The American Civil War (1861-1865)

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The American  

Civil War  

(1861-1865)

 

The American Civil War was a military conflict between the North, which was known as the Union, and the South, known as the Confederate State of America. The war costed 600, 000 lives and property worth more than $5 billion. There were a complex series of events and reasons including economic and social factors, political factors and the different views of slavery, which differentiated the two regions of America and led the country into the most significant military battle of the nation’s history.

The main debate between the Union and the Confederacy, which resulted into one of the most destructive events of American history, was whether slavery should be allowed or prohibited. Slavery, which had been a part of the Southern way of life for well over 200 years, was a substantial part of the Southern society because the people wanted and needed slave labour in the fields in the cultivation of tobacco, rice, indigo most importantly, cotton. Farming was the Confederacy’s main industry and cotton was the primary farming product. Many slaves were also used to provide labour for the various household chores that were needed to be done. However, the Confederate States were the only region in the world to On the other hand, slavery disappeared in the Union after the American Revolution while it grew popular in the South. The Northerners strongly thought that slavery was a flawed system that revoked the human right of being a free person and disagreed the South’s laws and beliefs concerning slavery. That belief made them set out a quest for the complete abolition of slavery.

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Source: ‘New Haven’ speech

If the Republican party of this nation shall ever have the national house entrusted to its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national house-keeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up, whatever difficulties may arise in the way of its administration of the government, that party will then have to attend to. It will then be compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question, which now assumes an overwhelming importance -- the question of Slavery. It is true that in the organization of the Republican party this question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present. The old question of tariff -- a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national housekeeping to all time… For, whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us -- and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere -- all of us wish this question settled -- wish it out of the way. . . . If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality -- its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension -- its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought Slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong…Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.

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An extract of the New Haven Speech, Abraham Lincoln – March 6, 1860

This source is a speech, which was addressed to the American citizens of Connecticut, from Lincoln. He emphasised the issue of slavery, which was of ‘overwhelming importance’, and was ‘the all absorbing topic’. He also pointed out the ‘old’ tariff problem ‘, which ‘will remain one of the chief affairs’. This shows that the issue about tariffs was a long, well-known national issue. In the conclusion, he encouraged his audience to have faith in the Union.

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Another fomenting cause, which contributed ...

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