Civil War

The American civil war took place between 1861 and 1865. More than 600,000 people died and this made the civil war the worst around that time.

The reasons that led to the civil war are diverse with some people arguing that the term ‘civil war’ is inappropriate. Some of the speculated causes were social, political, psychological, and economical. It was termed as an ‘”irrepressible conflict” amongst Americans (Columbia Encyclopedia, 1993).

Pressures that Lincoln faced as he contemplated the question of emancipation and why he did not free all the slaves

Back in 1840, Lincoln was more inclined to compensate emancipation. He was against the slave trade and used to compensate those who lost their slaves. These compensations were financial and he insisted that they were voluntary.

The major pressure that Lincoln faced was from anti-extensionists. They were opposed to compensated emancipation and this agitated Lincoln. He tried to revoke it but he was unsuccessful. Lincoln went ahead to introduce compensated emancipation to Delaware. He wanted his proposal’s inclusion in the Delaware legislature (The Lincoln Institute, 2001).

Gradual emancipation featured in the draft bill and he further offered another bill that would order slave compensation by the federal government. These bills however flopped since George Fisher; the Delaware congressman lacked legislative approval. Slaves were in this era treated as personal property hence their loss would call for state compensation.

The north however failed to agree with Lincoln. Lincoln underwent transformation and now campaigned towards the freeing of these slaves. He however saw it as unfair to just free them without offering their masters any form of compensation. Lincoln talked of having friends who put him under pressure to free the slaves while others wanted them to stay (The Lincoln Institute, 2001).

In his quest for emancipation proclamation, Lincoln did not quite succeed in freeing all the slaves. The southern part remained opposed to this move and so only, the ones in the north were freed. Those states that were under the confederacy refused to honor this move.

The civil war united the south to the north and they had to obey Lincoln’s rule. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation policy ended slavery in America (Think quest Library).

Compare the problems faced by the administrations of Lincoln and Davis in prosecuting the war. Why was Lincoln more successful in resolving his problems?

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were the U.S president and the confederate president respectively. Prosecuting the civil war was tricky especially on the Southerners side led by Davis. His confederate government was not in a position to sustain its army after several sieges by Lincoln’s troops.

There was a deficit in food supply, transport, and clothing. At the same time, the horses went hungry due to lack of fodder and proper care. The ammunition that was in use was faulty and this made all the logistics work against them.

Lincoln was faced with problems such as rejection by the seven states that indeed pulled out of the union thus the formation of the confederation. He thus embarked on changing his generals and this worked, as he was able to conquer the South (Pagewise, 2002).

The civil war was a major success for Lincoln due to his fighting tactics and ability to strategize. He was seen as a better leader as he was skilled, more eloquent, pragmatic, and flexible and this endeared him to his people. He had great choice when it came to picking subordinates for his administration.

He was also very good in delegation. Davis on the other hand was seen as a lesser leader owing to the fact that he was rigid and antisocial. He therefore managed to make more enemies than friends. His strategy further failed as he followed the southerners’ decision to send armies to the vast confederacy. The resources were limited and this resulted in a thinned out distribution of the army. This led to their resounding defeat (Storie, 2004).

Conclusion

The American civil was something that could have been evaded. They only needed to be more rational. The freeing of slaves has been controversial and Lincoln is said to have cared little about them. The black people were treated as personal property and that is why bills on compensation were doing their rounds.

This was split between two sides where one was for emancipation and the other for their stay in America to provide labor. Lincoln carried the day and slave trade was abolished in all states of America.

References

Columbia Encyclopedia. (1993). Causes of the civil war. Retrieved from

http://www.us-civilwar.com/

The Lincoln institute. (2010). Compensated emancipation. Retrieved from

http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=35&subjectID=3

Think Quest Library. (2010). The emancipation proclamation freed all black people. Retrieved

from http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112391/myth_8.htm

In the decades post-Civil War, America moved to the city. The increase in population almost doubled especially with the rush of new immigrants. The drift towards the city didn’t only affect America, it affected the Western world. With new industrial jobs, immigrants and Americans had opportunities for jobs, having the United States flourish.

I. The new look of cities; the urban frontier.
A.1870 to 1900, the American population doubled, and the population in the cities tripled.

