The American Civil War Summary

The two most contested theories as to the origins of the American Civil war of 1861 to 1865 lie in the government support of slavery or as states’ rights supersession of federal rule. Both rely on the Southern ideal of states’ being able to operate their own supreme law within the confines of their borders; the slavery argument claims that slavery was the prominent issue that these southern states wished to control, while the states’ rights argument claims that slavery was just one of the many grievances that the South had towards their northern brethren. Reid goes on to assert, with the aid of many political decisions, treatises, economic sanctions, et cetera were actually based on the South’s need of the slavery institution. The first of

Bartlett in The English Historical Review turned his attention on the lack of inter-state support for the North and South and how the war stayed confined in mid-America. He notes that other scholars like: Kenneth Bourne in Britain and Balance of Power in North America, W. LaFeber in The American Age, and Michael Perman in The Making of the American Civil War focused in far more detail on the international actions that contributed to the war and why it did not escalate past civil war. Perhaps the most critical of the book as a whole was William L. Barney in The Journal of Southern History. He writes that The Origins of the American Civil War had a “lack of originality in its treatment of sectional divisions, this work offers a tough-minded reassessment of secession and the outbreak of war.” Following in course with the other reviewers, and in one of the general messages of Reid’s book, Barney notes that “America was born in a successful revolution and recreated in an abortive second

While not explicitly stated, human nature’s desire for control is quite prevalent in both the states’ rights and slavery debates. Both North and South, attributed turmoil to certain devils on the other side, and America’s rapid imperialist-like expansion into newly acquired territory west of the Mississippi disenfranchised much of the population and put a heavy strain on the federal and territorial governments. While the book did not go into the actual militaristic events of the Civil War, I think a strong comparison can be made between Sherman’s March to the Sea and the origins. For many years prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, North and South had been embroiled in a competition of outlasting and outmaneuvering each other. Sherman’s March is a militaristic exploit, but the ideology is the same: take whatever action necessary to destroy any