civil war essay introduction

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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American Civil War - List of Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

The American Civil War, waged from 1861 to 1865, was a seminal event in the United States’ history that stemmed from long-standing regional differences and disputes over slavery. Essays could delve into the political, economic, and social factors that led to the conflict, exploring the disputes between the North and the South regarding states’ rights, slavery, and economic policies. The discourse might extend to the significant battles, military strategies, and the leadership on both sides of the conflict. Discussions could also focus on the Emancipation Proclamation and its implications on the war and the broader struggle for civil rights. Moreover, essays could explore the reconstruction era that followed the war, examining the efforts to reunite the nation, address the legacies of slavery, and establish civil rights for freed slaves. The enduring impact of the American Civil War on the national identity, racial relations, and historical narrative could provide a captivating exploration of this pivotal period in American history. A vast selection of complimentary essay illustrations pertaining to American Civil War you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Nationalism in the Civil War

Introduction The Civil war of 1861-1865 is a central event in America's historical conscience. The war determined what kind of nation America would grow to be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution (1773-1776): 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 […]

Civil War was the Westward

Many historians argue that the catalyst for the civil war was the westward expansion of slavery. In 1845, after the United States annexed it the year before, Texas officially became a state- a slave state. The addition of a slave state allowed the Lone Star Republic into the Union. As a result of Texas becoming a state, the Mexican-American War broke out. After the war, the United States bought a massive amount of land from Mexico. The land later became […]

African Americans Made up

During the 1800's in America, African Americans made up most of the population. The Southern states were inundated with slaves. They labored in farms and on plantations. African Americans received cruel treament. They were brutally beaten and looked upon as being inhumane. The issue of equal rights for African Americans caused great disparities between the states. Our new country found itself at war with one another. This was a war of the North versus the South. The Civil War for […]

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The Civil War was the Deadliest

The Civil War was the deadliest and most brutal war ever fought. How did everything stir up between the states in the first place? Southerners had an Agricultural economy and mainly focused on the way they lived their lives to make profit for their well being; this included slaves for more hands to get more work done in less time. On the opposite side of things the northerners had an Industrial economy and wanted to abolish slavery. The north and […]

Many Causes of the Civil War

During the 1860s, the North and South of the United States had many disputes and conflicts. The South succeeded from the North, eventually leading to the civil war. The Civil War was the most destructive war ever fought in the western hemisphere and lasted from 1861 to 1865. The Civil War led to the end of the Confederacy and helped America to grow economically and socially as a nation. Today, America faces an issue with immigrants and their policies on […]

The Battle of Gettysburg Changed Everything

The Battle of Gettysburg changed everything for the Union. During the Civil War, America was fighting against each other, so there were two sides. The Confederates were mainly from the south and the Union was from the north. The concerning issue involved the North wanting slaves to be free while the south wanted to keep slaves. This conflict started the Civil War and up until the Battle of Gettysburg, the Confederates were striving. The south was winning every battle, so […]

The Civil War was a War Fought

The Civil War was a war fought between the states. It was fought between the Union and the Confederate States of America. Civil War spies played a major part in how the Confederate (North) won the Civil War (History.com Editors). Spies let generals know when they should attack, where, and whether they should withdraw or not (Mark). The armies of America had been tracked by spies during the Civil War. The spies gathered information on them and in return would […]

The Civil War is Perhaps

The civil war is perhaps the most studied time period in American history. Though the war was only four years, it would alter the course of history and change American culture forever. Among the changes caused by the war, the most prominent were the social and economic changes and the largest being slavery. The country was divided in many ways and all contributed to the start of the war. Most people would say that the war was solely dependent on […]

One of the most Important Events

The Civil War is one of the most important events in the history of the United States of America. It had many important repercussions which went on to have a deep and long lasting impact on the nation. After four years of a cruel battle, from 1861-1865, between a divided nation of the North and South, more than 600,000 people were killed. These lives, however, were not given in vain. Had it not been for the American Civil War where […]

Role of Technology in the American Civil War

The American Civil War is the first real modern war in America. Most of the technology and weaponry used in the Civil War can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution era. The Industrial Revolution was a time of profound transformation that resulted in new manufacturing processes. It was a time of profound transformation that resulted in new manufacturing processes. By the mid-19th century, mass production industries have been developed mainly in the North, which led them to control a […]

The Civil War Ended

The Civil War ended up being a turning point for many women. Women were required to remain at home to cook, clean and take care of their families, while their spouses went to the front line. Even though, women were prohibited from battling in the war, regardless they had critical roles to satisfy. Various women went up against the roles of medical caretakers, spies, promoters of ladies' suffrage, a supporter of social equality, and so forth. But a few women […]

Abraham Lincoln Presidancy

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. At the early age of 7 he and his family moved to Southern Indiana. When he was nine years old his mother passed, and he had to work to help support his family. He had very limited formal schooling because he was working, though he had very little education, he loved to read books and would borrow books from his neighbors. At age 21, Lincoln and his family […]

The American Civil War

The American Civil War was a battle between the South and the North after a number of states in the south seceded after Lincoln's Presidency. The battle started off as states rights but as the battle went on and advanced the battle was fighting to end slavery. Nobody had any idea that this battle would eventually turn into the deadliest battle in American history. This battle cost many people their lives on the battlefield and beyond. Also, it cost a […]

The Civil War is Considered

The Civil War is considered the bloodiest and deadliest wars in the history of the United States. It began in April 1861 when Confederates opened fire on the Union soldiers at Fort Sumter. The war would go on to last four more long years until May 1865. According to American Battlefield Trust, about 2% of the population, or estimated 620,000 men, were lost in the line of duty. As the battle began, there was a shortage of war time labor […]

Civil War and Abraham Lincoln

Thesis: To what extent did Abraham Lincoln’s election influence the outcomes of the Civil War? Introduction: Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in November of 1860 before the start of the Civil War and continued as president during the War. He sought to unify the nation, to create a better country and to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln described the reality that you can’t avoid destiny so you must prepare yourself for it. “You cannot escape […]

The Civil War was Aged

The Civil war was aged on by many reasons on both sides and leaders from both ends in a disagreement with how the United States of America should be govern. With the leaders and war generals making big decisions and the people of the north and the south both raging their opinions with words and with guns. The war was all about the morality of having slaves, African Americans, work for little money and have no rights. And there were […]

Longstreet First Fought

James Longstreet was a government official, a U.S Army officer, and a famous lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He was one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted generals and known as "Lee's War Horse." James Longstreet was born on January 8, 1821, in Edgefield District, South Carolina to James and Mary Anne Dent Longstreet. He was the son of a prosperous farmer and mostly raised in Augusta, Georgia and Somerville, Alabama. While he was in […]

The Civil War is Central

The Civil war is central to the history of the United States of America and as part of the historical events that define the American experience, it is vastly represented in several historical movies . Indeed, while 1776-1783 revolution created the US, the Civil war of 1861-1865 is said to be the determinant of what kind of nation America would be in the world . By nature, cinematic historical representations of past events are common and loved by Americans and […]

Post Civil War: Economic Factors Shape Democracy in America

Life differed for everyone after the Civil War ended—farmers, Southerners, former slaves, and more—because America was rebuilding itself in more ways than one. Former slaves were set free upon the end of the war, and they believed that their years of unpaid labor gave them a claim to land and ""forty acres and a mule"" became their rallying cry. Whites were not willing to give their property to previous slaves, and the federal government chose not to redistribute land in […]

American Civil War wasn’t Inevitable

The Civil War was and is one of the most outstanding events in the history of the United States. It was a military conflict that occurred in the United States, between 1861 and 1865 (when Abraham Lincoln is elected president). Where the North States fought against the Confederate States of America, composed of the countries of the South, which were just conforming. The struggle took place because the States of the South wanted their independence, while those of the North […]

The Role of Women in the Civil War

The bloodiest conflict in history of North America was not between other countries, like one would might imagine, it was in fact the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the clash between the North and Southern states. The Northern states was committed to ending the practice of slavery. However, the Southern states wished to introduce slavery into the western territories. During this time of conflict over the issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln won […]

Americans Think of African-Americans

When Americans think of African-Americans in the deep south before the Civil War, the first image that comes to mind is one of slavery. However, many African-Americans secured their freedom and lived in a state of semi-freedom even before slavery was abolished by war. Free blacks lived in all parts of the United States, but the majority lived amongst slavery in the south. Freed Blacks continued to be treated as less than a citizen than their white counterparts because the […]

America’s Role in the World after the Civil War

As the civil war came to an end Americas southern territory was in a horrible economic place it was, looted burned, and destroyed by the unions strength to defeat the confederacy. America saw this as a time to reconstruct morally, socially, and economically. During post-war northern Americas industries soared with the help of tariffs passed during war time. It helped corporations like steel and oil to grow and create better technology and mechanics. The growth of industries in America made […]

