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Civil war facts essay
Civil war facts essay
Facts and opinions about the civil war
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Civil war facts essay
Civil war facts essay
Facts and opinions about the civil war
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Despite previous scholarship offering insight into soldiers’ views during the war, Manning looks at the subtle ways these views evolved. Manning claims that Union soldiers called for complete emancipation of the slaves as early as 1861. This was long before civilians and political leaders and civilians began to feel the same. From the perspective of a Union soldier “slavery blighted everything it touched” and needed to be completely dismantled in order to preserve the Union (p. 47). According to Manning, Northerners had little contact with slavery prior to the war.
The Union believed that the war was a means to restore unity to the country and to free the slaves. Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, an “idealist” and a charismatic speaker,
Union soldiers fought to protect the Union. Further along in the war, more Union soldiers fought to abolish slavery. As the Confederacy was trying to keep slavery and their own nation, the Union was trying to unify them all and make it more like the United States today. “He had believed that it was a mere question of getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if pursued for a murder.” (Crane 77.)
In chapter one of What They Fought For, I learned about the letters and diaries of the Confederate soldiers. The themes of the letters were home-sickness, lack of peace, and the defense of home against their invading enemy. The thought of soldiers fighting for their homes and being threatened by invaders, made them stronger when facing adversity. Many men expressed that they would rather die fighting for a cause, than dying without trying and this commitment showed patriotism. Throughout the letters, soldiers claimed their reason for fighting, was for the principles of Constitutional liberty and self-government.
We established this this country in the first place with strong state government just for that reason, to avoid a central tyranny.” (p. 65). The South looked at the North as a tyrannical government. The North on the other hand looked at the South as trying to tear the country into two. The Union army fought to keep the country together as one, because if the South would win the war it would have split the country into two for good.
Southern soldiers viewed the confederacy as their country and were compelled to fight for the safety of it. Confederate soldiers enlisted to protecting their native lands from what they understood as invaders. The Confederacy sentiments of the Union was they were imposing upon the southern way of life. For instance, a young soldier from Kentucky wrote “sink or swim, survive or perish” (McPherson 11). The average Confederate soldier felt that they the Union was trying to destroy the legacy of the founder fathers by enslaving them and reversing the actions of the American Revolution.
Both the Union and the Confederates believed that they were right in the beliefs that they had fought for. The South thought they were fighting for states rights while the North believed they were fighting to free the slaves. Jim Kemper states“You must tell them, and make it plain, that what we are fighting for is our freedom from the rule of what is to us a foreign government. That's all we want and that's what this war is all about. We established this country in the first place with strong state governments just for that reason, to avoid a central tyranny” (Shaara 61).
While the popular image of the Confederacy, and indeed the Secessionist Southern States as a whole, are looked at as containing white populations uniformly supportive of the Confederate cause, the reality is more complex. As portrayed in Victims: A True Story of the Civil War and Free State of Jones there existed sizable pockets of dissent among the populace whom the Confederate government failed to convert to the cause. In places like the mountains of western North Carolina and southeastern Mississippi this led to desertion, passive resistance, and even outright armed rebellion which sapped Confederate resources that were needed to continue to fight the Union. Though this anti-Confederate feeling would often translate into support for the Union, this was not based on some inherent loyalty to the Federal government. As shown in Victims and Free State of Jones the disunity within the Confederacy stemmed from the failure of the Confederate government to get their non-slave holding lower classes to buy into the pro-slavery ideology of the nation, which was compounded by the lower classes bearing many of the harsh measures of the war including the draft and the
The civil war began in the year of 1861, many historians have established theories for the main cause. Four of the possible theories include, morality and views on slavery, two societies, failure to compromise, states rights and Lincoln's election. Although all of these play a big role in the causes of the civil war, I believe the principle cause of the civil war was, the existence of two societies in the United States beacuse the South wanted to become more independent, had multiple uprisings due to slavery, and had differnt oppions on slavery. America was split into the North and the South, both very diverse. Some might say that the North was very independent and the south was very dependent on the north.
The United States of America was once severely divided over an extreme issue that needed to be quickly solved before it caused any serious damage on the country. The Northern part and the Southern part of the United States of America were both having intense arguments over the issue of slavery. The North deeply accepted the abolishment of slavery in the United States of America. However, the South was strongly supporting on the ability of having slaves anywhere in the United States of America. Before the American Civil War, the North had a immoral perspective on slavery and the South had a righteous outlook on slavery they had contrasting ideas.
When comparing the Union and confederacy, they are a lot of dissimilar attributes between these groups. During the early war between the years 1861-1862, neither side was a 100% prepared for the war but the Union Army was bigger, and could draw on a far bigger populace for substitutions. The Union Army had better equipment and ammunition, and could fabricate their own particular cannons. The Union's powers were comprised of a far bigger rate of workers, and as a rule had great junior and
‘Slavery was the root cause of secession’. ‘November 6 1860, Lincoln was elected president of America which resulted in panic emerging in the South’ . The election of Lincoln as president who was a Republican leader meant that ideologies, movements and values from the North would be implemented in the South which meant the abolition of slavery. Slavery was a huge characteristic of the South as the economy; politics; social status and psychological mind-sets were influenced by the process of slavery. The southern white population then derived the idea of secession which meant the South would gain independence from Northern aggression .
Two fundamental questions normally surround the history of any war: whether the war was inevitable and if it was necessary. These same questions emerge any time during debates regarding the American Civil war. The most cited cause of the Civil war is the secession of certain southern states that formed the Confederate States of America in January 1861. Thomas Bonner writes "Civil War Historians and the "Needless War" Doctrine" arguing that Southern Carolina seceded in 1860, followed by six other states by January the following year. A deep analysis of the events leading to the war indicates that the Union and the Confederates had profound ideological, economic, political, and social differences.
After the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union. People in the South made a living through a plantation economy, Southerners needed cash crops that were labor intensive, using slaves to work this economy. The Northern economy was very different than the Southern economy the Northern economy was an industrialized economy, unlike the Southern economy. Abolitionists wanted slavery to end and thought it was an immoral and incorrect way to treat other human beings. Many Southerners supported the secession of South Carolina, and many other states, from the Union because they would rather leave the Union now than be killed by the people who hated them and the people they owned.
After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the rise of the Republican party, Southerners feared the tipping of the balance of political power against them; their need for self-determination parallel the colonists’ belief of rebelling against the oppressive government of Great Britain. However, the Civil War represented something more: the clash of the feudalistic, agrarian South with the industrialized, capitalistic North. These two powers differed socially, politically, and economically, and were especially conflicted over slavery. These two sections of the United States were divided against one another, and could not survive this way. Therefore, it is more accurate to state that though the Civil War resembled some aspects of the American Revolution, it was a clash between two forces who could not exist with one another in their current state, leading inevitably to conflict between the