B.Cities grew up and out, with such famed architects as Louis Sullivan working on and perfecting skyscrapers (first appearing in Chicago in 1885).
1. The city grew from a small compact one that people could walk through to get around to a huge metropolis that required commuting by electric trolleys.
2. Electricity, indoor plumbing, and telephones made city life more alluring.
C.Department stores like Macy’s (in New York) and Marshall
Field’s (in Chicago) provided urban working-class jobs and also
attracted urban middle-class shoppers.
1. Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie told of woman’s escapades in the city, made cities dazzling and attractive.
2. The move to city produced lots of trash, because while farmers always reused everything or fed “trash” to animals, city dwellers, with their mail-order houses like Sears and Montgomery Ward, which made things cheap and easy to buy, could simply throw away the things that they didn’t like anymore.

D.Criminals flourished, and impure water, uncollected garbage, unwashed bodies, and droppings made cities smelly and unsanitary.
1. Worst of all were the slums, which were crammed with people.
2. So-called “dumbbell tenements” (which gave a bit of fresh air down their airshaft) were the worst since they were dark, cramped, and had little sanitation or ventilation.
E.To escape, the wealthy of the city-dwellers fled to suburbs.

II. Immigration happens all over the nation.
A.Until the 1880s, most of the immigrants had come from the British Isles and western Europe (Germany and Scandinavia) and were quite literate and accustomed to some type of representative government. This
was called the “Old Immigration.” But by the 1880s and 1890s, this shifted to the Baltic and Slavic people of southeastern Europe, who were basically the opposite, “New Immigration.”

1. Southeastern Europeans accounted for 19% of immigrants to the U.S. in 1880, early 1900s, were over 60%!

III. Southern Europeans make their way to America.
A.Many Europeans came to America because there was no room in Europe, nor was there much employment, since industrialization had eliminated many jobs.
1. America often praised to Europeans, people boasted of eating everyday/having freedom, much opportunity.
2. Profit-seeking Americans also perhaps exaggerated the benefits of America to Europeans, so that they could get cheap labor and more money.
B.Many immigrants to America stayed for a short period of time and then returned to Europe, and even those that remained (including persecuted Jews) tried very hard to retain their own culture and customs.

1. However, the children of the immigrants sometimes rejected this Old World culture and plunged completely into American life.

IV. Americans react to the new immigrants in their country.
A.Federal government did little to help immigrants assimilate into American society, so immigrants were often controlled by powerful “bosses” (such as New York’s Boss Tweed) who provided jobs and shelter in return for political support at the polls.

B.People like Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden began preaching the “Social Gospel,” insisting that churches tackle the burning social issues of the day.
C.Among the people who were deeply dedicated to uplifting the urban masses
was Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in 1889 to teach children and adults the skills and knowledge that they would need to survive and succeed in America.

1. She eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, but her pacifism was looked down upon by groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, who revoked her membership.
2. Other such settlement houses like Hull House included Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York, which opened its doors in 1893.
3. Settlement houses became centers for women’s activism and reform, as females such as Florence Kelley fought for protection of women workers and against child labor.
4. New cities gave women opportunities to earn money and support themselves better (mostly single women, since being both a working mother and wife was frowned upon).

V. Narrowing the Welcome Mat
A.The “nativism” and anti-foreignism of the 1840s and 1850s came back in the 1880s, as the Germans and western Europeans looked down upon the new Slavs and Baltics, fearing that a mixing of blood would ruin the fairer Anglo-Saxon races and create inferior offspring.

1. The “native” Americans blamed immigrants for the degradation of the urban government. These new bigots had forgotten how they had been scorned when they had arrived in America a few decades before.

2. Trade unionists hated them for their willingness to work for super-low wages and for bringing in dangerous doctrines like socialism and communism into the U.S.
B.Anti-foreign organizations like the American Protective Association (APA) arose to go against new immigrants, and labor leaders were quick to try to stop new immigration, immigrants were frequently used as strikebreakers.

C.Finally, in 1882, Congress passed the first restrictive law against immigration, which banned paupers, criminals, and convicts from coming here.
D.1885, another law was passed banning the importation of foreign workers under usually substandard contracts.
E.Literacy tests for immigrants were proposed, but were resisted until they were finally passed in 1917, but the 1882 immigration law also barred the Chinese from coming (the Chinese Exclusion Act).

