the most amazing blog ever: civil war

Mason Newstead

Elika Dadsetan

Humanities

Per 1/2

1/07/08

The Civil war lasted for four years , it went from April 12 , 1861 to April 9 , 1865. It was Americas most deadly war. The roughly 620 ,000 casualties were all American deaths. This war changed a lot of things in America. It was the war that ended slavery. Basically the South wanted to succeed and the North wanted to end slavery which created very high tensions between the two. The war was a very horrible one because it really broke down America. Every casualty in the war was that of an American citizen. Every building destroyed was an American building that would later need to be rebuilt regardless of the winner. Although there were many bad things about it , it did happen for a reason. Had the south succeeded , or had the outcome of the war been different , our country could be much different then the one we are accustomed to today in everyday life here in America.

With the slave owning South and the anti slavery North tensions began to escalate. During the the 1850's Abraham Lincoln was the president. He had the difficult task of deciding whether or not to allow slavery any longer. He made the effort to stop it by banning it in the new states that America was acquiring , this was during a time when we were expanding quite rapidly. He figured that the states that didn't believe in slavery would do their own thing , and slavery would end up being abolished their on its own. He figured that If he did not allow it in the new states then slavery would be contained enough to the point where the southern states that did own slaves would eventually become non slave owning states. The problem was that the south also saw this coming and they did not want to loose their power. During this time The south had a lot of control of the federal government. The North's fears were that the slave powers of the South already controlled the government. While the South was afraid that the anti-slave North was a threat to their power in the federal government. Tensions continued to escalate in America. The North evaluated the morality of slavery more and more and a general consensus formed in the North that slavery was wrong. Many people gathered in their political parties at that time. Although many thought that slavery was right and many people thought that slavery was wrong , they still had different ideas about what the government should be doing. First there were the republicans who were completely antislavery. Then there was the free soil party who wanted to prevent the spread of slavery , like Lincoln , although by 1854 they were pretty much absorbed by republican party. Then there were the democrats who were entirely pro slavery. Lastly there was the constitutional union. They were pro slavery , but their approach to it was to simply not do anything and leave things how they were. So their were four parties , an extreme and a mild approach from both sides. What is kind of funny about this is that today democrats are regarded more as the party that cares about human issues like gay rights or immigrant rights , things along that line. Also the republicans today are the ones that are more interested in money and doing the more profitable thing. So if the views of the modern day republican and democratic party were given the issue of slavery in the 1850's they would have been the exact opposite from that which they actually back in that time. The democrats of today would be antislavery , while the republicans of today would be proslavery. But , that isn't a completely valid argument. The republicans really didn't view slavery as a big human rights violation that needed to be stopped. It was more that they wanted to slow down the moment of the south to keep them from taking over. The reason that the South was doing so well was because of slavery and the massive amount of free labor that was because of it. So if the North were to cut out slavery in the South , then they would in turn loose all of their free work force in turn weakening the South to the extent that the North would gain political power over the United States. Over time tensions continued to grow between the North and South. Their main problem with each other was simply slavery. Having a war was pretty much inevitable. Up until the point of the civil war the North and South had been making simple compromises when dealing with the issue of slavery. Such as the gag rule , which restricted the discussion in congress of petitions for ending slavery between 1835 and 1844. Or the compromise of 1850 which decided which states that were gained after the Mexican American war would become slave states or not. Although the North and South were attempting compromise it really wasn't doing much. The North and South were being rapidly torn apart. War or succession was right around the corner. Congress did nothing but fight about the issues of slavery. The economy was at a standstill because trade became very limited between the North and South. When the proposition of a railroad to be put in across the United States , too much controversy arrived simply because members from the North and South in government simply could not agree on anything by now. The North and South were basically hanging together by a thread in 1860. That thread was severed when republican Abraham Lincoln was elected in to office. Regional leaders of the South agreed that Abraham Lincoln would be the one that would put an end to slavery and they could not have that. They decided that the only thing to do would be to succeed. This was the start of the war.

The deep Southern states that were the most prevalent for having the larger amount of slavery were the states that seceded first. Following their secession four more Southern states joined in after the Battle of Fort Sumter joined with Lincoln's call for each remaining state to provide troops to retake forts and fight back the secession. The upper South states said that they refused send troops to fight against their fellow neighbors in what they thought to be an invasion. The Secession of these states took place during February of 1861. The 7 states that seceded were South Carolina , Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , and Texas. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America on February 4 , 1861. Their president was a man by the name of Jefferson Davis. Their governmental structure was pretty much identical to that of the United States Constitution. As mentioned previously , two months following the battle of Fort Sumter four more slave states had now joined the Confederacy. These states were; Virginia , Arkansas , North Carolina , and Tennessee. The northwestern part of Virginia Seceded from Virginia and joined the Union in turn creating the state which remains to this day , West Virginia.