Outbreak of the US Civil War

The mid-19th Century was not the happiest time in America. Slavery was still very much a thing in the South; the Mexican-American War had devastated the West, tribes of Native Americans were coming into conflict with the Army on the regular, while tensions between the North and South were at an all-time high. All these factors, as well as so many others, would eventually lead to the outbreak of the US Civil War, the bloodiest war in the history of […]

Civil War and Slavery

The U.S. Civil War began on April 12, 1861 in Fort Sumter, South Carolina. There were several events that led up to this battle. Three major causes of the U.S. Civil War include slavery, states’ rights, and the abolitionist movement. The future of slavery created a consuming issue that prompted the disturbance of the union. That question prompted withdrawal, and severance achieved a war in which the Northern and Western states and regions battled to safeguard the Union, and the […]

Civil War was not about Slavery

Some people that experienced the Civil War and some who did not experience it like to say that the Civil War was not about slavery, but instead about defending rights that states had. President Lincoln even tried to offer a deal to the southern states saying if they returned to the union they could keep their slaves, but they denied his offer. The Civil War was started when Fort Sumter was attacked by the confederates. In return to this, Lincoln had […]

Slavery is an Established Social Institution

Slavery is an established social institution in which God did not condemn, is what Thomas Dew believed, whereas Thomas Jefferson believed the opposite; he said that slavery was a moral evil. This was one of the reasons that had started the American Civil War. Although the slave trade was abolished in 1808, slavery on plantations was still practiced in about 15 southern states, from Texas to the Carolinas. With the south having the ideal weather conditions to support cotton plantations […]

Confederate Soldiers Vs. Union Soldiers: Disentangling Motivations on the Battlefield during the American Civil War

The tumultuous era of the American Civil War witnessed a clash of ideologies, with Confederate and Union soldiers donning uniforms that represented more than just military allegiance. The motivations that propelled these men to the battlefield were as diverse as the nation they fought for. As we delve into the intricacies of why Confederate and Union soldiers fought, we uncover a mosaic of personal, societal, and political factors that converged on the bloody fields of conflict. At the heart of […]

Compare and Contrast the American Revolution and the Civil War Essay: the Dual Pillars of American Freedom

In American history, the American Revolution and the Civil War are two major events with lasting effects. Two chapters, separated in time but linked in subject, depict the rise of a nascent nation battling for freedom, justice, and nationhood. While they share freedom as a purpose, their causes, settings, and legacies differ, creating a vibrant tapestry of contrasts. The Quest for Freedom Both the American Revolution and the Civil War fought for freedom. Liberty, as a rallying cry, links these […]

Why was the Battle of Gettysburg a Turning Point in the Civil War

Wars Throughout History Throughout the ages of many, there have been many wars that have graced planet Earth. The Punic wars, a few hundred years before the birth of Christ, saw more than one million people deaths between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginian Empire over a hundred-year span. The French Wars on Religion during the mid-1500s saw more than two million people die for the sake of their religion. And the Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, […]

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Prelude to war

• Comparison of North and South
• The high commands
• Strategic plans
• The war in 1861
• The Peninsular Campaign
• Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) and Antietam
• Fredericksburg
• The Emancipation Proclamation
• African American troops
• Trans-Mississippi theatre and Missouri
• Operations in Kentucky and Tennessee
• The Copperheads
• The Southern home front
• Photography
• Chancellorsville
• Conscription and the New York City draft riot
• Arkansas and Vicksburg
• Chickamauga and Chattanooga
• Grant’s Overland Campaign
• Sherman’s Georgia campaigns and total war
• Western campaigns
• Sherman’s Carolina campaigns
• The final land operations
• The naval war
• The cost and significance of the Civil War

What caused the American Civil War?

Who won the american civil war, who were the most important figures in the american civil war, why are confederate symbols controversial.

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American Civil War

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• Table Of Contents

The American Civil War was the culmination of the struggle between the advocates and opponents of slavery that dated from the founding of the United States. This sectional conflict between Northern states and slaveholding Southern states had been tempered by a series of political compromises, but by the late 1850s the issue of the extension of slavery to the western states had reached a boiling point. The election of Abraham Lincoln , a member of the antislavery Republican Party , as president in 1860 precipitated the secession of 11 Southern states, leading to a civil war.

The Union won the American Civil War. The war effectively ended in April 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The final surrender of Confederate troops on the western periphery came in Galveston, Texas, on June 2.

How many people died during the Civil War?

It is estimated that from 752,000 to 851,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War. This figure represents approximately 2 percent of the American population in 1860. The Battle of Gettysburg , one of the bloodiest engagements during the Civil War, resulted in about 7,000 deaths and 51,000 total casualties.

Important people during the American Civil War included Abraham Lincoln , the 16th president of the United States, whose election prompted the secession of Southern states; Jefferson Davis , the president of the Confederacy ; Ulysses S. Grant , the most successful and prominent general of the Union; and Robert E. Lee , Grant’s counterpart in the Confederacy.

The modern usage of Confederate symbols, especially the Confederate Battle Flag and statues of Confederate leaders, is considered controversial because many associate such symbols with racism , slavery , and white supremacy . The flag was revived as a popular symbol in the 1940s and ’50s by the Dixiecrat Democratic splinter group and others who opposed the American civil rights movement .

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American Civil War , four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America .

The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina , Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , Texas , Virginia , Arkansas , Tennessee , and North Carolina ) in 1860–61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over slavery . Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture—mostly smaller farms that relied on free labour—remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, along with the telegraph.

By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and that relied on slaves as the main labour force . Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners invested their money in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.

The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the “peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labour, came to believe, in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated . White Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through compromise. When Abraham Lincoln , the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party , won the 1860 presidential election , seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America .

In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the harbour of Charleston , South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under P.G.T. Beauregard . Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy.

With war upon the land, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states, although he insisted that they did not legally constitute a sovereign country but were instead states in rebellion. He also directed the secretary of the treasury to advance $2 million to assist in the raising of troops, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus , first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country. The Confederate government had previously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months’ service, and this figure was soon increased to 400,000.

Experiences of the U.S. Civil War, an introduction

Two family portraits from the Civil War era (1861–65) show a seated woman with a young child, gazing straight into the camera. The woman on the left, draped with a blanket and carrying her child on her back, is identified only as a “Sioux Squaw” and her child as a “Pappoose,” racist labels used by whites in that era that dehumanize Indigenous people. This portrait was taken by photographer Joel Emmons Whitney, who wanted to profit from the sale of pictures of the Santee Sioux people after the Dakota War of 1862 . This woman and child were living at a concentration camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, where more than 1,600 Sioux non-combatants were forced to remain over the winter of 1862–63. In the spring of 1863, the U.S. Congress voted to repeal all treaties with the Dakotas and confiscate their lands, forcing them to move to a reservation . [1]

The image on the right shows a white woman in mourning dress, with a brooch featuring the photograph of a Confederate soldier (presumably her husband and her child’s father) pinned to her dress. Her child wears a kepi , which may have belonged to the deceased soldier. This photograph was taken in a Richmond, Virginia studio, and its hand-colored accents and ornate case suggest the sitter’s wealth. 

The format of these photographs draws a contrast between the two families: the carte-de-visite of the Sioux woman and child was intended to be reproduced many times and sold inexpensively as a curiosity to whites interested in seeing people involved with the Dakota War, while the unique ambrotype of the Confederate widow and her child had a closing case designed for private viewing; protected with a latching cover, it was small enough to tuck into a breast pocket. 

Both of these families were profoundly affected by the Civil War. They remind us that the Civil War occurred over a vast country and involved a diverse population, so that capturing “the experience of the Civil War” is an impossible task: there were as many experiences as there were people who lived through it. Soldiers fought in deserts, swamps, mountain passes, orchards, and city streets. Families lived in refugee camps, farm houses, wagons, tepis (tepees), and splendid mansions. Workers made cartridges, built bridges, raised money, sawed off limbs, drove mules, and guarded prisons. 

The experiences of the Civil War in art

These myriad experiences can be difficult to access through the visual and material record of the war—the images and objects that represented everyday life in wartime. The visual record is slanted heavily toward certain groups and areas: northerners produced many more prints and photographs than southerners, for example, because the South was surrounded by a blockade that limited access to the supplies necessary for image-making. Location and wealth were also factors: although photographs were easier to obtain than ever before, not everyone could go to a studio to sit for their portrait, let alone pay for a painting. Like the Sioux family above, they may have appeared in images but often did not control the terms on which they were depicted. We have also lost a great deal of the war’s visual and material culture to time: we can see only what earlier generations decided to preserve, and their ideas of whose art was important enough to save may have differed from our own.

Photographs provide the largest source of visual evidence about the people who lived through the Civil War, including untold numbers of portraits of soldiers. Although a few daguerreotypes were taken during the Mexican-American War , the Civil War was the first major conflict in the United States that took place after photography—which had been invented only 35 years earlier—became widely available, and enlisted men rushed to have their photographs taken in uniform. Scornful of their opponents’ abilities, both U.S. and Confederate soldiers believed that the war would be over in a few months, and they did not want to miss their chance to show they had been willing to do their duty.