F.Anti-immigrant climate, the Statue of Liberty arrived from France—a gift from the French to America in 1886.

VI. Churches Confront the Urban Challenge
A.Since churches had mostly failed to take any stands and rally
against the urban poverty, plight, and suffering, many people began to
question the ambition of the churches, and began to worry that Satan
was winning the battle of good and evil.

1. The emphasis on material gains worried many.
B.A new generation of urban revivalists stepped in, including people like Dwight Lyman Moody, a man who proclaimed the gospel of kindness and forgiveness and adapted the old-time religion to the facts of city life.

1.Moody Bible Institute was founded in Chicago in 1889 and continued working well after his 1899 death.
C.Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were also gaining many followers with the new immigration.
1. Cardinal Gibbons was popular with Roman Catholics and Protestants, as he preached American unity.
2. 1890, Americans chose from 150 religions, including the Salvation Army, tried to help the poor.
D.The Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), founded by
Mary Baker Eddy, preached a perversion of Christianity that she claimed
healed sickness.
5.YMCA’s and YWCA’s also sprouted.

VII. Darwin Disrupts the Churches
A.1859, Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, which set
forth the new doctrine of evolution and attracted the ire and fury of fundamentalists.
1. “Modernists” took a step from the fundamentalists and refused to believe that the Bible was completely accurate and factual. They contended that the Bible was merely a collection of moral stories or guidelines, but not sacred scripture inspired by God.

B.Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll was one who denounced creationism, as
he had been widely persuaded by the theory of evolution. Others blended
creationism and evolution to invent their own interpretations.

VIII. The Lust for Learning
A.New trend began in the creation of more public schools and the provision of free textbooks funded by taxpayers.
1. By 1900, there were 6,000 high schools in America; kindergartens also multiplied.
B.Catholic schools also grew in popularity and in number.
C.To partially help adults who couldn’t go to school, the Chautauqua movement, a successor to the lyceums, was launched in 1874. It included public lectures to many people by famous writers and extensive at-home studies.

D.Americans began to develop a faith in formal education as a solution to poverty.

IX. Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People
A.South, war-torn and poor, lagged far behind in education, especially for Blacks, so Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave came to help. He started by heading a black normal (teacher) and industrial school in Tuskegee, Alabama, and teaching the students useful skills and trades.

1. Avoided Issue of social equality; he believed in Blacks helping themselves first before gaining more rights.
B.One of Washington’s students was George Washington Carver, who later discovered hundreds of new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans.
C.However, W.E.B. Du Bois, the first Black to get a Ph.D. from Harvard University, demanded complete equality for Blacks and action now. He also founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910.

1.DuBois’s differences with Washington reflected contrasting life experiences of southern and northern Blacks.

X. The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
A.Colleges/universities sprouted after the Civil War, and colleges for women, such as Vassar, were gaining ground.
1. Also, colleges for both genders grew, especially in the Midwest, and Black colleges also were established, such as Howard University in Washington D.C., Atlanta University, and Hampton Institute in Virginia.

B.Morrill Act of 1862 had provided a generous grant of the public lands to the states for support of education and was extended by the Hatch Act of 1887, which provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges.

C.Private donations also went toward the establishment of colleges, including Cornell, Leland Stanford Junior, and the University of Chicago, which was funded by John D. Rockefeller.
D.Johns Hopkins University maintained the nation’s first high-grade graduate school.

XI. The March of the Mind
A.Elective system of college was gaining popularity, took off after Dr. Charles W. Eliot became president of Harvard.
B.Medical schools and science were prospering after the Civil War.
1. Discoveries by Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister (antiseptics) improved medical science and health.
2. The brilliant but sickly William James helped establish the discipline of behavioral psychology, with his books Principles of Psychology (1890), The Will to Believe (1897), and Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).

a. His greatest work was Pragmatism (1907), which preached what he believed in: pragmatism (everything has a useful purpose). XII. The Appeal of the Press
A.Libraries such as the Library of Congress also opened across America, bringing literature into people’s homes.
B.With the invention of the Linotype in 1885, the press more than kept pace with demand, but competition sparked a new brand of journalism called “yellow journalism,” in which newspapers reported on wild and fantastic stories that often were false or quite exaggerated: sex, scandal, and other human-interest stories.

