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The Civil War started in the year 1861. The main reason that the Civil War happened was that the South did not want to be governed by the North which was so far away. It was fought by the Confederacy (the South) and the Union (the North). Also, the Civil War was the most costly war in American history. Economic and political points of view gradually tore the two sections apart. The elections of Abraham Lincoln as president made the South think he was a threat to slavery and that was the start of the war. The North was established as an industrial society. Labor was needed but not the work of slaves. Immigrants from Europe started working in factories building the railroads of the North and settling the West. Very few Europe immigrants settled in the South.The South did not want to be industrial. They manufactured very little. Almost all goods had to imported to the South. They, therefore, opposed high taxes that were placed on imported goods. The manufacturing economy of the North, demanded high taxes to protect their own products from cheap foreign competition. Prelude the Civil War, the federal government's head source of reveue was taxes. Neither personal nor corprate income taxes existed. The taxes paid for most improvments made by the federal government. In an action to keep the taxes low, the South did not improve their roads, turnpikes, and canals.