American Civil War
The American Civil War was within the borders of the United States between Confederacy in the South and Union in the North. The war lasted from 1861 to 1865, and it is considered among the most destructive events ever witnessed in the country, leading to death more than 600,000 Americans. The war assisted in shaping the character and democracy in the American society today. Individuals involved in the war had different perspectives towards the war. People in the Northern part of the United States perspective the war as a revolution while other in the South viewed the war as a way to gain independence and as a rebellion to the ideologies brought forward by those in the Northern part. The war resulted from several years of differences between the Confederacy and the Union. It erupted from the conflict that built up between these two regions resulting from social, economic, and political differences. This paper examines the causes and effects of the American Civil War.
Causes
Social Causes
Several social factors contributed to the eruption of the Civil War. Differences in standards in the South and the North with respective to slavery contributed to the war. The South was a slavery-based community observing a class-based system. The system comprised of slavery, the middle class, and aristocracy. People were accustomed and depended on slavery for labor, a concept difficult to change at that time. Plantation owners had slaves working on their farms, and
The causes and effects of the Civil War will be defined through the institution of slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the military leadership of President Lincoln to resolve the uncompromising political position of the South/Confederacy. Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech will be an important primary source that defines the underlying resistance to the expansion of the slave states into new territories taken by the U.S. government in the 1850s. More so, the uncompromising and an increasingly militaristic aggression of the South in seceding from the Union defines the effects of this political “divide” between Republicans and Democrats in Congress due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. At the center of this issue, Lincoln’s leadership defines the slow process of political causality in opposing slave state status, which eventually manifested itself into a “house divided” in the Civil War. In essence, the root cause of the Civil War will be defined through the tension between slave and free state status, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the important pro-northern leadership of Lincoln in the coming war that would divide the nation.
The fight between the union and a separate entity called the confederacy was a profound event in American History, but how did this development evolve? Slavery and democracy had existed for many years, making the Civil War avoidable, yet the course of events still led the United States to the outcome stated above. In order for one to understand this change, one must try to piece together the many instances that would tell him/her the reasons for a Civil War as destructive as the one fought in the eighteen hundreds between the North and the South. The Civil War was caused by the North’s and South’s viewpoints on slavery.
The American Civil War occurred from 1861 to 1865, with the North and South unable to reconcile their differences peacefully, it turned to violence and bloodshed. It tested American principles and fundamentals, spurring from sectionalism, or the allegiance to one's region as opposed to the whole country. Due to the distinct political, economic, and social systems of the North and South, each was unable to obtain its objectives, leading to a war which resulted in conservation of the Union and an end to slavery.
Civil War can be also known as “War Between the States” that happened in the mid 19th century. The war was a result of decades simmering tensions and controversy between the North and South of United States over slavery, state’s right and moving West. The northern states leading by President Abraham Lincoln wanted to abolist slavery in the United States. On the other hand, the southern states fought against this policy. Over those decades before the war, there were many critical events that led to the Civil War. Though, in my opinions, the four most critical events that contributed to the outbreak out the war were The Missouri Compromise in 1820, Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, the Dred Scott Decision
The argument I will be discussing is what caused the Civil War, the fight over slavery or over states’ rights. Dew is going to be arguing that the South was fighting to protect their right to have slaves. Dew believes this partly due to the commissioners in the Deep South trying to rally people together to fight for the right to protect slaves. Gallagher will be arguing that actually the War was to preserve the Union. Gallagher believes this partly due to the most powerful symbol in the nation, the soldiers of the Civil War. It is possible that one could be right or both or neither could be right. My analysis will consist of me questioning the causation of the Civil War.
