The Civil War was a war between states, in the government of the United States between states that were slave and states that were free.
The rights of property ownership are involved in state rights, and slaves held as property in slave-holding states were not recognized as such in states that were free. Therefore, the principle of slavery became involved not alone in the individual ownership of slaves, but also in the rights of a state, and the relationship of states to each other in the government of the United States.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, one of the first things to be settled was the boundaries as between states of the land comprising the thirteen original states; and as an outcome of this settlement, there came into possession of the United States all of that territory ceded by Great Britain in 1783, which was not included in the boundaries of those states. This territory, in brief, may be described as the territory east of the Mississippi, and north and south of the Ohio River; and out of this territory and that west of the Mississippi added later (1803) through the Louisiana Purchase, most of the new states were formed that came into the Union before the Civil War. And this was the beginning of what is known as the "public domain"--that is, land owned by the Federal Government.
In 1785, Congress passed a law which has become general in its application to all public lands of the United States. It is a law for the uniform survey of public lands into townships six miles square, subdivided into sections containing 640 acres, and quarter sections containing 160 acres. The purpose of the government in making this survey was to make public lands in the territories of the government easy of settlement, and as the townships became settled, to develop in them the local township form of government.
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The territory north of the Ohio River was designated the "Northwest Territory." As soon as the public lands in this territory were thrown open to settlers, they began to pour in. Indeed, in many instances, they went ahead of the survey.
The next step taken by Congress was to pass a law, in 1787, for the government and protection of those settlers in this Northwest Territory, and in this law Congress made provision that slavery should be prohibited. Therefore, states formed in this territory had to come into the Union as free states. This was a restriction of slavery, however, which did not apply to the territory south of the Ohio, nor west of the Mississippi; so that when a new state came into the Union, formed out of either one of these territories, it became a great political factor in our government either for or against slavery.
In the passing of the years, many changes were taking place in our government, but there came a time when the people began to realize that slavery was spreading and that our government was politically divided between states that were slave and states that were free--or, in other words, that in the principle of slavery the peace and preservation of the Union were involved.
And thus it happened that the slave-holding states, not being able to live at peace in the Union, decided to go out of it, and live by themselves. The right of a state to leave the Union was called "the right of secession"--a right which the North held did not exist under the Constitution.
Nevertheless, one by one, under the leadership of South Carolina, December 20, 1860, the slave-holding states announced their secession, either by act of state legislature or in convention assembled; and on February 4, 1861, there had been formed in our government a Southern confederacy. At this time the whole number of states in the Union was thirty-two, and of this number eleven entered the Southern confederacy.