C.2 Journalists emerged: Joseph Pulitzer (New York World) & William Randolph Hearst (San Francisco Examiner) Strengthening of the Associated Press, which had been established in the 1840s, helped to offset some of the questionable journalism.

XIII. Apostles of Reform
A.Magazines like Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, and Scribner’s Monthly partially satisfied the public appetite for
good reading, but perhaps the most influential of all was the New York Nation, launched in 1865 by Edwin L. Godkin, a merciless critic. These were all liberal, reform-minded publications.

B.Another enduring journalist-author was Henry George, who wrote Progress and Poverty, which undertook to solve the association of poverty with progress.
1. It was he who came up with the idea of the graduated income tax—the more you make, the greater percent you pay in taxes.
C.Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward in 1888, in which he criticized the social injustices of the day and pictured a utopian government that had nationalized big business serving the public good.

XIV. Postwar Writing
A.After the war, Americans devoured “dime-novels” which
depicted the wild
West and other romantic and adventurous settings.
1. The king of dime novelists was Harland F. Halsey, who made 650 of these novels.
2. General Lewis Wallace wrote Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which combated the ideas and beliefs of Darwinism and reaffirmed the traditional Christian faith.
B.Horatio Alger was more popular, since his rags-to-riches books told that virtue, honesty, and industry were rewarded by success, wealth, and honor. His most notable book was titled Ragged Dick.

C.Walt Whitman was one of the old writers who still remained active, publishing revisions of Leaves of Grass.
D.Emily Dickinson was a famed hermit of a poet whose poems were published after her death.
E.Other lesser poets included Sidney Lanier, who was oppressed by poverty and ill health. XVI. The New Morality
A.Victoria Woodhull proclaimed free love, and together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, wrote Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, which shocked readers with exposés of affairs, etc.
B.Anthony Comstock waged a lifelong war on the “immoral.”
C.The “new morality” reflected sexual freedom in the increase of birth control, divorces, and frank discussion of sexual topics.

XVII. Families and Women in the City
A.Urban life was stressful on families, who were often separated, and everyone had to work, even children.
1. While on farms, more children meant more people to harvest and help, in the cities, more children meant more mouths to feed and a greater chance of poverty.
B.1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Women and Economics, a classic of feminist literature, in which she called for women to abandon their dependent status and contribute to the larger life of the community through productive involvement in the economy.

1. She also advocated day-care centers and centralized nurseries and
kitchens.
C.Feminists also rallied toward suffrage, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890, an organization led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who’d organized the first women’s rights convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY) and Susan B. Anthony.

D.By 1900, a new generation of women activists were present, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, who stressed the desirability of giving women the vote if they were to continue to discharge their traditional duties as homemakers in the increasingly public world of the city.

1. The Wyoming Territory was the first to offer women unrestricted suffrage in 1869.
2. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs also encouraged women’s suffrage.
E.Ida B. Wells rallied toward better treatment for Blacks as well and formed the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.

XVIII. Prohibition of Alcohol and Social Progress
A.Concern over the popularity (and dangers) of alcohol was also present, marked by the formation of the National Prohibition Party in 1869.
1. Other organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union also rallied against alcohol, calling for a national prohibition of the beverage.
a. Leaders included Frances E. Willard and Carrie A. Nation who literally wielded a hatchet and hacked up bars.
2. The Anti-Saloon League was also formed in 1893.
B.American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed in 1866 to discourage the mistreatment of livestock, and the American Red Cross, formed by Clara Barton, a Civil War nurse, was formed in 1881.

The South States of the United States dependent upon agriculture as a source of foreign and domestic exchange and therefore held a negative feeling about abolition of slavery. Nevertheless in order to save the image of the constitution as a legal binding document that granted freedom to all Abraham Lincoln together with the support of the Union states felt that liberal source of labour was much more profitable both to the economy and civilization of the United States.

The cotton and tobacco producing states felt oppressed by the antislavery tactics of the federal government and promptly seceded since the federal government was acting beyond the provisions of the constitution in abolishing slavery and therefore in response decided to secede from the Union for independence since they considered the Union’s constitution less supreme to individual states’ constitution.

