but rather about promoting southern ideas as a whole. It is true that the CSA believed that slavery was an incredibly important part of their national mission, as evidenced by Alexander Stephens and his speech outlining black slavery as the “cornerstone” of the Confederate government (Stephens). But this was not the reason for secession, nor the only difference between the Union and the Confederacy. The long history of conflict in the Union led to what many saw as an inevitable end, but which in reality was a conclusion resulting from a line of precise and certain events that aggravated relations between the two parts of the country. The crux of this conflict – the disagreement over slavery – would prove to be the catalyst for the chain of political and social events that led to the war, but not as the reason for secession...