The cartes-de-visite above, both taken during the war, show how recruits put the medium to use. The sailor had his photograph taken in a studio wearing his uniform, but in front of a generic painted backdrop that mimics a garden-like setting and reminiscent of the background often seen in painted portraits of the previous century. The backdrop hardly evokes life at sea, but in the scramble to take pictures before men set off for war, it provided for a suitably respectable portrait setting. The photograph at right shows U.S. Army Lieutenant Patrick Boyce in his officer’s uniform (including tasseled epaulets and sword) standing in front of a blank backdrop; on the back of the card, Boyce scrawled “Votre Amie” (“your friend”) and his signature as a token for a friend or sweetheart. Each of these men took advantage of the opportunity to have a photographic portrait made in uniform, representing his military prowess and social standing.

For Black soldiers, sitting for a photographic portrait was not just a record of their bravery in volunteering to serve, but also a claim to citizenship, which was constantly called into question. In 1857, the Supreme Court had ruled that Black people were not citizens of the United States , and so when Black men enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Civil War they were signing up to fight for a nation that did not recognize them as citizens, hoping that their military service would lead not only to the destruction of slavery but to the recognition of Black citizenship.

The Black soldier pictured above holds a pistol across his chest, his belt buckle proclaims his status as a “US” soldier (the image is reversed, so to the viewer it reads “SU”). The photograph was hand-colored (adding pink to the soldier’s cheeks and gold to his buttons and belt buckle) and encased in a frame with numerous symbols of U.S. citizenship and national belonging: an eagle perches above his head, with American flags and bayonets flanking him on each side. Below him is a cannon and a stylized ribbon with the Latin motto found on the Great Seal of the United States, E Pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”). A simplified version of the Great Seal was also reproduced on the uniform buttons of U.S. soldiers, one of which is pictured here: a bald eagle with its wings spread behind a shield, grasping an olive branch in one set of talons and arrows in the other. Frederick Douglass , who worked to recruit soldiers for Black regiments, understood the power and symbolism of the army uniform in changing minds, stated, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” [2]

Photography was far from the only way of capturing the experience of war. In the 1860s, newspapers could not yet reproduce photographs (the process to do so was not created until 1880), so “special artists” were sent to travel with armies to sketch the action. These artists mailed their drawings to newspaper offices so engravers could interpret them for mass distribution. In the drawing above, the hole where engravers tacked this piece of paper to the wall as a guide for copying is still visible near the top of Winslow Homer’s sketch of a scene of officers and enlisted men discussing strategy outside a farmhouse near Yorktown, later printed as part of a larger page of scenes illustrating the war. [3]

Some soldier-artists captured their experiences in drawings, completed while in camp or years afterward when recalling the scenes of battle. They used what materials were available to them: ink, watercolors, or even a pencil nub on a lined journal page. One unknown artist, a soldier in the 44th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stationed in New Bern, North Carolina, drew a series of cartoons in his diary contrasting the northern press’s breathless coverage of the war with the far less romantic reality. In “Glorious News!!!! Destruction of a very Important Bridge in North Carolina!!” the artist showed a wooden plank over a creek being broken by a soldier throwing a rock at it, satirizing the scene with the overblown headline “The REBELS in DESPAIR!!!! Jeff Davis says All is now LOST!!!!!!!!!!” The simple set of panels reveals the humor and playfulness of an ordinary soldier, who wrote that he had to end his sketchbook because he ran out of paper. [4]

Material culture can also tell us about the experience of the Civil War. This bandolier bag, which high-ranking Indigenous men would have worn across their bodies during ceremonies or in battle to carry ammunition, is made of tiny glass beads arranged in abstract floral patterns.

Bandolier bag, likely Delaware, wool, glass beads, cotton, fringe c. 1860 (The American Civil War Museum, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Battle of Honey Springs—despite the death of this bag’s owner—was an important victory for U.S. forces in their quest to gain control of Indian Territory . Indigenous tribes, nations, and bands fought for both the United States and the Confederacy in the Civil War, hoping their alliances would preserve their sovereignty. The bag’s creation in Oklahoma and its journey to the capital of the Confederacy hint at the complex story of the Civil War, where the future of westward expansion , cultural transformation, and the survival of people and nations were at stake. 

The essays in this section grapple with these complex experiences of the war—both on and off the battlefield—through art. 

The first essay, “ The work of war ,” focuses on images depicting the everyday life of the soldiers and civilians who labored for the military during the U.S. Civil War.   

The second essay, “ Homes and families ,” examines how the “home front” was not easy to distinguish from the battlefront during the conflict, as women’s roles transformed with the advent of war.

The third essay, “ Refugees, prisoners, and displacement ,” looks beyond the battlefield and the home front to the people who moved across and outside those spaces, either by choice or by force.

[1] See more on The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 from the Minnesota Historical Society.

[2] Frederick Douglass, “Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army?,” speech delivered July 6, 1863, at National Hall, Philadelphia, PA, published in Douglass’ Monthly , August 1863.

[3] Frank H. Goodyear III and Dana E. Byrd, Winslow Homer and the Camera: Photography and the Art of Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), pp. 10–11.

[4] A Few Scenes in the life of A “SOJER” in the Mass 44th , 1863, graphite on paper, 10.5 x 20.5 cm (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).

Bibliography

American Indian Removal: What Does It Mean to Remove a People? from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 from the Minnesota Historical Society

The Battle of Honey Springs from the Oklahoma Historical Society

Civil War Soldier Stories from the Library of Congress

The Civil War and American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Amy Athey McDonald, “ As embedded artist with the Union army, Winslow Homer captured life at the front of the Civil War ,” Yale News , April 20, 2015.

Lisa Tendrich Frank, Household War: How Americans Lived and Fought the Civil War (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020).

James G. Mendez, A Great Sacrifice: Northern Black Soldiers, Their Families, and the Experience of Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019).

Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).

Amy Murrell Taylor, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 20, 2023 | Original: October 15, 2009

The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them. The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, ended in Confederate surrender in 1865. The conflict was the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and much of the South left in ruin.

Causes of the Civil War

In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions.

In the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, while the South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of Black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco.

Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America —and thus the backbone of their economy—was in danger.

Did you know? Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his famous nickname, "Stonewall," from his steadfast defensive efforts in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). At Chancellorsville, Jackson was shot by one of his own men, who mistook him for Union cavalry. His arm was amputated, and he died from pneumonia eight days later.

In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “ Bleeding Kansas ,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party , a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, the abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar institution” that sustained them. Abraham Lincoln ’s election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas—had seceded from the United States.

Outbreak of the Civil War (1861)

Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after less than two days of bombardment, leaving the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Four more southern states—Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among their citizens.

Though on the surface the Civil War may have seemed a lopsided conflict, with the 23 states of the Union enjoying an enormous advantage in population, manufacturing (including arms production) and railroad construction, the Confederates had a strong military tradition, along with some of the best soldiers and commanders in the nation. They also had a cause they believed in: preserving their long-held traditions and institutions, chief among these being slavery.

In the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) on July 21, 1861, 35,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson forced a greater number of Union forces (or Federals) to retreat towards Washington, D.C., dashing any hopes of a quick Union victory and leading Lincoln to call for 500,000 more recruits. In fact, both sides’ initial call for troops had to be widened after it became clear that the war would not be a limited or short conflict.

The Civil War in Virginia (1862)

George B. McClellan —who replaced the aging General Winfield Scott as supreme commander of the Union Army after the first months of the war—was beloved by his troops, but his reluctance to advance frustrated Lincoln. In the spring of 1862, McClellan finally led his Army of the Potomac up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers, capturing Yorktown on May 4. The combined forces of Robert E. Lee and Jackson successfully drove back McClellan’s army in the Seven Days’ Battles (June 25-July 1), and a cautious McClellan called for yet more reinforcements in order to move against Richmond. Lincoln refused, and instead withdrew the Army of the Potomac to Washington. By mid-1862, McClellan had been replaced as Union general-in-chief by Henry W. Halleck, though he remained in command of the Army of the Potomac.

Lee then moved his troops northwards and split his men, sending Jackson to meet Pope’s forces near Manassas, while Lee himself moved separately with the second half of the army. On August 29, Union troops led by John Pope struck Jackson’s forces in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas). The next day, Lee hit the Federal left flank with a massive assault, driving Pope’s men back towards Washington. On the heels of his victory at Manassas, Lee began the first Confederate invasion of the North. Despite contradictory orders from Lincoln and Halleck, McClellan was able to reorganize his army and strike at Lee on September 14 in Maryland, driving the Confederates back to a defensive position along Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg.