Therefore the American civil war was about the issue of different views about free labour against slavery and the subsequent supremacy of the Union’s constitution over individual states independence. The Union established the 13th amendment act that abolished slavery by allowing all men to be free and at liberty to and in order to preserve the constitution that formerly paradoxically upheld slavery, Abraham Lincoln had support the Union’s war against the pro-slavery south (Cornell University Institute, 2010).

The federal government had its quarters at the Washington D. C. while the Confederation has it headquarter at Virginia’s Richmond. The Union’s economy was organized and well established through the promotion of industries and use of immigrants as industrial workers and the general population while the south cotton and tobacco states derived their economic subsistence from agriculture with over five million slaves.

The Republican Party believed in democracy and justice regardless of ethnicity as a fundamental right under the auspice of the constitution-consequently in order to protect the supreme constitution’s aspirations to promote a coherent and democratic America the Union had to fight the southern militia that were against the Union control and abolition of slavery (Stampp, 1981, 144).

Religious, cultural and intellectual freedoms were being undermined in the South against the Union government’s principle of the 13th amendment act and the allowed slavery was denting the image of US in Europe that widely perceived the presence of slavery to as a sign of inability within the Union’s government to act.

Economically, the Union benefitted from the Union government economic policies and taxation more than the confederation. Therefore it was a mandatory economic issue that the United States had to be kept together despite the civil war through proper conflict resolution that would see the economic models of the North America spread to the south in order to end the former economic disparities between the two regions.

The economic value of the United states in the international market was dependant on the union more than a divided America that would soon enter into worse civil unrest realities and fierce interstate rivalry of ideologies and religious views that would have torn American into pieces as the American enemies projected as a mechanism to further colonize and control the economic power of the vast continent. Lincoln as the president had the right to preserve the Union from disintegration due to diverse political views in order to look in control (Stampp, 1981, 192).

Military aggression of the southerners was well advanced to inflict damage in courage and sustainable conquest tactics due to the recently concluded Mexican war experience to use the horse and the gun more effectively. Also, the North as the government knew that they were disadvantaged in military action and therefore the war had to be fought with a common ground that would help in enlisting more soldiers to defeat the south (McWhiney, 1984,170).

Therefore the Union was aware that in any case the southern aggression had to be suppressed if the power of the Union government under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln was to be recognized with respect as a legally binding Union. Therefore President Lincoln referred to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation as the “last card, and I [Lincoln] will play it and may win the trick.

” And therefore “we must make that proclamation effective by victories over our enemies. ” Since “It’s a paper bullet, after all, and of no account, except we can sustain it” (Don, 1862)-thus the president and the union were exercising a crucial and political will by suppressing the southern insurgency that threatened to break apart the United State into meaningless defragmentation that would soon shrivel up in economic and political disparity.

The south secede was politically seen as a form of annexation against the United States and Lincoln would have gone down the history as the president who broke the Union. Consequently, the Union had a political right to protect the US from becoming desolate in the face of the determined southerners who believed in offensive wars that “have many advantages; purely defensive ones will always end with submission” and that “the greatest minds in the South are coming to the conclusion, that our liberties are to be won by the bayonet.

Those regiments or companies that most distinguish themselves in bayonet charges will march on the true road to honor and preferment” (McWhiney, 1984, 144); such propaganda in the general media put the Union government into task of either preventing the escalating confrontation by the Confederation or face imminent alienation. Therefore the preservation of the Union was quite dependant in the military power of the Union over the south as the civil war was already in progress. The south seceded from the war after the election of Abraham Lincoln as the president of the United States.

The southern economy was dependant on agriculture. With the large scale growing of cotton, slaves and land conservation was necessary. The slaves were needed since they were a source of cheap labor on the white farms. As opposed to the south, the north’s economy dependent on industrial production of finished goods thus the slaves was not needed in the production. This meant that the southern life was based on the plantation and firm system while the northern life was based in the cities.

