25) Which statement from the above paragraph best reveals the causes of the American Civil War?
The election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede from the Union to form the Confederate States of America; four more joined them after the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
In the spring of 1861, decades of simmering tensions between the northern and southern United States over issues including states' rights versus federal authority, westward expansion and slavery exploded into the American Civil War (1861-65).
The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, pitted neighbor against neighbor and in some cases, brother against brother.