Answer questions from the reading Karl Marx’s analysis of the causes of the U. S. Civil War (document attached) 1. Why does Karl Marx in his article The North American Civil War of October, 1861 claim that the mainstream British press falsely describe that war as an issue of free-trade vs. protectionist economic policy? 2. What proof does Marx offer for his claim that the true goal of the Confederacy was the maintenance of a system of slavery, rather than the British press’ claim that the Civil War was about the Southerner’s desire for independence from Northern domination? 3. Briefly identify why according to Marx’s analysis, attempts to spread slavery into new territories resulted in the formation of the Republican Party in the 1850s. 4. Why according to Marx’s analysis of the economics of slave-based production was it essential that slavery expand into new territories? 5. Why according to Marx’s analysis of the politics of the U.S. before the Civil War was it essential that the slave states maintain an equal number of slave and free states. 6. Why according to Marx’s analysis was is essential for the internal social stability of the South that slavery expand into new territories? 7. Why according to Marx was the Republican Party’s platform of merely limiting slavery to where it already existed rather than abolishing it was nonetheless a fundamental threat to Southern slavery and the slave economy?
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