The southerners who benefited from agriculture were pleased to go to war with the aim of attaining independence as they thought the war would take a short time and they would come out victorious as they were better skilled fighters than the northerners. However, since the war showed no sign of coming to an end while the northern seemed to be taking all the advantages, the northern felt the need to guard and conserve their land against any force especially the northern thus leading to most abandoning the fighting to and protect their properties at home.

( Kelly 2010) The war of states versus federal rights led to the emergence of two camps within the government whereby each wanted to be in control over the other. After the American Revolution, a weak federal government formed by thirteen states called for a strong constitution since problems were on the rise. The frequent problems led to the secret creation of the US constitution by the leaders.

Due to the absence of some key leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry during the constitution making, it was felt the constitution had failed to put in mind the states’ rights of acting independently whereby a state would decide whether to accept or refute federal rights. This led to the idea of nullification that would see the freedom for states to rule the federal act as either unconstitutional or not. The southern states were for the option of each state making its own law instead of the central government. This was nullification as campaigned for by people such as John C. Calhoun who greatly advocated for the nullification.

When nullification failed to succeed, the southern states felt disrespected and uninvolved in the government issues. The southerners then opted for the secession as an option (Kelly2010). Land gained from the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican war saw the Americans posses vast tracks of lands. This led to the big debate as whether the new states acquired could be treated as slaves or Free states. The 1820 Missouri compromise solved the issue by proclaiming that slavery was illegal while other alternates suggested several awareness programs for the slaves as the federal government was to compensate the slave owners.

The south was left to rethink its alternatives on the issue of slavery where it picked on benefits versus cost in deciding the fight. (Michael 1996)Another conflict arose as to what would happen to the conquered lands after the war. The 1846 Wilmot Proviso by Wilmot David proposed that the land should be slave free a move strongly opposed in a debate. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that caused the freedom to have slaves or not in the two states led to a lot of blood shedding to the states.

The wrangles led to the south withdrawal from the government as they felt they were being ignored. The growth of the abolition movements by the northerner’s against slavery while proclaiming the negative impacts of slavery led to the increase in number of anti slavery supporters especially from the outside nations who sympathetically joined in the slavery abolition movement thus favoring the north against the south to the extent of supporting the south in war that eventually saw the south loose over the north. (Kelly 2010).

Though the victory of Lincoln in the elections saw the south in the state of South Carolina declare a secession thinking that Lincoln was who was a presidential candidate from the north was elected so as to favor the interests of the anti slavery people from the north thus he could not serve their interests . The southerners further thought that they could lose their land to the northern who were now in control of the whole state thus causing some men in the battle ground feign excuses to get back home and manage their possessions.

States like South Carolina stated the reason for secession being constitutional violation under Lincoln to which the Union saw as a form of political annexation against the presidency and the founding fathers view about America (Michael 1996). In conclusion the war that was sparked off by the issue of slavery in order to protect the supremacy of the Union constitution against the literally annexation of the United states by the South was won and the servitude done away with.

Remarkably, President Lincoln preserved the Union and established a better platform that allowed the integration of the economic value of the United States as one nation. References: Don E. and Virginia E. Fehrenbacher, editor, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln: Letter from Charles Sumner to John Bright. August 5, 1862 McWhiney, G. (1984). Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817302298, 9780817302290 Stampp, K. (1981). The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War.

Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0195029917, 9780195029918 Cornell University Institute. (2010). 13th Amendment. Legal Information Institute. http://topics. law. cornell. edu/constitution/amendmentxiii Michael B. (1996). Lincoln’s election and the south. Retrieved May 8, 2004 from http://www. h-net. org/~south/archives/threads/lincoln. html Kelly M. ( 2010)Top Five Causes of the Civil War Leading up to Secession and the Civil War Retrieved May 8, 2004 from http://americanhistory. about. com/od/civilwarmenu/a/cause_civil_war. htm

The deadliest war in American history is known as the American Civil War killing nearly 620,000 soldiers and a mass amount of civilians. The War Between the States was fought between Southern slave states and the United States federal government. Southern states formed a group called the Confederacy, which went against the beliefs of the Union. Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America and Abraham Lincoln sought different views on slavery.

