War and the Centralization of Power Essays

The Civil War was caused by many several pressures, principles, and prejudices, fueled by sectional differences, and was finally set into motion by a most unlikely set of political events. From economic differences to political differences all the way up to cultural differences, the North and the South opposed each other. These tensions were further increased after the western expansion of the United States. By the early 1850’s a civil war was known to be likely coming soon.

The history of the road to the Civil War is both simple and complicated. Being a new country and developing its own set of laws was both freeing and restricting. The colonists were free from a monarchy, which they very much hated due to the greed and corruption that came along with it. Now, they needed to agree on their own set of laws. This seemed simple enough; however, the rules of a republic meant to give up one’s own interest for the good of the general public. This is where greed caused problems. There would be people who felt differently about the laws when it affected them in a negative form. Living in a Republic benefited the colonists by having free trade with a better economy, and the ability to expand. However, it brought its own

Within the seventy years following the Revolutionary War, the United States had a critical fault festering deep inside it. This fault was the fact that the United States had become divided into the North and South regions. These two regions differed severely in infrastructures: the North had a capitalistic manufacturing system that had no use for unpaid labor as the free laborers were already paid very little, the South on the other hand had an agrarian slave based system. As the years carried on new states began popping up, and the one question that needed to be answered was which system would these states adopt. The United States also suffered due to issues in its infrastructure with corruption and severely differentiating ideas being put into law. With all that being said, the Civil War was caused by slavery, economic differences, and political tensions between the North and South.

The debate of war powers between the executive and legislative branches has led to a conflict between the two branches on who has the right or responsibility to declare war and to commit troops. Although the constitution specifically gives the President the title of Commander-in-Chief, he does not have the power to declare full out aggression. This has led to conflict over the years because Congress is the one with the true power to declare war and yet, US Presidents have committed troops and other resources without congressional approval. Truman set precedents for using military force without congressional approval. Truman declared troops without Congress even declaring war in Korea. Truman in doing this had done something that no one other President had done: using full-scale military force without an official declaration of war. Truman had simply called his deploying troops as, “a police action.” This action by Truman did not go well with Congress but because Congress was going to declare war on Korea anyways, Congress allowed Truman to continue to deploy troops without a full declaration of war but Congress asked Truman to ask for their permission before deploying more NATO troops. This continued during the Vietnam War as both Presidents Johnson and Nixon used military force without official declarations from Congress. They both were following something called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which was passed by Congress and allowed the President to have full rein over

There has always been quite a bit of tension between northern and southern territories while creating our nation. Though we all had one common goal - expanding westward - northerners and southerners had many different ideals on how to achieve that goal. Many historians believe that the Civil War could have been avoided, I for one believe the Civil War was quite inevitable. Obviously, the different ideas are going to cause some tension between the two ‘colonies’. Looking at all the events that did lead to the Civil War I have come to the conclusion that there were three broad causes which lead to the Civil War. The three major causes of the Civil War are the challenges over: political disputes, slavery, and tariffs.

The Civil War was one of the most bloody and divisive conflicts in United States’ history. While the conflict may have spanned over four years, its origins date back to the birth of the nation. The fracturing of the early political system on the basis of location, party, economic visions were the beginning of fundamental differences between the states. As the political, social, and economic patterns developed throughout the nation, the regional and ideological differences only deepened, leading to the inevitable division of the Union and its populace.

News media is supposed to serve the purpose of informing their listeners of current and upcoming events that affect the audience. Very few viewers actually take into account how valid these news reports actually are. More or less, the news is accept. The same could be said about any news releases on war. However, in the documentary, “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” the narrator speaks to the audience about how the media such as news reporters and presidential speeches influenced Americans to become advocates for the war. Presidents play a large role in propaganda because they showed means of justification for their immoral military actions during these wars. The film discuss several wars in which America contributed in unethical acts.

