Summary: The Effects Of The Civil War Upon The American West

The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat, having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the “irrepressible conflict.” In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.

Army and the forceful action used to confine the natives, the construction on Indian land, and the massive slaughter of the buffalo which the Indians relied on in every aspect of life. The mistreatment of the Native Americans has been going on for hundreds of years, way before the Gold Rush began. The American government has taken land that they are unable to return to this day. They have deprived the plains Indians of their culture and freedom. Immigration from other countries was at its peak, but America still wasn’t able to call people, that had resided in the United States for many years, citizens. Even the Native American’s, that had lived on the continent before it was even discovered, were denied citizenship unless they were Anglo-Saxon Protestant. To this day, many look at the Indians as a joke; The Seminoles as “The Tribe that Purchased A Billion Dollar Business.” Children are being taught about friendship between the American Settlers and the Natives, they are being lied to. The upcoming generations won’t understand the horrors of unnecessary warfare against innocent people, and they will only know to take what they want, even if it isn’t rightfully theirs. America as a nation has to be stopped from draping curtains over the defeat of the plains Indians: their wiping out of an entire people, just as they did to the

Between the Age of Exploration to the end of the Civil War, the United States of America has undergone countless events, people, and ideas in which the history of the country was forever altered. However, out of all these moments in history, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, is by far the most important event in the United States. Known as the largest and most destructive conflict in American history, the Civil War brought into question what kind of nation it would become. The importance of the Civil War can be found in the conflicts, deaths, and questions that were created by this brief event in

Although the horrors of the American Civil War and Reconstruction within Indian Territory were fresh. Yet, the presence of Indian Territory changed drastically between 1865 and 1889, because of the “Second Trail of Tears”, the unrest of the Southern Plains tribes of western Indian Territory, and the impact of U.S. Polices on Indian Territory.

The American Civil War occurred between 1861 and 1865 and is largely considered the most destructive conflict in U.S. history, resulting in approximately one million military casualties and an inestimable number of civil victims. Much controversy still surrounds the nature of this conflict, as its determining causes are complex. Contemporary international perception may have placed a progressive, anti-slavery label on the whole affair, yet the basic fact remains that nineteenth century America was an increasingly inhomogeneous country and prone to blatant discrepancy.

The tensions of the Civil War are very much still alive in the Southern United States one hundred and fifty years after the Confederacy surrendered to Union forces to end the war. While the tensions may have mitigated away from full-fledged war between North and South, there still remain tensions along racial and cultural lines well beyond the war. In Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic these long standing tensions left over from the war are delved into by Horwitz as he makes his way across the south to see how the old Confederacy is viewed in the modern world of the United States. What Horwitz found was a dualistic society differing views on the Confederacy and the events of the Civil War. Dualities left from the war in aspects such as racial tensions, the meaning of the Confederate flag even between North and South entirely. Those living in the South can be seen holding a resonating connection to the Civil War. It becomes clear in Confederates in the Attic the Civil War not only became the catalyst of such dualities in Southern society, but still further shape and perpetuate these dualities long after the Civil Wars conclusion.

The removal of various members of Native American tribes from their indigenous lands to that which was east of the Mississippi was a widely debated topic in the early portion of the 19th century. Morally, proponents of this action cited the fact that these Native Americans were "savages" (Jackson) with no rights to their land; legally, they were expected to adhere to the rights of the states and the federal government of the U.S. Those who were against Indian removal believed that legally they were entitled to their land because of their lengthy history in occupying it, and that morally their rights as people substantiated their claims to the land. A review of both arguments reflects the fact that the latter position is the most convincing.

