The American Civil War: A Historical Analysis

The analysis of how the Southern States lost the Civil War is based on three articles, each with a different perspective. According to Died of Democracy by David Donald, the Confederates were defeated because of internal challenges facing the 11 Sothern States seeking independence. Some of the challenges facing the Confederate States of America included a predominantly agricultural economy and slave revolts. In Why the South Lost by Beringer et al., the authors argue that the Confederates lost because of their weak nationalism, which was constantly undermined by the feelings of guilt over slavery. Confederates’ nationalism had shallow foundations, which caused the Southern to lack the will to fight for their nation. In the Blue over Grey: Why the North Won George Frederickson articulates that the North prevailed over the South because the North’s social system was more adaptive to the changing present. From the accounts of the war, it is clear that Southern States had the will to fight for their ideologies and social system. The Southern society was less innovate and adaptive; however, the internal challenges facing the Confederates states of America is the best explanation for why the South lost the Civil War.

Soldiers of the American Civil War were overwhelmed by a time where weaponry and technological developments were thriving. This brutal war changed the soldiers, both mentally and physically, and continued to have an impact throughout their entire lives. There were not only many deaths during the war, but also prior to the war as many soldiers took their own life. They would experience disturbing thoughts and events in their mind that could not be explained until they became known as mental illnesses. The exploration of psychological disorders following the Civil War improved medical diagnostic tools and the way patients were treated which transformed the treatment of mental illness by creating new ways of discovering illnesses, treating patients, and developing the foundation for the future of psychology throughout America.

A Civil War is a battle between the same citizens in a country. The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the independence for the Confederacy or the survival of the Union. By the time Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1861, in the mist of 34 states, the constant disagreement caused seven Southern slave states to their independence from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy, generally known as the South, grew to include eleven states. The states that remained devoted to the US were known as the Union or the North. The number one question that is never completely understood about the Civil War is what caused the war. There were multiple events that led to the groundbreaking, bloody, and political war.

Abraham Lincoln once stated “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln is a hero for the citizens of America because his determination and courage to ending slavery even if it meant war caused peace in this nation. Slavery was the vital cause of the American Civil War. The north and the south both had their differences on how to run the country. People in the North believed in unity and that slavery should not exist because “all men are created equally.” On the other hand, the South believed in continuing slavery. People tried to talk it out and come to a middle ground after both sides compromising, however that didn’t work and caused war. Ideological differences were a vital role to making the American Civil War an inevitable event.

The Civil War that occurred was one of the darkest times in our history as a country. It was a time where there was a complete breakdown of social and political systems. Hundreds of thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands more were aversely affected. However, it was also a time of remembrance and significant moral progress. It is remembered as the turning point in American History and would be the foundation for the Civil Rights movement many years later.

When the American Civil War began in the spring of 1861, those flocking to enlistment stations in states both north and south chiefly defined their cause as one of preservation. From Maine to Minnesota, young men joined up to preserve the Union. From Virginia to Texas, their future foes on the battlefield enlisted to preserve a social order, a social order at its core built on the institution of slavery and racial superiority . Secession had not been framed by prominent Southerners like Robert Toombs as a defensive measure to retain the fruits of the revolution against King George, a fight against those who sought to “intrique insurrection with all its nameless horrors.” (Toombs Speech) On January 1, 1863, when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect the war became a revolution. The Union, the soldiers in blue fought to preserve could no longer exist. On every mile of soil, they would return to the Stars and Stripes from that moment on, the fabric of society would be irrevocably changed. In May of 1865, with the abolition of slavery engrained into the Constitution with the passage of the 13th Amendment, the Confederate armies of Lee and Johnston disbanded, and Lincoln dead of an assassin’s bullet; this change was the only certainty the torn fabric of the newly reunited states was left to be resown. Andrew Johnson and Southern Democrats believed the revolution of 1863 had gone far enough. Radical Republicans and African-Americans sought instead to bring it to

Adams is expressing to Jefferson about the need of a stable economy, that at that time, was not being given by the major flaws of the Articles of Confederation. The Articles did not give the government power to tax, regulate trade, or even set a national currency. Farming was an important occupation as stated by the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture. (Document F) It was limited by the Proclamation Line of 1763 and an unstable economy.

