The Breakdown of the Two-Party System: An Analysis
This seven-page undergraduate paper examines the breakdown of the two-party system in the United States before the Civil War. The author notes that the divisive issue of slavery and the passion in the South for state's rights presented the two major parties with challenges they proved unable to overcome and led to the breakdown of the two-party system, which became the principle cause of the Civil War. The breakdown of the two-party system was a slow development, but it was accelerated during the last decade before the Civil War by the weakness of the Whigs and the emergence of the new Republican Party in the North.