Lincoln believed that all slaves should be emancipated and advocated the restoration of the Union.The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 supported the belief that all slaves who escaped, once captured were to be returned to their owners. This led to the War Governors’ Conference on September 25, 1862 which included the meeting of thirteen Union governors who conversed between many different aspects of the war. The importance of this meeting routed from the war and the downfall that Abraham Lincoln was witnessing in the United States. As they discussed many reasons to abolish slavery, they believed that a substantial win would help the announcement of the proclamation. Slavery had a significant impact on society in a moral and economical aspect.The money had “strengthened the American economy in the north and south.

” Economically slaves who worked on plantations changed the agricultural society. The shift went from the agricultural society to a more advanced industrial society. This then caused the downfall of the Confederate States of America. “Slaves were known as contraband, or illegal imports to represent the captured slaves, and with the impact of Lincoln, he was able to present the theory of emancipation that took away the view of slaves as property and allowed the states to control the territory within their borders. When the proclamation was first issued, it did not free all slaves. Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri had not suceeded from the union. The collapse of the Confederate States of America forced slaves to free away from the plantations.

The emancipation of the rebellion areas was essential to end the ongoing secession that was going on in the United States. Lincoln wanted to “endorse the emancipation on the state level. ” The belief of equality towards all individuals is one aspect that Lincoln promoted.At the beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln’s main goal was to preserve the union, and in time the theory of emancipation came into effect. Lincoln supported the rights of each individual and the “equality of all humans that demanded and abolishment of slavery. ” Releasing slaves all at once was not something that would have been immediately effective, so Lincoln approached the situation in a structured manner. After the Union had won at Antietam, he set fourth a deposition to the Confederate states stating that if the return of the Union was not met, that the remaining slaves would be free.

The amount of men and women that escaped the Union army camps when the war began made such an impact on Lincoln as well as the Union that the formation of the emancipation occurred. ” America’s values about how citizens should be able to pursue their liberty was created through the birth of the “Emancipation Proclamation was a true belief of what Lincoln believed religiously and legally. ” The new birth of freedom helped the nation come together as a whole, rather than have two opposing sides. This brought new views on American society and promoted a new beginning for the United States.Lincoln’s defense to restore the Union went against the beliefs of the constitution. After the war “impacted the salvation of the Republic, and that the United States would again become the land of the free. The shackles slaves had worn had then become a cash profit by selling the material as iron.

The block that men were called upon to be sold to slave owners was banished. All men have the right to freedom as an American citizen; therefore will make their own decisions without influence from an individual with higher class status. The secession is reasonable to the citizen for each and every individual has their own right to liberty and freedom under the laws of the constitution. “Union only made the procedure of redrafting southern states a faster process. ” On an international level, the support from England or Britain was completely in Lincoln’s favor to go through with the abolishment of slavery. With the prior end of slavery in Britain and France, not only would Lincoln gain respect but support as well for this new approach.The Slavery Abolition Act in Britain was an act that refused the owning of slaves in the colonies.

Lincoln supported the views of the British and transformed their views into the life of an American citizen. With outside support from other countries only helped America on a international level. After Europe had restored their Union, the hope of Americans according to the diary of John Beauchamp Jones “believed that it was the United States that would soon be recognized and hope for a new outlook was in store. ”African Americans had believed that “the proclamation would completely transform each and every aspect of the lives they once knew. ” Lincoln supported the freedom of individuals and enforced the release of slaves. His impact completely transformed the country and was unification to all citizens. Some slaves did in fact stay with their masters, but many others chose to flee.

Some individuals respected the views of Lincoln, and some went against. The belief that Lincoln issued the proclamation for means to win the war is one of the most controversial topics within the proclamation.Regardless of his purpose for constructing the proclamation, African Americans now had the rights that they were entitled to as a citizen of the United States. The reason for Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was in fact the greatest movement in history. Although the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the areas that the federal government did not control, the overall change in the country influenced future issues in the United States. Prior to the proclamation, African Americans had no identity.Their main purpose in life was to simply be owned by another human being and forced to perform grueling tasks.

Slavery was a means of cheap labor under the control of white superiority. The United States was now more colonized and brought together the civil rights of Americans. Lincoln enforced the meanings behind the constitution and altered society. Although not all slaves were free, Lincoln believed that the Southern slaves would be able to help support him win the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln had restructured all that Americans were accustomed to, and put forth a positive outlook for future generations.