When did the People’s War break out in the United States?

The American Civil War was the product of the contradiction between the two systems of the North and the South reaching a certain level. Of course, in addition to this fundamental reason, there are other factors that jointly promoted the beginning of the Civil War.

First, territorial expansion intensified the contradiction between the two economic systems of the North and the South. After the founding of the United States, the United States actively pursued a policy of large-scale territorial expansion. In 1803, taking advantage of the contradiction between Britain and France and the failure of the French army, it "purchased" the French North American colony of Louisiana from Napoleon for $15 million, expanding the U.S. territory by one and a half times, from the original 890,000 square miles. is 2 million square miles. In 1810, the United States seized the Spanish territory of West Florida; in 1819, it forcibly purchased East Florida for US$5 million. In 1823, Monroe proposed that "America is the America of Americans", paving the way for the expansion of the United States in the American continent. In 1835, slave owners incited British immigrants to riot in Texas, Mexico, and became independent from Mexico and annexed by the United States. From 1846 to 1848, he provoked a war with Mexico and occupied all the territory of Western Mexico north of the Rio Grande River. In 1846, Oregon was captured from the British without a single soldier or a single gold or silver, covering an area of ??280,000 square miles, equivalent to 5/6 of the area of ??the original 13 states in the United States. While intensifying its territorial expansion, the United States was so greedy that it began to get involved in East Asia. It not only benefited a lot from China, but also opened Japan's locked door with its powerful ships and artillery. At the same time, large numbers of immigrants arrived. From 1800 to 1850, the population of the United States increased from 5.3 million to 23 million. Territorial expansion, overseas invasion, and immigrant inflows accelerated the development of capitalist industry in the northern and northeastern United States. The contradictions between the capitalist economy and the slave plantation economy were increasingly exposed and intensified.

The north and northeast of the United States are home to almost all of the country's important industries. In the first half of the 19th century, the American Industrial Revolution mainly took place in this region. The rapid development of modern industry requires a large amount of labor.

The South of the United States, since the Revolutionary War, has been developing along the direction of the slave economy and has always maintained the nature of a colonial economy. Take 1860 as an example. At that time, the population of the South was 9 million, of which 4 million were black slaves. Britain's cotton textile industry was developing rapidly and required a large amount of cotton. Slave owners shipped about 80% of cotton and other industrial raw materials to Britain, and imported large quantities of cheap cotton from Britain. Industrial products. They demand lower tariffs and free trade, while the North advocates protective tariffs and opposes free trade in order to protect its own industrial and commercial interests and prevent foreign trade competition. This is a completely irreconcilable contradiction. Therefore, the opposition between the two different social systems in the North and the South inevitably makes the contradiction between the two parties increasingly acute. As Marx said, the current struggle between the South and the North is nothing but a struggle between two social systems, machine slavery and free labor. This struggle broke out because the two systems could no longer coexist peacefully together on the North American continent. It can only end with the victory of one of the systems.