Essay about The American Civil War

The North’s economy was based on textiles, shipping, and skilled trades. Their climate was not suited for the same type of agricultural products that the South produced like cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. Northern states like New England manufactured and shipped goods like guns, clocks, plows and axes (page 399). One reason for the South’s dependence on slavery is because their economy relied on the existence of slave labor. For example, the cultivation of cotton depended largely on slave labor, with 75% of the crop grown on plantations,

The economies of the North and South were vastly different leading up to the Civil War. Money was equivalent to power in both regions. For the North, the economy was based on industry as they were more modern and self-aware. They realized that industrialization was progress and it could help rid the country of slave labor as it was wrong. The North’s population had a class system but citizens could move within the system, provided they made the money that would allow them to move up in class. The class system was not as rigid as it was in the South. By comparison, the South wanted to hold on to its economic policy. In doing so, the practice of slavery kept the social order firmly in place. The economic factors, social issues and a growing

Factories in the North attracted former subsistence farmers because it was more efficient to buy food rather than to grow it. Systems like the Lowell System employed young women, provided them with room and board, and paid the women for their work in the factory. With the rise of numerous new American inventions, machines became more efficient and the United States had soon developed one of the best industrial economies in the world. Because of the need for effective transportation to distribute goods, new forms of transportation such as elaborate railroad and canal systems emerged. The south, on the other hand, clung to the slave-based plantation system. The economy was based largely on the production of raw materials, mainly cotton. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin allowed the cultivation of short staple cotton to bring Southern planters great success. Because the cotton industry was so lucrative, Southerners had no reason to become industrialized. However, the industrial economy of the North and the agrarian economy of the South led to a colonial relationship between the two, meaning that the South sold raw materials to the North in exchange for manufactured goods. The system put the South in an inferior position to the North, which obviously upset Southerners and led to greater tension between the two regions.

The American Civil War lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865. It was the bloodiest war in American history, killing approximately 620,000 soldiers in total. The War was fought and won by the North, ensuring that all the United States would stay united and slavery would be illegal in The United States. However, history is one of the most complicated things in the world. It’s also one of the most important things in the world because history is what made the present possible. Historians have debated the cause of The American Civil War for over a hundred and fifty years. This is a very complicated question as history can be a matter of opinion sometimes. When looking at history, one of the most important tools you can have is written words from past men and women of the time. “It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercource with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us their heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.” William Ellery Channing an American preacher 1780-1842. Writings from the time will reveal the true history of the time. The writings of John C. Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, and Henry Clay, are three opinions that highlight the causes of the Civil War.

Americans primarily know the Civil War today as a war between northern states and southern states. The war began because each side perceived its liberty to be at risk. However, the fight underlined core differences between the beliefs of the North and South. “I could easily prove that almost all the differences which may be noticed between characters of the Americans in the Southern and in the Northern states have originated in slavery”, said Alexis De Tocqueville while visiting the United States in the 1800’s (Keene, p. 270). What began as a fight for liberty soon became a fight over the institution of slavery. Both sides had different interpretations of enslavement and the moral questions involved with the topic. The book What They Fought For addresses these questions in profound detail using letters from members of both the Union and Confederate army.

The American Civil War, known as the War Between the States’ by some, was America’s bloodiest war. The Civil War consisted of over 10,000 battles between The Union Army of the North and the South’s Confederate Army, which lasted almost 4 years. The War was fought in 23 states and of the more than 10,000 battles only about 50 were major battles. (Weider, The Civil War, 1) In this paper the reader will learn about important dates of the war also about 4 of the bloodiest battles in the war; the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Chickamauga, and the Battle of Gettysburg. The American Civil War had more than 650,000 casualties. (Weider, The Civil War, 1)