The existence of the Indian nations as distinct independent communities within the limits of the United States seems to be drawing to a close.... You are aware that our Brethren, the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Creeks of the South have severally disposed of their country to the United States and that a portion of our own Tribe have also emigrated West of the Mississippi--but that the largest portion of our Nation still remain firmly upon our ancient domain....Our position there may be compared to a solitary tree in an open space, where all the forest trees around have been prostrated by a furious

Growing up in the west, Jackson “fought Indians as a militia officer” (Tindall 331) and considered the removal of Indians his primary presidential priority (Tindall 333). In his statement regarding the Indian Removal Act of 1830, he argues that removal is necessary as it “puts an end to all possible danger of collision” between Indian tribes and the American slaves and reasons that removing Indians could potential lead to Indians “cast[ing] off their savage habits and becom[ing]n interesting, civilized, and Christian community” (Jackson). The basis of this argument relies entirely on whether the Indians were a savage and uncivilized community that posed a direct threat to the American government. Primarily, Dale Van Every, an American writer, argues that the “forces that led to removal did not come ... from the poor white frontiersmen who were the neighbors of the Indians. They came from industrialization … and the greed of businessmen” (Zinn 136). The tribes, therefore, did not pose threats to neighboring Americans but were rather simply an obstacle to the rapidly expanding American. Secondarily, many Native American tribes had actually become increasingly civilized (or increasingly American) by the passing of the act. A good example of a Native American tribe whose advancements were discredited by biased

The United States was able to maintain both liberty and slavery at the same time until around 1848. Between 1848 and the time of the Civil War, many events, mostly pertaining to Westward Expansion, caused a greater divide between the Union. The election of Lincoln was the last draw for the South because they grew tired of negotiating and not getting their way, causing them to succeed from the Union and sparking the Civil War in 1861. With all the acquired new land that was gained in 1848 from the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, people had to start to address the long standing issues that involved a state's slave status. The new land left both sides vying for new states to join their side of the debate, giving them more power and land over the

In this essay, I will discuss the ways the South was fated to fight the Civil War, and how this war has affected our country during the past 150 years. States’ rights played a major role in the ‘inevitability’ of the war; the southern states wanted more power to go to the individual states, while the northern states favored a stronger federal government. “The South increasingly grew away from the rest of the nation… this civilization had difficulty in surviving during the nineteenth century- a bourgeois century… the difficulty… was neither economic, nor political, nor moral, nor ideological; it was all of these.” As Genovese said, the South was growing away from the rest of the country. This was because the southern states had completely different ways of life that the north did not agree with, nor understand.

Pre-civil war there were three main political powers within the united-states. These powers each supported the one of the 3 geographical areas they were from. Henry Clay from the west, Danial Webster from the north, and John Calhoun from the south these men where consisted political giants because of the impact they had on the politics of their time. This includes but is not limited to times such as the war of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the first Missouri compromise, the second Missouri compromise, the fugitive slave law, and the tariff of 1825.

Within the decades that proceeded before the Civil War had taken place, Americans witnessed an abundance of trial, error, and triumph during their attempt to revise the American society. Some of the main focal points of the remaking of our society would have been the Market Revolution, Urbanization, Abolition, States Rights and Westward Expansion. Without these contributing factors, our society may not have excelled in the ways that it did prior to the Civil War. ("The Pre-Civil War Era (1815–1850)." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.)

The aftermath of the Civil War shook the nation. A new way of life was beginning for the people of America. A way of life that was beautiful and free to some and absolutely devastating to the rest. The country had changed and nobody did a better job at documenting this change than the authors. The authors used this new world to explore new and unique stories as well as capturing what it was actually like living in the post-Civil War times. This paper will examine post-Civil War Literature and its importance to documenting this period in history.

​The effects of the Civil War brought about changes in the United States. The country had to answer the question: To what level of moral and ethical conduct do we want Americans to be held? Loyalties were seriously evaluated. People had to decide if they held their loyalty to the country as a whole, their state, their families, or even to humanity as a whole. They had to decide if it was right to own another person, or if the slavery system was justified as a way to keep the Southern economy going. Through all this contemplation, people wrote about their thoughts and fears, and as a result, people abandoned romanticism and became realists. Many writings of the Civil War, whether informational or literary, reflect