On September 17, the Army of the Potomac hit Lee’s forces (reinforced by Jackson’s) in what became the war’s bloodiest single day of fighting. Total casualties at the Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) numbered 12,410 of some 69,000 troops on the Union side, and 13,724 of around 52,000 for the Confederates. The Union victory at Antietam would prove decisive, as it halted the Confederate advance in Maryland and forced Lee to retreat into Virginia. Still, McClellan’s failure to pursue his advantage earned him the scorn of Lincoln and Halleck, who removed him from command in favor of Ambrose E. Burnside . Burnside’s assault on Lee’s troops near Fredericksburg on December 13 ended in heavy Union casualties and a Confederate victory; he was promptly replaced by Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker , and both armies settled into winter quarters across the Rappahannock River from each other.

After the Emancipation Proclamation (1863-4)

Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863. He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side. Some 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives.

In the spring of 1863, Hooker’s plans for a Union offensive were thwarted by a surprise attack by the bulk of Lee’s forces on May 1, whereupon Hooker pulled his men back to Chancellorsville. The Confederates gained a costly victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville , suffering 13,000 casualties (around 22 percent of their troops); the Union lost 17,000 men (15 percent). Lee launched another invasion of the North in June, attacking Union forces commanded by General George Meade on July 1 near Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania. Over three days of fierce fighting, the Confederates were unable to push through the Union center, and suffered casualties of close to 60 percent.

Meade failed to counterattack, however, and Lee’s remaining forces were able to escape into Virginia, ending the last Confederate invasion of the North. Also in July 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) in the Siege of Vicksburg , a victory that would prove to be the turning point of the war in the western theater. After a Confederate victory at Chickamauga Creek, Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in September, Lincoln expanded Grant’s command, and he led a reinforced Federal army (including two corps from the Army of the Potomac) to victory in the Battle of Chattanooga in late November.

Toward a Union Victory (1864-65)

In March 1864, Lincoln put Grant in supreme command of the Union armies, replacing Halleck. Leaving William Tecumseh Sherman in control in the West, Grant headed to Washington, where he led the Army of the Potomac towards Lee’s troops in northern Virginia. Despite heavy Union casualties in the Battle of the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania (both May 1864), at Cold Harbor (early June) and the key rail center of Petersburg (June), Grant pursued a strategy of attrition, putting Petersburg under siege for the next nine months.

Sherman outmaneuvered Confederate forces to take Atlanta by September, after which he and some 60,000 Union troops began the famous “March to the Sea,” devastating Georgia on the way to capturing Savannah on December 21. Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, fell to Sherman’s men by mid-February, and Jefferson Davis belatedly handed over the supreme command to Lee, with the Confederate war effort on its last legs. Sherman pressed on through North Carolina, capturing Fayetteville, Bentonville, Goldsboro and Raleigh by mid-April.

Meanwhile, exhausted by the Union siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Lee’s forces made a last attempt at resistance, attacking and captured the Federal-controlled Fort Stedman on March 25. An immediate counterattack reversed the victory, however, and on the night of April 2-3 Lee’s forces evacuated Richmond. For most of the next week, Grant and Meade pursued the Confederates along the Appomattox River, finally exhausting their possibilities for escape. Grant accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. On the eve of victory, the Union lost its great leader: The actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14. Sherman received Johnston’s surrender at Durham Station, North Carolina on April 26, effectively ending the Civil War.

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Essay on American Civil War

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The American Civil War, a defining moment in the nation’s history, was not only a clash of arms but also a battlefield of ideas and ideologies. It was a war that forever changed the social, political, and economic landscape of America and significantly influenced American thinking. This essay delves into the multifaceted aspects of the Civil War, exploring its causes, course, consequences, and the profound impact it had on American thought and society.

The Genesis of Conflict

The seeds of the Civil War were sown long before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. The primary cause was the deep-seated division over slavery. The Northern states, advocating for abolition, clashed ideologically with the Southern states, where slavery was integral to the agricultural economy. The war was also about states’ rights and the struggle for power between the federal government and the states.

Ideological Divisions and Their Impact

The ideological divisions that culminated in the American Civil War had a profound impact on the nation’s history and development. Here are key aspects of these divisions and their consequences:

• Slavery and States’ Rights: The primary ideological division revolved around the institution of slavery and the question of states’ rights. The Southern states argued for the right to maintain slavery as an essential part of their economic and social structure. They believed in states’ rights, asserting that individual states had the authority to decide their own policies, including those related to slavery.
• Abolitionism and Anti-Slavery Movements: On the opposing side, the Northern states saw slavery as a moral evil and sought its abolition. Abolitionist movements gained momentum, advocating for the immediate emancipation of enslaved individuals. Prominent figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman played crucial roles in the anti-slavery movement.
• Sectionalism: These ideological differences between the North and the South created deep sectionalism, with each region developing distinct economic, social, and political identities. The North embraced industrialization and modernization, while the South’s agrarian economy depended heavily on slave labor.
• Compromises and Tensions: Several compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, were attempted to ease tensions between the North and the South. However, these compromises ultimately proved unsustainable as the nation’s divisions deepened.
• Election of Abraham Lincoln: The election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, representing the anti-slavery Republican Party, further exacerbated tensions. Southern states viewed his election as a threat to their interests, leading to secession.
• Outbreak of War: The ideological divisions reached a breaking point when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, marking the beginning of the Civil War. The war became a brutal and protracted conflict with significant loss of life.
• Long-Term Impact: The ideological divisions and the Civil War continue to shape American society and politics. Issues related to race, civil rights, and the role of the federal government remain central to the nation’s ongoing dialogue and struggles.

The Course of the War

The Civil War was marked by bloody battles, strategic military campaigns, and significant figures whose decisions shaped the course of the conflict. Key battles like Gettysburg and Antietam were not just military engagements but also turning points that shifted the war’s momentum. The leadership of individuals like President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee played crucial roles in the war’s outcome.

The Transformation of American Society

The Civil War brought profound changes:

• Emancipation Proclamation : Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 declared freedom for slaves in Confederate states, reshaping the war’s moral and political dimensions.
• Economic Changes : The war accelerated industrialization in the North, while the South’s economy, heavily reliant on slavery, was devastated.
• Political Reconstruction : Post-war, the Reconstruction era attempted to integrate the Southern states back into the Union and redefine civil rights, especially for freed slaves.

The War’s Impact on American Thought

• National Identity : The war forged a stronger national identity, transitioning the perception from a collection of states to a unified nation.
• Concepts of Freedom and Equality : The abolition of slavery redefined American values regarding freedom and equality, although the struggle for racial equality continued long after.
• Literature and Art : The Civil War influenced American literature and art, with works like Walt Whitman’s poetry and the paintings of Winslow Homer capturing the era’s essence.

Social and Cultural Ramifications

The war altered the social fabric of America. It led to a significant loss of life and left many families bereaved. Women played new roles, contributing to the war effort and managing homes and businesses in the absence of men. African Americans, both enslaved and free, actively participated in the war, with many fighting for the Union, shaping their future in American society.

The Legacy of the Civil War

The legacy of the Civil War is complex and enduring. It resolved the issue of secession but left unresolved questions about the integration of African Americans into American society. The war also set precedents in terms of constitutional interpretation, federal authority, and civil rights.

Modern Reflections

Today, the Civil War is a subject of extensive study and debate, offering lessons on unity, diversity, and the importance of addressing societal issues. It serves as a reminder of the consequences of division and the value of reconciliation.

In conclusion, The American Civil War was more than a historical event; it was a crucible in which the American identity was reshaped. Its impact on American thinking and society was profound, setting the course for future generations. As students explore this topic, they engage with a critical period that not only defined a nation’s past but also continues to influence its present and future. Understanding the Civil War is key to understanding America itself.

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American Civil War Causes Analysis Essay

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Introduction

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The American Civil War has been a subject of intense study by historians, political scientists and scholars over the years. The reasons which led to the civil war are many but some historians have favored the approach that sectional divisions or political divisions were the main causes which led to the war. David M. Potter is the proponent of the former approach while Michael F. Holt favors the latter. This essay aims to explain the main points of the argument of both the scholars with a view at arriving at an objective analysis of the most likely causes for the American Civil War.

Potter believes that the main cause for the country to divide into two sections was over the issues of slavery, taxation of imports and exports and the assumption of state debts amongst other aspects of governance. Potter states that “From the outset, slavery had been the most serious cause of sectional conflict” (Potter, p. 378). While the Northern states had abolished slavery, the Southern states propounded it as their right. Within these two opposing views, lay the role of the Federal government, which had to consider whether the question of slavery was to be decided by the Federal government or be left to the states. Through the years 1846 to 1861, debates raged all over America to decide the validity of each view. These arguments crystallized into four main formulae.

The first position was formulated by David Wilmot who opined that the Congress had the power to abolish slavery leading to the declaration of the Ordinance of 1787, also known as the Wilmot Proviso stating that “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (Potter, p. 379). Based on the Wilmot Proviso, Presidents Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Monroe and Jackson held that the Congress had constitutional powers to prohibit slavery in all territories. The Congress however, did not uniformly apply this principle to all territories, allowing some territories to the South of the Ohio River to maintain slavery rights while abolishing the same to the North.

