Weapons Of The Weak Analysis

William W. Freehling's book The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War tells a unique story about the Civil War and one that is not typically discussed in history books. The book is about divisions within the southern culture, which might have led to the outcome of the war in favor of the Union. Perhaps all black southerners had a vested interest in the North's victory, but many white southerners felt the same way for many reasons. In The South vs. The South, Freehling discusses the way the Union used divisions in the south as a war strategy, such as by recruiting potentially neutral Americans living in border states. Recruiting soldiers from border states and western states with less entrenched plantation cultures versus their Dixie counterparts was one of Lincoln's key strategies and also helped General Grant secure some key military victories.

The South vs. The South by William Freehling is a narrative that focuses on the civil war that affected a vast number of Southerners who opposed the Confederacy regardless of whether they were white or black. These ?anti-Confederates,? as termed by Freehling comprised Slaves and Boarder state whites who together formed half the southern population and were significant to the Union victory. By weakening the Confederacy military, contributing manpower and resources to the Union and dividing the southern home front, the anti-Confederates made a critical contribution to the Union war efforts that hastened the end of the war leading to the Union?s victory. The U.S was not the only house that was divided; Divisions between pro-and anti-Confederates, white and black, and the loyalty of both upper and lower states to slavery contributed a lot to the downfall of the confederates. ?Divisions within the South helped pave the path toward war. The same divisions behind army lines helped turn the war against the slaveholders.?(p.10). William Freehling argues that more than 450,000 Union troops from the South, especially southern blacks and border state whites, helped in the defeat of the confederates. Further, when the southern Border States rejected the Confederacy, more than a half of the South?s capacity swelled the North?s advantage.

According to Document 1, “ … peasants do not have enough allotment land, and cannot during the year feed themselves, clothe themselves, heat their homes …”. Also according to Document 10, “Goods have gone up to ruinous rates.”. Peasants are poor, they can’t afford much. They could end up stealing goods because they have no money.

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

During the American Civil War thousands of blacks enlisted to support the cause of emancipation. Before the war ended the black troops began to shift their focus to issues such as citizenship rights by preparing to become citizens, and insisting that they should receive the same treatment and opportunities as white troops. The book Firebrand of Liberty does a good job arguing the importance of the Florida expedition in convincing the North that blacks should fight and to increase enlistment. However, the author fails to consider other reasons for that decision.

Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause” (p 38-39). To some extent our minds have not changed from 62 years ago when Vietnam took place. The Vietnam War created protesters which indeed led to the Civil Rights Movement. Similarly to the Afghanistan War, the belief of many members of society, especially veterans, pushed organizations to share their points of view. The IVAW is a current organization against the Afghanistan War. This organization shares their belief toward the end products of the war and why we should be at peace. In July 2011, protesters from the IVAW, Brock McIntosh and Jacob George, returned to Afghanistan with a U.S. commitment to nonviolence. They were eager to meet with local Afghanistan leaders to find peace and social justice organizations. Their mission came ted down to ”gaining a greater understanding of ordinary Afghans’ needs, fears, and desires for their country, and to discover ways U.S. activists can support indigenous nonviolent efforts to reach those goals.” In contrast to the Afghanistan war the Vietnam War protest related to the Black Power

The following pages are an essay on the cause of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the effects that the war had upon the soldiers, women and African Americans of the North and the South. In this essay I will write about the following topics and present a view of how the war was witnessed by these different groups of people. In regards to the soldiers of the North and the South, I will answer the following questions: What was the enthusiasm of the soldiers from the North and the South before the war? What was their perspective after the fighting had started? How did the soldiers of the invading armies treat the civil

“As they fathom injustice, organize to protest, craft a tactics, and engage in action, these bodies read what is happening and articulate their imaginative rebuttal. In so doing they demonstrate to themselves and all those watching that something can be done. Could this be why they are called political ‘movements’?”

The predicament of the African American soldiers in the civil war depicts an agonizing tale of discrimination and slavery. African American soldiers would claim a significantly minimal recognition in the civil war. Despite their potent and willingness to take part in the war, the soldiers were reduced to a minimum role and limited participation. Before the start of the Civil war, President Abraham Lincoln had a firm stance on the restriction and obstruction of black volunteers to be recruited in the army. The prodigy of the African American emancipation declaration by the president was a temporal and limited absorption into army actions on the onset of the civil .

The Civil War was one of America’s most brutal battles in history. Majority of which being white, male soldiers. Over the years, many historians have argued the actual involvement of blacks during the civil war era. Many claiming that they were doing nothing more than assisting the actual, white soldiers in combat such as, nurses, and wagon drivers, not actually picking up the gun and shooting alongside in battle. Most people look over the fact that almost ten percent, or 180,000, of the Union army were African American. Though a small fraction of the amount of total soldiers during the war, their involvement is still significant. These soldiers recruited and voluntarily, committing the same acts of bravery of any Caucasian solider, due to the prejudice against them, they were pushed to the back burner and treated with disrespect, virtually diminishing their extensive courageous acts. Nevertheless these soldiers made an impact in world changing war.

Race was a heated issue in the 1800’s, which finally broke into the Civil War. Black men young and old wanted desperately to be allowed to fight for their own stake in this war. This paper helps to describe the climate surrounding this issue and the changes that gave way allowing for black men to serve.

About 180,000 African American people comprised 163 units that served in the Union Army, during the time of the Civil War, and many more African American people had served in the Union Navy. Both the free African-Americans and the runaway slaves had joined the fight. On the date of July 17, in the year of 1862, the U. S. Congress had passed two very important acts that would allow the enlistment of many African Americans, but the official enrollment had occurred only after the September, 1862, issuance of the, Emancipation Proclamation. In general, most white soldiers and officers, had believed that most of the black men, who had served in the Civil War, lacked the courage, and the will to fight

This wildly unpopular move constituted a direct breach of any notion of states’ rights which the South could purportedly claim (Jones, 2001). This national conscription, however, was merely the first step in a long march towards centralization of federal power within the Confederacy. Sentiments of poor southerners perceiving their government to be acting in the interests of the wealthiest classes of society extended from the conscription policy to taxation

Therefore, it is understandable that movement scholars tend to write from a rather activist stance. There is nothing wrong with this per se, however, as historians, we should critically assess in how far this positioning might limit our scholarship. At times, Payne tends to overemphasize the unity and the solidarity among the organizers and the local population and fails to mention the tensions among direct democratic groups like SNCC. Every social movement is made up of people, united under what they perceive as an urgent need to bring about change. This unity tends to suppress theoretical and practical differences for some time and can thus create a tremendous amount of communality and solidarity among its members. However, as history has shown over and over again, as soon as the external threat either diminishes or proves resistant to change, movements tend to disunite. This is what Baker and other activists wanted to prevent by modeling their training around local long-term strategies and individual

Stephen Hoch in a study that he conducted on a small Russian village called Petrovskie makes some insightful inferences about the serf system there. In Russia, as well as Europe in the 17th century, the serfs were ?managed? in a way that more closely represented exploitation. Very little was invested in improving the state of the land that they cultivated and instead the emphasis was placed on compelling the serfs to produce more. Meanwhile the landowner merely reaped the benefits and rarely reinvested in the venture. This study is relevant because it was taking place at the same time as the Manifesto was being written.[v] The system led to a series of revolutions because as Hoch deduced, ?Serf behavior and attitudes were in fact an integrated human response to the ecological constraints at work in the society and to the inhumane degradation of being reduced to property.?[vi]