Civil War Dbq

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During the Civil War, different groups thought different things about why the war was being fought. The North mostly fought for reunification while the South fought to save slavery. Lincoln, who was President at the time, began the war with one set of beliefs and eventually won the war with another. Lincoln’s focus for the war changed from reunification to the abolition of slavery. During the first year of the Civil War, the reunification of the United States was the only goal of the war. In the year 1862, the second year of the Civil War, President Lincoln gave his annual Congressional Address. The Congressional Address was extremely important because it changed the goal of the war from reunification of the country, to a war fought over the morality of slavery. About a year after the Congressional Address, Lincoln gave another well known speech, the Gettysburg Address. This famous speech was given after the Battle of Gettysburg to honor …show more content…

In his Inaugural Address Lincoln talked about the war. He talked about how ⅛ of the United States’ population was black. The black population lived mostly in the South working as slaves and were vital to the Southern economy. Lincoln told how the South wanted to strengthen slavery, but the North threatened the existence of slavery. The slavery debate split the country in half which caused the war. Lincoln talked about how the government was limited to what it could do in terms of abolition, but it was able to stop the spread of slavery. No one in the Confederacy or the Union expected the war to last as long, or be as big as it was. No one expected slavery to be abolished before the war was over either. Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address gave an overview of the war, it was also one of the final pushes he made for the abolition of slavery to end the

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