Consequently, a compromise between the proslavery and antislavery interests based on territorial divisions became the second formula for resolving the dispute. This approach typified the admittance of Missouri as a slave state and dividing the rest of the Louisiana Purchase along latitude 36 o 30’ to the North being slavery free. This ‘Missouri Compromise’, according to Potter, was free of ambiguity even if philosophically and morally untenable as each side knew what it would gain or lose.

The third formulation was the doctrine of ‘popular sovereignty’. According to this doctrine, the citizens of a state would decide whether they wished to abolish slavery or not. This doctrine was very popular as it allowed Northern states to abolish slavery and the Southern states to affirm their slavery rights.

The fourth formula rejected the Congress’s right to regulate slavery in the territories and stated that the Constitution did not give the Congress such powers. The Constitution gave equal rights to all citizens and thus those who had slave properties could not be discriminated against those who did not wish to possess such properties. Potter argues that the Doctrine that the Congress “could neither exclude slavery from a territory itself nor grant power to a territorial government” (Potter, p. 383) to do so became the main element of Southern unity which led to the civil war.

Michael Holt on the other hand argues that slavery was not the main cause but it was the need to reform the political system and restore republicanism which was the main reason for the war. According to Holt, political theory dictates that in a two party system it is important for the parties to have opponents with clearly defined positions. In the early 1850s the two party systems had collapsed as the two parties namely the Federalists and the Jeffersonian increasingly took consensual stand on issues. Thus, the society now had to look for third party alternatives to carry forth issues that were dear to them but were not being taken up t by the old two party systems. This destruction of the old two party systems and the search for the new two party systems was in great part, responsible for civil war to take place.

The old two party systems had survived for so long because of federalism. Holt argues that “most legislation that affected every day lives of people was enacted at state capitals and not at Washington” (Holt 389). Thus, as the old two party system disintegrated and newer parties emerged, the framework of the new two party system namely the Democrats and Republicans varied from state to state. This varied response to positions to be taken on the issue of slavery gave rise to inconsistencies amongst the Democrats within their states as also amongst the Republicans within their respective states. During the reign of the old two party systems, the federal system had ensured precise divisions of issues of national and state importance which ensured that citizens could identify with their problems and have them addressed by the respective state unit, while national issues were tackled at Washington by the state representatives. When the federal system weakened and the new parties still in a nascent state, Holt opines that state and national issues remained blurred. This led to sectional extremism in the Deep South “because no new framework of two-party competition had appeared there as it had in the North and upper South” (Holt, p. 387).

Holt’s thesis appears to be built on political theoretical grounds while the postulates of Potter seem grounded in the practical pragmatic approach stating actual events of those times. Undoubtedly, the causes of the American Civil war, despite dense political theorization, resulted primarily due to the opposition of the American citizens to the immoral precepts of slavery. Potter’s analysis is event based with rich examples of actual incidences and discussion of legislations enacted by federal and state authorities of those times which give a more plausible explanation of the causes of the American Civil War. Holt’s formulation though attractive from the viewpoint of political theory is not substantiated with illustrative examples as has been put forth by Potter. Analysis of both the essays reveals that Potter’s thesis that sectional divisions due to differences on the question of slavery and its ramifications on individual, state and federal rights were the most likely causes of the American Civil War holds greater logical appeal than does Holt’s theory of Political Divisions.

• Holt, Michael F. “The Political Divisions That Contributed to Civil War.” Cobbs, Elizabeth. Major Problems in American History. Boston: Houghton Muffin, 2006.
• Potter, David M. “The Sectional Divisions That Led to Civil War.” Cobbs, Elizabeth. Major Problems in American History. Boston: Houghton Muffin, 2006.
• The Gathering Storm 1848-1860
• America of 1848-61 in Impending Crisis by D. Potter
• The Harry Potter Phenomenon Analysis
• The Way the American Flag Was Deployed Culturally Following Sept 11th
• Child Labour in the Late 1800s to the Early 1900s
• Quaker Executions in Early America Settlement
• How the Vietnam War Polarized American Society
• American City Life in the 19th Century
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, October 14). American Civil War Causes Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-civil-war-causes-analysis/

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Bibliography

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Introduction to the American Civil War

By william c. davis, james i. robertson, jr., and john c. waugh.

Three introductory Essays

Sesquicentennial: A Retrospective on the Civil War

By professor william c. davis , virginia tech.

The coming of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War in 2011-2015 begs for looks backward and forward to gauge both how that conflict has shaped America as it is today, and to speculate on what its influence may continue to be in the next century and a half.

One thing that cannot be denied is that the war was the making of American mythology. To be sure our frontier experience gave rise to a number of icons whose legends far outstrip their historical exploits and import, men such as David Crockett and James Bowie, or Buffalo Bill Cody. But the Civil War produced a virtual Iliad of epic figures whose legends continue to grow despite the best work of historians to contain them to their historical boundaries. Indeed, it says something about Americans’ relationship with that era that by and large most of us continue to prefer the myths to the realities.

Abraham Lincoln towers above all others, closely followed by Robert E. Lee. Both have been all-but-worshipped as Christ-like figures of sacrifice and nobility. Lee’s great lieutenant Stonewall Jackson’s capabilities have been so exaggerated—and they were great enough in reality—that he is perhaps the only man in the Civil War whose death is made responsible for the Confederacy losing the war, as if Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and close to 2 million other Union soldiers had no influence in that outcome.

The growth of the post-war “Lost Cause” myth continues unabated despite its repeated explosion by historians North and South. The Confederacy is still regarded romantically in many quarters as a land of moonlight and magnolias, knightly cavaliers, blushing belles, and happy slaves who loved their masters and felt no inner call to freedom. Indeed, the Lost Cause myth has long ago jumped its bounds as a palliative to help the South deal with the emotional trauma of defeat, and is now almost as widely believed—indeed yearned for—north of the Mason-Dixon Line as it is below.

The impact of such mythology on attitudes today is evident almost daily in the press and other media. Every politician at some point conjures Lincoln, either to use his eloquence, or claim his posthumous endorsement. Millions of Americans, and not just those in the new South, cling to discredited arguments that secession and the war that followed had little or nothing to do with slavery, despite the straightforward declarations of Southern leaders in 1860 and 1861 that issues surrounding slavery were exclusively the cause for their actions. The hoary old myths are kept alive to support and advance social and political attitudes of today in a classic example of the universal habit of humans of misrepresenting the past in order to support viewpoints of the present. And of course, there is no more potent example of this than the growing and militant use of the Confederate battle flag as an emblem of all manner of attitudes, from resistance to federal taxation, to opposition to universal civil rights.

Despite the fact that in the last few generations Americans have given up spending lifetimes in one place, and migrated all across the map, no one can travel the country without still encountering regional prejudices against lingering stereotypes that date to the war era and before. Yankees are still cold and calculating, Southerners are still lazy and in-bred. If anything, the war entrenched those views, and as always, people tend only to see what reinforces the particular stereotypes operating on them.

Beyond the war’s lasting impact on our perceptions of ourselves, good and bad, right or wrong, we also live in a framework vastly shaped by that experience. Today the federal government is undoubtedly supreme to the states, even though as recently as 2010 some states began trying to resurrect the discredited old idea of nullification in order to allow the states to overturn an unpopular act of Congress. The display of the Confederate flag still causes repercussions in state houses and in Washington. Memorials and monuments to Confederate leaders spark controversy, while a statue of Lincoln in Richmond, Virginia has done the same, and the debate rages on about the role played by Negroes in the war, with even numerous claims that Southern slaves fought for the Confederacy. All of these issues and more are not just arcane squabbles about historical interpretation; they are arguments growing out of attitudes of today that seek to use the past as precedent.

Americans in the 21 st century live very much in a culture of the Civil War. Indeed, we cannot escape it. The subject dominates the book publishing industry as never before, with hundreds of titles coming out every year. Half a dozen periodicals deal solely with the war era. Film and television still portray the war and its peoples—inaccurately for the most part, though occasionally a producer really strives for authenticity. Computer games and internet sites abound, and the web itself is awash in Civil War material, much of it unfortunately evidence of the aptness of the old aphorism about “garbage in, garbage out.” Preservation efforts have never been more aggressive or successful in saving significant battlefield land for future generations to explore. Seminars and symposia and that peculiar phenomenon known as the Civil War Round Table all flourish as never before.

In short, while from time to time people have spoken of a current phenomenon of interest in the Civil War, the fact is that the fascination began even before the war was over, and has continued unabated ever since. It is our 150-year-old hobby, and it shows no signs of facing old age just yet. As long as that interest continues, we hope that the adaptation of current technology to its study via the Essential Civil War Curriculum, will help sift fact from fiction and allow people of today and tomorrow to continue to draw both interest and meaning from an understanding of the war and its issues and individuals as they really were. Surely the myths will continue. We cling to them, for reasons that say far more about ourselves than our past, but through the glamour and romanticism the Essential Civil War Curriculum will strive to cast illumination on the essential truths of our most fascinating era.

