American Civil War

American Civil War

Introduction

The Civil War in the United States began in 1861 due to tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, rights, and westward expansion. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 led to seven southern states seceding and forming the Confederate States of America. The War Between the States ended in Confederate surrender in 1865, resulting in 620,000 deaths and millions of injuries, leaving much of the South in ruin.

Causes of the Civil War

• Economic difference between Northern and Southern regions:

• In the mid-19th century, the United States experienced significant growth, but there was a significant economic difference between the northern and southern regions.

• Manufacturing and industry were well established in the North, and agriculture was primarily restricted to small-scale farms, but the South’s economy was centered on a large-scale farming system that relied on the labor of Black enslaved people to cultivate specific crops, particularly cotton and tobacco.

Growing abolitionist sentiment of Slavery:

• After the 1830s, abolitionist sentiment in the North and opposition to slavery’s expansion into western territories led to fear among southerners.

• By the 1830s, anti-slavery groups were on the increase in the north, reaching even into the newly acquired western regions of the United States. The southern states regarded this as a huge danger to their livelihood, which was heavily reliant on slavery.

• Kansas-Nebraska Act: The Kansas-Nebraska Act, approved by the United States Congress in 1854, effectively opened all new territories to slavery by emphasizing the primacy of popular sovereignty over federal authority.

• In “Bleeding Kansas,” pro- and anti-slavery factions clashed brutally, while resistance to the act in the North resulted in the founding of the Republican Party, a new political body founded on the basis of opposing slavery’s expansion into western territory.

Outbreak of the Civil War (1861)

• The American Civil War began in April 1861, when the newly created Confederate army attacked the Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.

• Following the Confederacy’s victory at Fort Sumter, four additional southern states joined it: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Despite the fact that border southern states such as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland did not join the Confederacy, there was widespread anti-Union feeling among their populations.

• Confederate states, even though numerically disadvantaged, evened the odds by maintaining a strong military heritage and deploying the greatest troops and commanders of the period.

• The Union troops were just conscripts compelled to fight in the Union army for minimal pay, but the southerners were ardent volunteers fighting to maintain their history and institution.

The Emancipation Proclamation

• After the Union’s victory at Antietam, President Lincoln used the moment to announce the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all enslaved people in Confederate states free as of January 1, 1863.

• This move was framed as a wartime strategy, aiming to weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of its labor force while shifting international support firmly in favor of the Union.

• By the war’s conclusion in 1865, 186,000 Black soldiers had served in the Union Army, with 38,000 of them losing their lives in the struggle.

Conclusion:

• Hence, the capitalist industrial states of the north defeated the slave-owning states of the south, winning the war. The United States government ended slavery. However, prejudice against Black people remained after slavery was abolished, and they continued to fight for equal rights