Civil War
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Civil War
The Civil war started in 1861 when Abraham Lincoln was elected into presidency and the southern part of the United States of America wanted to break from the federal union. The paper outlines the various reasons that might have lead to the civil war and the abolition of slavery has been highlighted. This is because after the war was over in 1865, the emancipation proclamation was one of the effects of the war that is witnessed and has been established to be a great milestone for President Abraham Lincoln. orderwriters.com outlines this in details. It is noted that the soldiers also did not fight based on the interests of the governments but had their own interests when they decided to go out to the battlefields and surprisingly most of them did not expect the war to last long. The cost of the civil war is weighed against the outcome and it is clearly put across that in the end, the war was necessary for the unity of the United States of America.
The Civil war started due to several reasons such as the economic differences. Gienapp (15) explains that when Eli Whitney invented the Cotton gin in 1793, it was a great relief to the cotton farmers as it made it easier for the separation of the seeds from the cotton. This made the South of the United States to go into the plantation of the cotton and the slaves majorly did this. The farmers in the south switched to planting cotton only and this left the North to be an industrial state as opposed to agriculture as in the south. The north acquired the raw materials from the south and produced the final goods hence making a higher income. The standards of the people in the north were raised and there were different cultures and values between the people in the north and the south. Those in the south sought to hold on to the olden social order. These different views or approaches to the issues may have been a major contributor to the conflict leading to the civil war.
After the American Revolution, there were two separate camps; one sought for the federal government and the south was hesitant of these as they saw that the individual powers of the states were undermined. The federal government had gone ahead to pass laws that were unfavorable to the south such as the import tax imposed and the ban of slavery in an amendment that had been passed. The south sought for nullification but with no avail and as a last result, they had secession which means it withdrew from the federal state with Southern Carolina taking the lead. This misunderstanding did not go well and might have fuelled the civil war.
Gienapp (48) continues to say that slavery especially in the southern part America may have been another reason why the civil war started. Very many religious organizations worldwide had sought to put an end to the slavery that was prevalent in America. The whole idea of one human being owner of another was morally not acceptable and this drove the slavery abolitionists in the north part to spread the ideas through publications such as books and even newspapers. The slave owners in the south thought that the abolitionist were interfering with their way of life and the federal government was doing very little to protect their property. The southerners were also concerned that the Union only allowed states to join if they did not advocate for the slavery and with fewer and fewer states from the south in the federal government made the former's influence negligible.
There was also the case of unfair taxation as seen where the north was economically different from the south. The southerners produced the cotton and exported it to England and in turn, they would get the cheap manufactured goods from England. The North on the other hand which was heavily dependent on the industries for their economic success had to impose heavy tax duty on the imports to prevent the southerners from importing the manufactured goods from England but instead purchasing from them. This did not go well with the people from the south, as they were greatly angered. The election of Abraham Lincoln could also have been a facilitator to the war as he was believed to be against slavery and would have worked into the favor of the people in the North and this brought about more states to secede (Gienapp 70).
It is evident that in the Civil war some soldiers were fighting for their own reasons, as there must have been something else fuelling them in the hardships of the war. They clearly did not fight for the same reason but they fought irrespectively. There have been cases of soldiers leaving the war once they realized that they were fighting an abolitionist war. This is a clear indicator that, they were not fighting to ban slavery as it may greatly be assumed. From the above demonstration, we can deduce that the soldiers fought for their own motives and were doing it as a way of social fulfillment and some wanted to go down in their history that they fought in the civil war era.
As Gienapp (100) outlines, on the onset of the war it did not seem as if it would last for a long time and each side was confident that it would win if they went to war. Unseasoned men even signed up for the army knowing that this would be an easy war and the fever and enthusiasm imparted in them fuelled them to fight for their government. The north, which was fighting to strengthen its union government, was out to fight the rebels who had rejected the union constitution. The south on the other hand had soldiers who were out to fight as a way of strengthening the confederacy by fighting for their rights, their very own constitution as the southerners and secession.