There were many causes for the Civil War starting up, that included trade, states rights, tariffs and the differences between the southern and northern states on the idea of slavery (www.historynet.com)). The main cause of the Civil War was that there was a debate over the future and moral issue of slavery. Slavery played a huge role in getting the southern states money and wealth. The southern states were very largely agricultural, unlike the states in the north. Southern states used millions of slaves for manual labor (historynewsnetwork.org). The southern states wanted to claim their authority instead of the federal government, just so that they could abolish federal laws that they did not support. Mainly because the of the laws that were with the South’s rights to keep the slaves and to take them wherever they wanted them to go. The south also wished that they could take the slavery into the western territories, while on the other hand the North was committed to having slavery kept open to white labor by itself. The southern economy had become one crop economy, that depended on cotton and slavery. Unlike the southern, the northern economy was mostly based on
The American civil war was a game changer for the United States as it opened the doors for a new government, Constitution, and way of life. It was one of the first great wars fought after American independence and showcased the need for abolition of slavery as well as the recognition and sovereignty of the independent nation. This war was necessary for all of these things to take place, and there was a significant amount of conflict before the actual war in the nineteenth century. In fact, some people at the time were referring to it as an “irrepressible conflict” (Gunderson 915). The world was beginning to shift in a different direction in regards to society, and the United States was internally divided on the issues at hand. The American Civil War in was inevitable, and so was the Union victory that resulted; this was mainly due to internal conflict, independence, and slavery.
Exactly 620,000 people died in the Civil War, the Civil War costed the country 5.2 million dollars. The Union Army of 2,100,000 soldiers was nearly two times the size of the Confederate Army of 1,064,000. It was the deadliest war in american history. Around 9 million people lived in the southern states at the time of the civil war. Thirty percent of all southern white males between the ages of 18 and 40 died in the Civil War. There were 179,000 Afro americans in the Union Army. The Civil War started because of the Missouri Compromise, economics, Bleeding Kansas, cotton production, and Virginia.
The Civil War in the United States of America is one of the most frequently studied wars of any in American History. This terrible war put brothers from the North against brothers from the South and the result was both awful and catastrophic. When counting the dead and wounded on both sides, including the destruction of houses, farms, and the livelihood of people on both sides, the Civil War was the most terrible and bloodiest war in American History. There were many issues that sparked the beginning of the American Civil War, including moral, political and economic aspects but the defining issue was slavery.
The American Civil War was one of the most significant wars of the United States. I will chronological show the causes, the main course and aftermath of the war in the following text. I am going to focus on the problem of slavery. I will represent the war mainly from economic and social point of view and put military conflicts in the background. So, I want to refer to the political changes. In addition, I would like to address the following questions: What was the reason for the war? What caused the war? Was there a way to avoid the war?
The civil war was between the Northern and Southern states, which were divided on the issue of slavery. The northern states didn’t want slavery to continue while the south wanted slavery to continue. This disagreement led to a five-year war from 1861-1865 leading to many social changes like the how the emancipation proclamation leading to the formation of the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments. Which allowed the African Americans to have a chance to gain their freedom not just by not having to be property but also free in ways so they are accepted in to the “other world” and guaranteed that slavery would not be an issue. Another change they faced was the political
The Civil War was a defining point in the history of the United States and has had ramifications that have lasted long after the Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse. No other war in the history of the United States has come close to matching the death toll that occurred in the Civil War. An analysis of The Civil War would not be complete without taking a deep look at the causes and effects of this historic event. Multiple disparate events led to the United States fracturing into two factions and facing off in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. All of these events are linked by a single underlying theme, the use of slavery.
The civil War started on April 12th 1861. It was on an argument between the North and the South. The Northern economy depended on productions while the Southern economy was dependent on cultivation, which had to do with slavery because they would not do or pay taxes. The North wanted to completely get rid of slavery which would have destroyed and completely ruin the southern economy. The North also threatened the Southern way of life by trying to abolish slavery, the north thought african americans were less than humans, but that was the Southern culture which the north tried to ruin. When Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency on November 6, 1860, Lincoln won without any votes from any of the southern states.
Social and economic division as a major cause of the civil war really goes hand-in-hand with slavery. In fact, nearly every issue, while not directly about slavery, has at least a remote connection to slavery. The south couldn’t support their economy without the cheap labor provided by slaves. The economically independent north labeled slavery as immoral. The emancipation proclamation, which was issued September 22, 1862 outlawed slavery in Confederate states that would not return
Sparking from myriads of events and political reasons, the Civil War lasted for many years—involving the African Americans. Since Eli Whitney’s cotton gin invention in 1793, social and economic differences between the North and South, the clashing between federal and state rights, and issues with slavery were all inevitable moments in history that ultimately caused this bloody war. Even though that African Americans suffered throughout, their contribution shaped the course and consequences of the Civil War by impacting the goals and aftermath of it to be related to them to a great extent.