A Name for the American Struggle of the 1860’s

By james i. robertson, jr. , virginia tech.

The Civil War was the bloodiest experience America has ever endured because both sides were fighting for absolutes. In the North, preservation of the Union was paramount. The South wanted its independence. No room for compromise existed between those two goals. Further, when Abraham Lincoln in 1863 added an end to slavery as the second major war aim—a move that would leave the South economically bankrupt and socially disrupted a negotiated peace between the combatants was out of the question. One side had to conquer, and the other side had to be conquered.

Emotion ran so high, bitterness was so profound that North and South then—and to an extent still—could not even agree on what to call the war. It would take the better part of a century to reduce the title list to 2-3 names. This reflects the deep wounds inevitable when a nation goes to war against itself.

During and after the conflict, the overwhelmingly popular choice of a title was the “Civil War.” It could never become totally acceptable because the definition of a civil war changed from mid-19 th Century usage to modern interpretation. In the early 1800s, a civil war was defined as people of the same country fighting each other. Later, “civil war” would be interpreted as people of the same country fighting each other for control of the nation. Certainly the Confederate States of America was not attempting to overthrow the United States. It sought to leave that governmental system and live by different standards of rule. However, in locales such as Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and even western Virginia, either definition of a civil war was applicable.

“Civil War” was the most common term used by both sides. Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee called it by that name. Southern newspapers, including the four major dailies in Richmond, used the term. In an 1862 Supreme Court decision, the high tribunal referred to “the Civil War” and gave the title a stamp of officialdom.

Many Southerners were offended by the name. It implied rebellion: a resistance to lawful authority. The eleven states of the Confederacy were so strongly convinced of the constitutionality of their action that they willingly went to war to defend it.

In the postwar period, Southerners developed a counterpoint with the title “War between the States.” Had this term been specifically used to mean one group of states under a strong central government arraigned to fight another group of states under a strong central government, the title would be accurate. Yet “War between the States” is misleading as well as incorrect.

The title implies that all of the states were at war with each other. In addition, Southern proponents of the theory of state rights preached loudly that the Southern nation was in reality a loose confederation of eleven independent sovereignties. Much more was involved in the conflict than the issue of state power.

Twenty Good Reasons to Study the Civil War

By john c. waugh.

It is not possible to fully know America and Americans without knowing about the Civil War. Its drama, pathos, irony and people make it compelling and endlessly fascinating. Of course there are more than twenty reasons to study the Civil War but these are the ones that resonate with me. [1]

1 Because It Was Unique

The Civil War was a disaster in its toll of human lives, in the anguish and sorrow it left in its track, in its political, social and emotional upheaval--it is unparalleled in American history. But it also brought a new birth of freedom by ending slavery and made the United States truly united. Robert Penn Warren called the Civil War “the great single event of our history.” Over 700,000 died, 500 a day for every day of the war, savaging a generation of young men. On September 17, 1862, the single bloodiest day in American history, 23,000 Americans were killed, wounded or missing. [2]

Unique also was why the war was fought. With the question of slavery unresolved by the Constitution, the nation was divided over slavery. Crisis and compromise succeeded crisis and compromise as the slaveholding South sought to preserve its way of life against an increasingly abolitionist North. As each new state was considered for admission to the Union the issue of whether it would be free or slave divided the nation. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 followed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820; the war with Mexico in 1846-1848 followed by the Compromise of 1850; all were crises deferred not resolved. With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, eleven Southern States seceded, believing this was the only way to preserve the Southern way of life against aggressive Northern abolitionists dominating a government in which the South felt it no longer had an equal voice. They went to war to defend their way of life and the North went to war to preserve the Union.

The Civil War was a source of incredible ironies. On the battlefield a Union soldier might find the body of a Confederate soldier who was his brother. After First Manassas two wounded soldiers, one Confederate one Union, lying side by side in a hospital were brothers who had not seen one another for years. Families and neighbors went to war against each other. Poignant, gut-wrenching irony was everywhere in the Civil War.

2 Because It Was a Watershed in American History

By the eve of the Civil War the nation was not one and the Union’s continued existence was still not assured. Growing pains from the War of 1812 with Great Britain, the War with Mexico in 1846-1848, economic, social and political upheavals, and the great issue of slavery—all raised the question of union and disunion. Abraham Lincoln understood the issue “this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free…I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.” [3]

The Civil War was the event in American history that defined the United States as a nation. Before the Civil War the nation was a grouping of independent states. After it became “one nation, indivisible.”

Zachary Taylor said of the Union “Upon its preservation must depend our own happiness and that of countless generations to come.” It was the Civil War that preserved the Union. [4]

3 Because It Was a War of Firsts

The Civil War, perhaps more than most, was a war of firsts. War is generally accompanied by an upwelling of inventiveness. Many of these inventions had lasting impacts and more constructive uses that far outlived the war itself.

For the first time in any war there was conscription, the Secret Service, income tax, withholding tax, tobacco and cigarette tax, flag signal codes, battlefield photography, and African American army officers, the Medal of Honor, military flares and a trumpet call called Taps . For the first time in American history a president was assassinated.

The railroad, in its infancy, grew dramatically and was used for military transportation. Though the telegraph existed before the war it was used for the first time in a mobile form by the Union Major General George B. McClellan early in the war.

For the first time in history in the midst of a Civil War a presidential election was conducted, and for the first time soldiers voted in the field in an election campaign. For the first time in any war reconnaissance was conducted from the air, in this case by the use of gas filled balloons. And these for the first time gave birth to antiaircraft fire, blackouts and camouflage on the ground. These early aeronauts even attempted to use air to ground telegraphic communications, although these failed.

Although the main antidote for ghastly wounds was a ghastly amputation under unsanitary conditions the medical arts were forced out of the medieval ages and set on the course to what we know today as modern medicine. For the first time there were hospital ships, and organized medical and nursing care and ambulances to carry the wounded to them. The war gave birth as well to the first widespread use of anesthetics.

Many of these firsts now ease our labors, lessen our pain and save our lives.

4 Because It Saved Republican Government

At the time of the Civil War Republican government was a new idea uniquely in place in the United States. At stake was not only the existence of the Union but also whether such a new form of government would survive a life-threatening crisis from within. In Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg address the issue was that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” For “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” [5]

The Civil War settled this issue and that our Republican form of government survived is alone reason enough to make the Civil War one of the great critical passages in world history, and worthy of everlasting study.

States’ Rights, the idea that the Union was only a loose Confederation of states and not an unbreakable union, led many Southerners to the belief that their first allegiance was to their native state and not to the United States. States’ Rights was a driving value that Southerners evoked to justify secession. They thought it essential to preserving their way of life, the right to own slaves, and their ability to run their individual states as they saw fit without outside interference. States’ Rights was their safe harbor from the mounting, aggressive antislavery sentiment in the North. Perhaps the greatest irony was that the objective the South sought through secession—preserving its way of life against the majority bent on destroying slavery—did just the opposite. It took decades for the South to recover.

But perhaps secession was necessary to create a more permanent Union.

5 Because It Killed Slavery

In the beginning the Civil War was not waged to destroy slavery. President Lincoln was prepared either to save or abolish slavery, whatever it took, to achieve the central aim of the war which he declared to be to preserve the Union.

When the war began slavery was protected in the Constitution in those states where it already existed. While Lincoln deplored slavery personally he believed that slavery had to be left alone in those states but that it should be prevented from expanding into the new territories. And in an August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune , Lincoln stated “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” [6]

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Lincoln in September 1862 after the Battle of Antietam , to take effect January 1, 1863. It turned the war into a war not just to preserve the Union but also to destroy slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in those parts of the Confederate states still in Confederate hands on January 1, 1863. It was the postwar Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which outlawed slavery everywhere in the United States. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments began to give freed slaves equal rights.

While slavery died in the Civil War racism did not and has not to this day.

6 Because It Originated New Ways of Waging War

New weaponry introduced in the Civil War forced radical changes in the strategy and tactics of warfare.

Single shot smoothbore muzzle loading muskets that dominated at the war’s beginning were made obsolete by the war’s end by rifled muskets and repeating rifles and carbines. These weapons made traditional tactics of mass frontal charges against well-defended positions obsolete.

Just as striking was the evolution of artillery. Rifled artillery complementing the more common smoothbore cannon allowed killing en mass at longer ranges with greater accuracy and foreshadowed the massive firepower of the artillery of the future.

Other developments included artillery fired for the first time from flatbed railroad cars, land minefields, wire entanglements, rudimentary flamethrowers, telescopic sights, the first revolving gun turret, and the first machine gun.

As important as the new weapons were the new strategies. This was the first time the concept of “total war” embraced by William Tecumseh Sherman was introduced. In previous wars armies lined up in packed ranks charging a packed rank of enemies. In Sherman’s March through Georgia the Union armies destroyed a wide swath of civilian infrastructure, aiming to break the rebellion by breaking the will of Southerners through this destruction.

