Name one problem that led to the Civil War.

Why this is the answer

Slavery, economic reasons and states' rights are all accepted, and one is enough. The three are not rival theories; they describe the same quarrel from three angles. Start with the money. During the 1800s the southern states came to rely on cotton and other crops grown for sale in Europe, and landowners depended on enslaved people to do that work. The North had a more industrial economy that did not need slave labor, and most northern states had passed laws against slavery. The southern states feared the federal government would end slavery, and they believed that would damage both their economy and their political independence. That contrast between the two economies is what the official answer "economic reasons" points to. Then came the land. As the country grew, slaveholders wanted to move into the new western states and territories and bring slavery with them, while many people in the North wanted the West kept free. Congress began passing laws that said where slavery was legal in the West and where it was not. States' rights was the argument the South put forward. Its claim was that each state could decide for itself and refuse to obey the national government when the two disagreed. Eleven southern states voted to secede and created the Confederate States of America. The northern states fought to keep the Union whole, and many northerners also wanted slavery ended. The war that followed ran from 1861 to 1865. This question sits right next to number 73, which asks only for the name of the war: the Civil War, or the War between the States. Listen for the wording. If you hear "name the war," give the name; if you hear "problem" or "led to," give a cause. And give a cause, not an event. Fort Sumter, where the first battle was fought, and Appomattox, where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, mark the start and the end of the war, not the reasons for it. To lock the three in, think of them as what, why and how: slavery was what the fight was over, the economy was why the South clung to it, and states' rights was how it justified leaving.