Some soldiers did not only fight as a way of strengthening their government but they also fought as a way of protecting their families. This could have been because of wanting to protect the families together with their land that seemed to be threatened in the war. They also sought to prove their masculinity by displaying their courage by going out to participate in the war.
Some soldiers especially in the South participated in the war based on acquiring honor. Most families were seen to send off their young men to go to fight in the civil war as it made them proud and it gave that particular family great honor. Those young men who did not go out to participate in the war were sometimes criticized as being weak and fragile and they subsequently brought shame to the family.
The civil war presented itself as a training ground for the soldiers and hence they decided to take part in it. There were also various opportunities that came along with taking part in the war such as the military soldiers earned money, which they would send back home for their families to live on. The participation of the soldiers in the civil war gave them the opportunity to get various ranks if they fought with diligence and valor. This would also give them status in the end and some soldiers opted to fight in the war, as there was nothing better for them at home. They hoped that if they fought in the civil war they would come back with the prestige of war and gain respect from the various farmers and laborers back at their homes.
Later on in the war as it advanced into the years, there were the Yankee soldiers who fought solely to abolish the practice of owning slaves in the southern states. The Yankee soldiers were fighting for the interests of the northern states and since the latter did not stand for the slavery in the southern, with time their soldiers would fight against the same says (Gienapp 190).
It can be established that some soldiers at some point just fought so that the civil war would be finished as it had brought fatigue and boredom to most of them. The soldiers were seen to be fighting with different motives and since most of their aspirations had been fulfilled, they began to tire and just wanted the war to end. The soldiers from the northern part fought because they could not stand the fact that an army from the south that had black soldiers would defeat them. This is because of their discriminatory ideologies and they pushed on to fight though most of the army from the south did not have the black soldiers in the combat.
Gienapp (249) explains that the Civil war lasted four years and there were several outcomes from it. The war resulted to the defeat of the Confederacy and this went for their resumption in terms of their status in the United States of America. The time after the civil war was known as the reconstruction and as much as it marked the end of the war, it was marked with numerous conflicts mainly because there were so many people especially from the north who were trying to take advantage of the southerners.
One of the most significant outcomes was that slavery was abolished as a legal institution in the United States of America. There was an amendment to the constitution called the 13th Amendment, which sought for the abolition of slavery, and this had gone hand in hand with the emancipation proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln.
Gienapp (285) argues that in as much as the civil war seems to have united both the states in the north and the south, it took almost twelve years to do this without war and if there were several conflicts during the reconstruction, it cannot compare to the over one million casualties that had resulted from the war. The war had left so many homeless especially those in the south. The abolition of slavery could not favor those who were slaves directly because even if they were let free, what would they do to earn an income. The 13th amendment could have been successful without the war and it would have been done with minimal hostility and was improvised for the new lives for the slaves.
After the civil war, the economic implication was enormous and it can be seen that there was inflation in both the north and the south and this greatly hit the south as most of their crops and plantations, which they used to earn an income, had been destroyed. The former federal soldiers also asked for benefits from the confederacy and this ended up costing the south more than it had cost them to fund the war.
The cost of war can be very extensive and it goes beyond the financial implication but the cost can even spread as far as being the psychological cost of trauma of the victims. The cost of reconstruction is always very high and after a war the country that looses the battle is the most affected in term of resources available to rebuild. For instance, the South had really exhausted its resources and it required them to join with the north of the United States of America so that they would continue with their survival. Economically disabling the enemy during war can be a strategy that is seen to have been used by the Union soldiers.
The war however seems to have been unavoidable as it is until the south had been defeated that they became more open to the idea of the emancipation proclamation. Though there were slaves who were not immediately released, this put an end to a practice that was inhuman and gave each person in the United States of America to be equal, as it has been outlined in the constitution. The cost may have been dear for the four years but is served to liberate the states for hundreds of years that would follow.
Reference
Gienapp, W. (2011). The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary History. W.W. Norton: SAGE Publication, Inc.