7 Because It Revolutionized War on the Water

The Civil War brought a new era of naval warfare through the development of nascent technologies such as the steam engine, screw propeller and more powerful naval ordinance.

On March 9, 1862 there was an epic battle at Hampton Roads Virginia between two ships with iron sides. The USS Monitor and CSS Virginia were the first ironclads to fight each other at sea. Built on wooden hulls these two ships fought an inconclusive engagement for four hours that made every wooden hulled ship of war everywhere in the world obsolete, changing naval warfare forever.

The first rudimentary submarine, the Confederate ship Hunley sank the USS Housatonic in February 1864, sinking with all her crew afterwards.

The first naval mines, called torpedoes during the Civil War, were also introduced. Hulking ironclad riverboats up to half a football field in length were introduced and used on the Tennessee, Cumberland and Mississippi rivers.

These changes were also the harbingers of the naval forces developed and used in 20 th century warfare.

8 Because It Teaches Us Brotherhood

We have never seen brotherhood stretched so far, absorb such blows, pass through such fire, and survive as intact as it was in the Civil War. Many of the men who wound up fighting one another were the dearest of friends.

Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Stoddart Ewell, then a prisoner in a Union prison, wept at the news of the death of Abraham Lincoln whose armies had put him there. When Union Major General George Brinton McClellan died in 1885 former Confederate generals came to mourn his passing. When President Ulysses Simpson (Hiram Ulysses) Grant died that same year Confederate generals sadly followed his casket wearing their gray sashes. Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman died in 1891. The man whom he had defeated and who surrendered to him at the end of the war, Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnson, was a mourner at his funeral.

During the war often at night regimental bands of both armies played while both sides listened across the battlefield. These concerts often ended in a mournful rendering of the song “Home Sweet Home” by both sides. There was as George McClellan once described it a “sacred brotherhood of arms” that arose in the Civil War. [7]

9 Because It Showcases Undaunted Courage

The phrase that Civil War soldiers used for the first experience of battle was “seeing the elephant.” Horace Porter, one of Grant’s staff officers, said “courage, like most other qualities, is never assured until it has been tested. No man knows precisely how he will behave in battle until he comes under fire.” Though there were many who turned and ran there were many more who showed incredible courage. We study the Civil War to learn about both but more to learn about the greatness of the human spirit. [8]

Ulysses Grant sat in his saddle under fire without moving a muscle or blinking an eye. As one of the soldiers said “Ulysses don’t scare worth a damn.” Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was similarly brave, casually inquiring once amid a rain of bullets of his companion “General are you a man of family man?” as casually as if they were sitting in chairs on the front porch at home. [9]

As great as the courage shown by the generals was the courage shown by the common soldier of both sides and the study of the Civil War will yield countless anecdotes of courage of the most incredible kind.

10 Because It Made Heroes

Most of the heroes we associate with the Civil War are presidents and generals who are the most vivid in our memories now—Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and many others North and South—and who are also now part of our collective American memory. They were not all men. For example Clara Barton became a symbol in the war of caring and courageous womanhood.

They were heroes because they were tested in the fire that touched them all. They were not all successful but they proved themselves to be heroes by their mettle. These heroes are role models for us even now, possessing characteristics against which we can measure ourselves. They show us a century and a half later the courage and nobility of which man is capable.

11 Because It Created a New Industrial America

The differences between the antebellum South and antebellum North did not relate to slavery alone. In the South before the war there was little industry. In virtually every home most of the essentials of life were made from scratch—from food to clothing to implements. Most things that could not be homemade but had to be manufactured were not produced in the South. They were imported from the North or from abroad. There was little indication that this would change in the southern, slave-dependent agrarian society.

The antebellum North was industrializing, moving from an agrarian base towards a future based on manufacturing and technology. It was on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain and was spreading. These stirrings of technological development in the decade before the war still left the North a nation of farmers working the land, more agrarian than industrial. The Civil War gave a tremendous jolt of creative energy to the North and launched it full-blown into the new economic world of big city, big industry, big manufacturing, big technology and the big business society that America is today.

The Civil War could not have been won without the growth of a tremendous industrial plant supporting a huge unprecedented fighting machine and creating the weapons and materials that war required. The war also required a different kind of banking system. From a balkanized collection of state banks the country emerged from the war with a national banking system on which the economic present was built.

12 Because It Produced Men of Fabulous Fortunes

Out of the Civil War emerged three men who epitomized the brand of antihero who knew how to build a fortune and did it. While their contemporaries went to war, these three—Andrew Carnegie, John Pierpont Morgan, and John Davison Rockefeller dodged the war and build the foundations for three of the colossal fortunes and most notable careers in American business, industry and finance. Instead of going to war with their young contemporaries they turned their talents to doing business and beginning to build their fortunes.

Of these Carnegie is the most heroic in what he accomplished and how he chose to use what he accomplished for the benefit of his fellow man. When the war began Carnegie was 26 years old, a young business phenomenon, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He worked briefly in the war office in Washington before returning to his job at the railroad. He soon left the railroad and entered the steel business. In 1889 he wrote an article widely known as “The Gospel of Wealth.” In it he argued that the life of a man with the talent to make a fortune fell into two periods—the first to make millions and the second to distribute and share them. He built 2,800 Carnegie free libraries and poured millions into churches and colleges, education, and international peace. He died in 1919 an American hero not for his money but for his good works.

J.P. Morgan was 24 years old at the beginning of the Civil War. He chose not to volunteer and when conscription came he hired a substitute. Early on he was involved in questionable gold speculation and selling the government obsolete weapons. After the war he became an international financier unmatched in American history. In the national treasury crisis of 1895 he led a syndicate and raised a $65 million gold payment that steered the country’s economy out of trouble. Like Carnegie, Morgan also gave back mainly to churches, cathedrals, art galleries, and hospitals. He died in 1913.

John D. Rockefeller was only 21 when the war came and clearly saw it as an opportunity to make a fortune. He wasn’t about to become a soldier, first claiming exemption as the sole support of his mother and four brothers and then hiring a substitute. In 1863 he became involved in an oil refining venture on which he was to build his fabulous fortune after the war. Rockefeller was ruthless in business but he and his progeny became noted in American life for the multi-millions poured into philanthropy. He died in 1937.

These antiheroes, lacking in the qualities of idealism and courage associated with heroes on the battlefield were formed in the same mix and at the same time by the Civil War.

13 Because It Was a War of Political Oddities

The Civil War years of 1862-1865 produced one of the most unique half decades of politics in American history.

The Democratic Party held a convention in Charleston South Carolina in the spring of 1860 only to fail to nominate a candidate as southern Democrats walked out. They tried again in Baltimore and succeeded in nominating Stephen A. Douglas, but southern Democrats, who had walked out, met down the street, proclaimed themselves the real Democratic Party, and nominated John C. Breckinridge.

The new Republican Party met in Chicago and passed over a famous politically seasoned New Yorker, William H. Seward, for a dark horse Illinois lawyer politician named Abraham Lincoln.

A fourth party not comfortable with any of the other three tickets nominated their own candidate, John Bell, thus launching a four-way race.

Lincoln was elected president having not given a single speech, receiving no votes in the southern states—indeed not even being on the ballots there—and without receiving a popular majority.

Shortly after Lincoln’s election, seven states seceded from the Union, met in convention in Montgomery Alabama, and called themselves the Confederate States of America. Here they wrote a constitution, and named a provisional president, Jefferson Davis, who did not want to be president. He was later elected to the single six-year term contemplated by the Confederate Constitution and his inauguration was held February 22, 1862.

One month after Lincoln was inaugurated as president, the Confederate government fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, inaugurating the Civil War. President Lincoln’s immediate call for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days to put down the rebellion, led four more states to secede.

In 1864 for the first time in history a presidential election was held during the Civil War, but only in the North. This was the first time in 30 years that a sitting president was running for reelection. The Democratic Party candidate was a popular general, George Brinton McClellan who had been fired as general in command of the Union military forces two years earlier by Lincoln.

The Confederate government sent agents to try to buy influence election in favor of the Democrats who they believed would be more sympathetic to peace and southern independence.

Soldiers in the army voting in the field for the first time in American history favored Lincoln over their former popular commander.

In the spring of 1865 a little over a month after his inauguration for a second term and after General Robert E Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses Grant, President Lincoln was assassinated, the first chief executive in American history to be slain in office.

14 Because It Pioneered a New Journalism

Newspapers in the 19 th century were powerful opinion makers and their editors were major players in their times. The editors were anything but objective, inserting themselves and their newspapers, their opinions and their gratuitous advice into the middle of affairs. The reporting, such as it was, reflected the newspapers’ political point of view. Injecting that point of view not only into editorials but also into what passed as new stories was accepted practice.

For example pro-Lincoln Republican newspapers hailed Lincoln’s Gettysburg address as the masterpiece that it was. But Democratic newspapers following their anti-Lincoln biases derided it.

The Civil War forced new thinking in journalism as it did in many other things. The war was the biggest news event of the mid-19 th century and demanded more than editorial opinion.

