A Brief Overview of the American Civil War
The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world.
Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.
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 won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.
The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Claiming this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day opened fire on the federal garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender. Lincoln called out the militia to suppress this "insurrection." Four more slave states seceded and joined the Confederacy. By the end of 1861 nearly a million armed men confronted each other along a line stretching 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri. Several battles had already taken place--near Manassas Junction in Virginia, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation of the new state of West Virginia, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base for a blockade to shut off the Confederacy's access to the outside world.
But the real fighting began in 1862. Huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines' Mill , Second Manassas , and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland foreshadowed even bigger campaigns and battles in subsequent years, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia. By 1864 the original Northern goal of a limited war to restore the Union had given way to a new strategy of "total war" to destroy the Old South and its basic institution of slavery and to give the restored Union a "new birth of freedom," as President Lincoln put it in his address at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there.
For three long years, from 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia staved off invasions and attacks by the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by a series of ineffective generals until Ulysses S. Grant came to Virginia from the Western theater to become general in chief of all Union armies in 1864. After bloody battles at places with names like The Wilderness , Spotsylvania , Cold Harbor , and Petersburg , Grant finally brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in April 1865. In the meantime Union armies and river fleets in the theater of war comprising the slave states west of the Appalachian Mountain chain won a long series of victories over Confederate armies commanded by hapless or unlucky Confederate generals. In 1864-1865 General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army deep into the Confederate heartland of Georgia and South Carolina, destroying their economic infrastructure while General George Thomas virtually destroyed the Confederacy's Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville . By the spring of 1865 all the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and when Union cavalry captured the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, resistance collapsed and the war ended. The long, painful process of rebuilding a united nation free of slavery began.
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The Civil War in America Essay
The main origin of the civil war in America was the declaration of seven states that had split from the U.S and grouped to form a confederacy. The main reason b ehind t ofhis was the devastating effects of slavery.The southerners felt that the northerners were against slavery, and they were grouping to form political parties that were to oppose the growth of slavery within western territories. The southerners felt that this would pose a threat to slavery and thus violate their rights.
Even without the optimum support of the southern states, Abraham Lincoln won the elections that were carried out in 1860. This victory catalyzed the rise of secession from slave states within the deep south when seven of them teamed up to form the confederate state of America just before Lincoln was sworn in to presume office.in addition, C.A.F was not recognized by nationalists from every part of America especially from the north. Even the U.S government declined to surrender its forts which had been claimed by confederacy. Civil war then started in 1861 following confederates attack on fort Sumter being the main fortress of United States in South Carolina.
As historians continue to emphasize, slavery and other multifaceted discontents were noted as the main causes of the uprising. Tariff issue later became entangled in slavery matters. The rest of the factors that contributed to civil war in America were party politics, sectionalism, modernization, industrialization, southern nationalism, economics and also abolitionism which took place during the antebellum phase.
The United States then became two divided nation. There was also a significant growth in population among the states in New England, mainly due to high birth rate and immigration. In the south, most of its dominants were planters based on slavery. A high growth rate was taking place within Texas due to higher rates of birth and large immigrant numbers coming from the south east as compared to the ones from Europe.
Debates over the years were focused towards explaining the future of slavery and how it could change before the civil war began in 1861. On May 26th, 1836, the house passed Pinckney resolutions, which stated that the Congress did not have constitutional powers to interfere with states that practiced slavery.
Secondly, it was not to practice it in the District of Colombia. Thirdly, all information and inquiries related to slavery and its activities were all enshrined in the infamous gag rule. This provided a blue print on how slavery would be ended, although it did not yield much.
Slavery contributed greatly to southern leaders in the following ways. To begin with, slave labor was used in industries like the cotton picking and had to do hard kinds of the job but were not paid and the money that was meant for labor was later spent on improving the economy of the United States thus maximizing their output on production with minimal cost. During this period, slavery was the main source and backbone of the southern economy since it became more like political socio identity of the south.
This slavery helped the south to enjoy its economic success that became before the rise of civil war.The use of slaves led to economic strengths by states that owned them since without slavery; the antebellum would have collapsed. The south than had to defend their economic security by slavery until it was legalized.W ith the slaves in the south, this enabled industrialization to speed up since there was free labor readily available.
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Home — Essay Samples — War — American Civil War — The American Civil War: A Historical Overview
The American Civil War: a Historical Overview
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Words: 691 |
Published: Jan 29, 2024
Words: 691 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read
Table of contents
Causes of the civil war, major events of the civil war, key figures and leaders, impact and consequences, legacy of the civil war, references:.
- McPherson, J. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press.
- Foner, E. (2015). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper Perennial.
- Grose, H.R. (2019). Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience: Generals Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee. Routledge.
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