The Civil War

The Civil War (1861-1965) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed in American history. At 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery in Charleston, S.C., opened fire on Fort Sumter, which was held by the United States Army.

The bombardment set off a savage four-year war between two great geographic sections of the United States. One section was the North – 23 Northern and Western states that supported the federal government. The other section was the South – 11 Southern states that had seceded (withdrawn) from the Union and formed an independent government called the Confederate States of America. The struggle between these two combatants is the American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States or the War of the Rebellion.

The war aims of both sides were simple. At the beginning the North fought only to preserve the Union. The South fought to win recognition as an independent nation. After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, the long-troublesome slavery problem took on vast importance. A Northern victory would mean ultimate freedom for slaves; a Southern victory would insure the protection of slavery in all Confederate states.

The Civil War came as a climax to a long series of quarrels between the North and South over the interpretation of the United States Constitution. In general, the North favored a loose interpretation that would grant the federal government expanded powers. The South wanted to reserve all undefined powers to the individual states.

This difference of opinion sprang primarily from economic considerations. The North, as well as the West, wanted internal improvements sponsored by the federal government – roads, railroads, and canals. The South, however, had little desire for these projects. Another source of conflict was the opening of public lands in the West. The distribution of such lands in small lots speeded the development of this section; but it was opposed in the South because it aided the free farmer rather than the slaveholding plantation owner. A similar quarrel developed over tariffs. A high tariff protected the Northern manufacturers. The South wanted a low tariff in order to trade its cotton to Great Britain and other countries for cheap foreign goods.

One issue, however, overshadowed all others – the right of the federal government to prohibit slavery in the Western territories. Such legislation would severely limit the number of slave states in the Union. At the same time the number of free states would keep multiplying. Many Southerners feared that a government increasingly dominated by free states might eventually endanger existing slaveholdings. Thus the South strongly opposed all efforts to block the expansion of slavery. If the federal government did succeed in exercising this power, many Southern political leaders threatened secession as a means of protecting states' rights.

Without some sense of the intense devotion of the Southerners to the land in which they lived, one cannot understand the Civil War. In the half century before the Civil War, South had a sense of destiny which had seldom been matched in American history. The trade flourished, and though not everyone was rich, everyone aspired and saw their labor as well worth reward. To most Southerners, their land was a world apart, a new Eden. To them the war for independence was abuse and destruction. On the other hand, the Northerners felt to be the heralds of progress and the God-sent liberators of the oppressed. Once again in American history feelings rose high and were expressed in a body of literature.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11