James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, led the way. Even before the war, while he dished out opinion and insult, he also delivered genuine reporting of events. In the antebellum years his newspaper was the most readable, popular, and sensational one in the country, mixing editorial opinions with reporting news. The Herald was the first general-interest newspaper to cover sports, business, stocks, and crime.

When the war came Bennett sent a stable of well-paid correspondents to cover and report what they saw. Other newspapers soon followed his example.

Not only did newspapers send reporters to the battlefield, they also sent artists to sketch what they saw. Photography was not sufficiently developed in the Civil War years to picture war as it happened. However, a handful of pioneering photographers, most famously Mathew Brady, appeared on the major battlefields within hours or days after the fighting stopped to set up their bulky equipment and capture the resulting carnage on film.

The reporters, artists and photographers of the Civil War were the forerunners of ubiquitous print and TV war correspondents that we know today. And the germ of all that now comprises the modern day style of journalism was incubated in the Civil War.

15 Because it Inspired Great Literature

One of the giants of American literature in the 19 th century occupied the White House during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was a great writer, the force and clarity of whose words still resonate today. The Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address stand out among the many examples of his masterful writing.

The Civil War has left us a beautiful legacy of words. Many people—on both sides of the war, of both genders, of all ages and persuasions and social strata, those fighting it or living through it—wrote what they were seeing feeling and experiencing. Many diaries and journals, vivid memoirs, an ocean of correspondence some of it beautifully written, was put on paper during the Civil War and survives today.

Think of the letter of Sullivan Ballou written to his wife Sarah on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run in which he died. Such writing from the soul and from the heart moves us as little else can.

There has also of course been some compelling fiction written about the war— Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage , Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind , Michael Shaara ’s The Killer Angels .

Literally hundreds of books about the Civil War are being written and published annually. Some of the writing has been good, some not, and some of it has attained the level of literature.

Some of the best historical writing has been by historians and writers writing about the Civil War—Bruce Catton’s works, Shelby Foote’s three volume history, Allan Nevins’ eight volumes on the war for the Union, the biographies of Douglas Southall Freeman on Lee and Carl Sandburg on Lincoln and the writings of such modern-day historians as James M McPherson, David Donald, James I. Robertson Jr., William C. Davis, and Grady McWhinney.

The Civil War has left a body of literature that continues to grow and to fascinate us again and again.

16 Because It Tested Our Faith

Of all institutions caught in the Civil War none were more unnaturally stressed than religion. The United States in 1861 was one of the world’s leading Christian nations with almost all in the North and South believing in the one and same God. When the split came, most people on both sides believed they had to have God on their side if they were going to win.

Many believed and many preached that God was on their side because their cause was the righteous one. When the battle was won it was often pointed to by the victor as proof that God was with them. It became common ecclesiastical wisdom to measure success or failure in battle against the wrath or benevolence of the Almighty, to assume that defeat meant you didn’t have things straight with God. Get right with God and victory would follow.

Soldiers facing death on the battlefield believed in an Almighty who controlled man’s destiny and guided his fate. Perhaps no man in the war believed this more strongly than Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson. Jackson saw God’s hand in every one of his victories and invariably give Providence full credit in each. As he lay dying in 1863 he was content, believing it was God’s will, and therefore the right thing to be happening.

That kind of faith sustained many in the war and it is a faith that sustains many of us still. But if the Civil War teaches us anything it is that we can’t necessarily count on God’s being on our side when we begin fighting one another.

17 Because it is Our Own Direct Tie to the Past

The genealogy craze that has gripped the country in recent years owes much to the Civil War.

The Civil War was an exclusively American experience and our ties to those who fought in it or lived through it are but a few short generations in the past. Nearly all of us have ancestors or personal interest, direct or indirect, dating back to the Civil War. Rarely has there been an experience in the past that so directly relates to so many of us in such a personal way. The knowledge that a direct ancestor experienced such a monumental event in history has driven the past home to us as nothing else can. And the sense of immediacy that this knowledge gives convinces us of history’s abiding relevance to us in our own time.

By linking us to the past, the Civil War has restored its great drama to our lives. Thousands have traced their Civil War ancestors in genealogical collections, libraries, city and county records, and cemeteries. TV programs and books feed the desire to know and understand our past and our own relationship to it. In learning about our ancestors and the Civil War we learn about ourselves.

In reading these materials we learn that our ancestors suffered the same sorrows, thrilled to the same events, thought the same thoughts as we do today. To understand their feelings and emotions is to better understand our own. To know them helps us to know ourselves.

Our kinship with the past is tight and inseparable.

18 Because It Makes Us Remember

Reunions are the mechanisms by which we remember and relive times in our lives that we don’t want to forget, things that are such a vital part of who we were and who we are. History is reunion on a large canvas—going back to our roots, invoking our memories of the city, county, state, nation, world, and universal scale. History has been defined by many great minds in many different ways but Winston Churchill’s definition is the one I prefer: “history, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”

The study of the Civil War makes us remember something we must never forget—how it was that we came to a crisis of such enormous moment in our history and lived and fought through it and came out in the end not only preserved as a unique democratic republic, but made better by it.

19 Because It Is Great Drama

There are two basic kinds of history—studies by academic historians and stories that writers and teachers of narrative history tell. And history as stories is great drama. History, taught and written as drama in all of its nuances, is irresistible and more engaging than any book of fiction ever written.

History is a story about people beginning and ending in the hearts of those who lived it. And passing history down the ages is like the passing of a flame from one age to another. By telling the stories of the heroes of the Civil War we give our listeners the foundation of what this country is all about.

When you read about the Civil War read about the people in it. Read the biographies. Anybody who reads about the Civil War as the great human drama that it was will never tire of reading about it.

20 Because It Speaks to Us Still

The Civil War still continues to stir the American imagination, bulking larger in our minds than any single event in our history. No event in our past evoked such an outpouring of telling and retelling. The books about it have become virtually uncountable and are still pouring forth every year.

Its most spectacular leap into our present-day imagination was triggered by Ken Burns’ eleven part TV documentary which injected the war into the national psyche again as nothing ever had, bringing it dramatically back to us as large as life. It helped spawn the growing subculture of the Civil War with people reading, visiting the preserved battlefields, and re-enacting the battles they had read about.

The Civil War subculture is populated by a vast network of Civil War Round Tables, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Sons of Union Veterans, Daughters of the Confederacy and organizations dedicated to preserving battlefields.

The Civil War’s traces and remnants are everywhere. National Battlefield Parks are magnets for those fascinated by the Civil War. Much of the land where battles were fought has been saved from development by organizations like the Civil War Preservation Trust and its allies. Artifacts of the war abound and are bought by eager collectors.

The Civil War is such a vibrant part of our past that lives so vividly still in the present that to know ourselves we must know it. So many aspects of our lives today took root in some way in that unique and stormy period of our history. That is reason enough in its own right, powerful enough to drive our memories indefinitely back to it, as doubtless it always will as long as we exist as a people and a nation.

• [1] This essay is a summary of: John C. Waugh, 20 Good Reasons to Study The Civil War (Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2004)
• [2] Robert Penn Warren, Legacy of the Civil War: Meditations on the Centennial (New York: Random House, 1961).
• [3] On June 17, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Lincoln gave what is now known as his “House Divided” speech upon accepting the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's United States senator from which this quotation is taken.
• [4] This quotation comes from the concluding paragraph of Zachary Taylor’s State of the Union 1849 address to Congress on 4 December 1849.
• [5] Lincoln gave the speech now known as the Gettysburg address on November 19, 1863 on the occasion of the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
• [6] “A Letter from the President,” New York Tribune , August 23, 1862”
• [7] This quotation is taken from a speech given on June 15, 1864 by Major General George Brinton McClellan at the dedication of the site for the proposed Battle Monument at West Point.
• [8] Horace Porter, “The Philosophy of Courage” in Century Magazine , June (1888):249.
• [9] Kate Havelin, Ulysses S. Grant (Minneapolis: Lerner Publishing, 2004), 32; William B. Taliaferro, “Personal Reminiscences of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” Civil War Times , vol.34, no. 2, May-June (1995):18, (Address of William Booth Taliaferro to the Lee Camp of United Confederate Veterans in Richmond Virginia).

If you can read only one book:

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Cary , New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

• Introduction - A Name for the American Struggle in the 1860s
• Introduction - Sesquicentennial: A Retrospective on the Civil War
• Introduction - Twenty Good Reasons to Study the Civil War

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

Introduction to the civil rights movement.

• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE

Black Power

• The Civil Rights Movement

• The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the period from 1946 to 1968.
• Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court, to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
• The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met with the fierce opposition of white supremacists .

The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights and the supreme court, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, what do you think.

• See Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• See C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
• See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• See Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Stephen Tuck,  Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• See Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
• See Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
• See Michael Eric Dyson, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
• See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
• See Tavis Smiley, ed., The Covenant with Black America: Ten Years Later (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2016).

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Home — Essay Samples — War — American Civil War — The Civil War in America

The Civil War in America

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