The war with the most death of Americans was not the World Wars, Cold War, Vietnam War or Korean War, but the Civil War. The Civil War is one of the most monumental moments in the United States that threaten the stability of the Union. The United States was split into two opposing sides, the Union and the Confederates, with opposing ideas; Americans pinned against one another in combat for their ideals and goals. The Civil War has multiple causes, but the most renowned reason was the abolishment of slavery. With the conclusion of the Civil War and the defeat of the Confederates, many efforts were made to establish the freedom of the slaves, such as the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and the status of freedman. However, with the discontent that was harbored in the former Confederates, “white southerners [tried to] reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866”; this thus led to the creation of the Black Codes ("Black Codes." History.com). The white southerners tried to regain control over freed slaves, acquire cheap labor and establish white supremacy through the Black Codes. The Black Code was mocking the efforts of the civil war since it recognized and limited the rights established in the civil war for the freed slaves, and recreated the slave like working environment before the civil war.

After the Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, northern and southern states were unable to see eye to eye. Both sides had different point of views regarding slavery issues. After the election of Lincoln, many southerner’s states were fed up and decided to secede the Union. These seceded states were known as the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. The formation of the seceded states led to a bloody battle between Americans on their own soil at the dispense of their citizens.

War is often thought of as an act, or perhaps numerous acts of violence that are used to settle conflicts between nations. These events can be studied by breaking them up into battles, or campaigns, but other factors are also in play, such as the economic, cultural, social or military issues. All of these, and of course many more made a difference in the way the Civil War was fought, as well as the way that the post war era was handled.

The Civil War was an internal conflict between the South and the North in the United States. In 1860, the first shots were fired, and the war would go on for 4 years. There were many events that led up to this war, including the many differences between the North and South. They had differences in their ideas of slavery, tariffs, state rights, and trade. These differences would all contribute to the start of the American Civil War.

In the early years of the republic, when the Northern states were providing for immediate or gradual emancipation of the slaves, many leaders had supposed that slavery would die out. In 1787 the Northwest Ordinance had banned slavery in the Northwest Territory. In 1808 many southerners thought that slavery would end soon. The expectations turned out to be false.

     The United States Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, represented a time of major change around the world. This civil war that absorbed our nation during the mid 1860s not only fought for the rights of African Americans in the United States but for the rights and respects of African Americans around the globe. These times of fighting altered the lives of women living in a strongly patriarchal society by giving females a chance to live independently and successfully while their husbands were at war. American males came back from battle to find a stronger, liberated nation that was now influenced by voices in society that were muted

The establishment for dark support in the Civil War started more than a hundred years before the episode of the war. blacks had been in servitude since early pilgrim times. In 1776, when Jefferson announced humanity 's unavoidable right to life, freedom, and the quest for joy, the organization of subjection had turned out to be immovably settled in America. blacks worked in the tobacco fields of Virginia, in the rice fields of South Carolina, and drudged in little ranches and shops in the North. Foner and Mahoney report in A House Divided, America in the Age of Lincoln that, "In 1776, slaves made forty percent out of the number of inhabitants in the provinces from Maryland south to Georgia, yet well beneath ten percent in the states toward the North."

If I were Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War, there would few things if any that I would change. I would try to do anything to avoid a war between our own country. I would try to settle the territory disputes and the slavery disputes with an orderly fashion. But if none of that works and we tried our absolute best, then I would say go to war to end the conflicts. After the war the slavery issue of the Emancipation Proclamation did not work as well as they hoped. They had no place to go after they were free and no one wanted to help them or even live with them or near them.

July 10, 1863 was a beautiful or a bleak Friday depending upon one’s allegiance to the Union or to the Confederacy. For ten bloody days prior to July 10, Union and Confederate soldiers were embroiled in intense fighting in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Both battles were resounding and triumphant victories for the Union that decisively turned the war against the Confederacy in the Union’s favor. During this period of military conflict, both the pro-Union The New York Times and the Confederate-leaning The Richmond Daily Dispatch served as vital sources of wartime reporting, agents of one-sided propaganda and unflagging patriotism, as well as important mouthpieces for the public to express their opinions about the war, slavery and other issues pertinent to the time. Reading the July 10, 1863 editions of both newspapers gave a brief but compelling glimpse into the attitudes, viewpoints and lifestyles of people deeply divided along ideological and political lines in the midst of a bloody and violent civil war.