In 1776, the Civil War began. Most believe war started over the moral issue of slavery, which was a huge conflict in society but in fact it started over the economic standpoint of slavery and political control. A key issue though, was states rights. The South wanted authority over the federal government so they could abolish federal laws that they didn’t support. Territorial expansion was another factor in the breakout of the Civil War. The South wanted slavery in the Western territories while the North was committed to being against slavery. While this was going on, a republican party was forming with members who were strongly against westward expansion of slavery, basically taking the North’s side. In 1860 when Abraham Lincoln took office, it was made clear to the South that slavery was not going to expand westward. Therefore, the seven states in the South seceded from the Union forming the Confederate States of America, leading to the start of the Civil War.

In war every combatant, just or unjust, poses a certain type of threat. On the two opposite ends of the spectrum a combatant poses either a culpable threat or an excused threat. If a combatant poses a culpable threat he poses a threat of wrongful harm to others and he is not justified, premised, nor excused in his actions (McMahan 159). If a combatant poses an excused threat, he poses a justified threat of harm and is therefore fully excused for his actions.

Although there is a long list of reasons to the cause of the Civil War, there are several significant political reasons. According to a lecture from Lisa Krumm, the Constitutional Convention met in 1787 to address and correct the problems to the Articles of Confederation (November 2017). After several meeting sessions, the Constitutional Convention created a new form of government, the Constitution. In order for the delegates to approve the Constitution, several compromises were made. These compromises were the Great Compromise, the 3/5th Compromise, and the Bill of Rights. The Great Compromise was issued due to conflicts from the New Jersey and Virginia Plan. The New Jersey Plan is supported by small states, therefore, they fear of losing federal power in federal government. In addition, it contains a one house legislature and have equal representation in Congress. On the contrary, the Virginia Plan is supported by larger states, made up of two house legislature, and had representation to Congress based on population. The New Jersey and Virginia plan made it more difficult to reach an agreement on either plan in the Constitution. Therefore, the Great Compromise was created for both large and small states to have equal representation in the upper and lower house of Congress to be proportional to population. Next, the 3/5th Compromise was issued due to differences between southern and northern state delegates. Both regions of the country have their own cultural, political, and economical views, so it made it difficult to reach to an agreement. The

The Constitution has given Congress the war-making powers as it states in Article 1, Section 8. Although they have given them the power to declare war, it is the Presidents job to direct the military. The war-making powers that Congress attained are: to raise and support armies, gather the funds for war and maintain the conduct of wars still going on. The greatest power of the government is the ability to send others into a war to fight, kill and, god forbid it, die for their country. When writing the Constitution, the founders were scared they were giving the President too much power and they worried that the system of Checks and Balances might fail us one day. All throughout history we have fault with the decision to go to war or not, and there are factors that need to be thought of when deciding on war or not. Those factors are the raising threat of terrorism, the members of congress that would vote for war and the evidence that sending these men and women into war will benefit the United States.

According to Article One, Section Eight, Congress has the power “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;” This means that Congress must be consulted before going to war and has the power to not only declare war, but also the power to raise an army and navy, to fund war effort; however, the President, in Article II, is named commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but this does not give him the power to commit armed forces to war.

Countries strive for power, that is why they go to war. Power is shown through violence with other countries, creating competition and alliances. Through this, society learns how to advance and improve to be better in all aspects. This impacted Western civilization in various ways.

America was struggling with everything including the Civil War. The Civil War was a war fought between the North and the South. The North was more about industry and factories while the south was more about farming which depended on the slaves to do their work .The north was against slavery which meant they were against the south, which provoked the American civil war. A significant amount of soldiers died during the battle, all types of races including white and black. Abraham Lincoln was the president during this era and knew he had to put an end to this but didn’t have a solution to solve it. When the United States was founded everything was as simple as it could get but as the years went it started getting more

The Just war theory is and interesting one simply because the phrase just war is an oxymoron. War is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations. Implicit in this definition of war is the result of death and since justice is right action towards other death is the most unjust of things. Thus war is unjust.