In the year 1864 the American Civil War was drawing to an end. The Confederate States of America was slowly running out of able bodied men and supplies to supply the army needed to ward off the Union’s invasion of the South. At this point in time the leader of the Union Army was Ulysses S. Grant. He devised a plan to escalate the process in which the Confederate Army was running out of supplies. Grant’s plan was to send Union troops to the West of the main conflict for them to loop around and cut off railroad lines, and burn farm lands. The greatest of these was the Army that burned thousands of acres in Georgia, yet another army led by General David Hunter might have been more decisive if it had not been stopped at the Battle of Lynchburg. General David Hunter was ordered by General Grant to make his way down the Shenandoah Valley and destroy as much farm land as possible along the way. On top of this General Hunter terrorized towns by pillaging stores and homes. The Southerners knew that a similar fate would become Lynchburg if they did not do anything to prevent Hunter’s advance. The people of Lynchburg worked hard at building up defenses protecting Lynchburg. They had to resort to using mostly young boys and elderly men since most able bodies men had already died in the War or were still fighting under General E. Lee. The boys and elderly men that maned the defenses did not have a good chance of warding of the large army led by General David Hunter; as a result, General

In the time after the Civil War the American South found itself in a sudden and un-prepared for state of great cultural flux, which came coupled with the destruction and rebuilding efforts of the physically ravaged post-war landscape; dubbing this new post-antebellum Southern era the time of Reconstruction. The beginning of this time saw the freeing of the slaves and the end of (legal) slave economics in the South, and therefore brought with it an initial sense of hope for the black Southern inhabitants. However, this hope was quickly diminished and replaced as the fear and powerful status-quo enforcing measures of the white upper class began to take hold throughout their society. Though a variety of efforts were used against black

Tensions grew between the North and the South causing what is known as the worse war tragedies of all time. The American Civil War was the bloodiest war in our history of the United States killing over 620,000 American soldieries. Many African Americans around 1861-1865 lost a family member or someone close to them. This war effected both sides of the nation, for both the North and the South. African Americans also were killed in this war being that they fought in it too. Slaves, southern people and northern people were effected mentally and physically after this war. The southern economy became a one crop economy because as the cotton gin was invented factories depended on the cotton during slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture by ++purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. This disagreement between the North and the South made a major difference in the economy.

The American Civil War, which began in 1861 to 1865, has gone down in history as the one of the most significant events to have ever occurred in the United States of America, thus far. At that time, questions had arose wondering how the United States ever got so close to hitting rock bottom, especially being that it was a conflict within the country itself. Hostility steadily grew through the years dividing the nation further and further, and finally leading to the twelfth day in April 1861 in Fort Sumter, North Carolina. The American Civil War was an irrepressible battle and aside from the obvious physical effects of the war, the disagreement over states rights, the act of slavery, and the raising of tariffs played crucial roles in the

The American Civil War is a pivotal point in the United States history. It changed the way that the country viewed one another on a much larger scale than neighbor to neighbor; but friends to enemies. The dates of the Civil War are, April 12, 1861 through April 9, 1865. The war shaped the United States into the country that it is today. The events that led up to the American Civil War vary based on people’s views of the northern United States and the southern United States. The period before the Civil War and the tensions that led up to the war are what caused a breaking point for the citizens that were involved. The moral issue of slavery in the south, states rights, the Dred Scott decision, and the Underground Railroad led to the Civil War and pushed the northern states to their breaking point of going to war on their own soil, with the south.

The American Civil War was a bloody war of four years fought between the United States, or the Union, and several Southern slave states known as the Confederate States of America. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson, “The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states.” When Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860, seven states succeeded from the United States forming the Confederate States of America. People of the North, along with the Lincoln administration, failed to recognize the legitimacy of the secession. They feared that with the secession, it would damage democracy and would be the cause of breaking up the United States into small countries, making the word “United” in United States meaningless. The Confederate States wanted to keep slavery and expand slavery into the newly claimed western territories, while the Union feared that expanding slavery would threaten their control in the Senate because they would be outnumbered by slave states. The two sides failed to come up with a compromise finding the Missouri Compromise of 1850 unconstitutional in 1857. Because the Missouri Compromise was deemed unconstitutional, there was a famous court case where a black salve, Dred Scott, sued for his freedom claiming Missouri citizenship when he was moved to New York. The ruling of the court was that

In 1861, a horrific war began. Nobody had any idea that this war would become the deadliest war in American history. It wasn’t a regular war, it was a civil war opposing the Union in the North and the Confederate States in the South.. The Civil War cost many people’s lives on the battlefield and beyond. In addition it cost an extreme amount of money for the nation which possibly could have been avoided if the war had turned to happen a little differently.

Slavery was the most important cause of the Civil War, because this single issue divided the North and South to begin with. The ideological differences between the North and South led to economic differences, conflicts over newly acquired territories, disputes over the constitution, and political extremism. The Election of 1860 was the culmination of these disputes and caused the South to secede in 1861 and guided the way towards the Civil War.