The American Civil War War Between The State

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Stacey Bell

Dr. Michael Wadyko

American History I 2213

The American Civil War: War Between the States

The American Civil War is referred to sometimes as the War Between the States, according to pbs.org. It started on April 12, 1861, when shots were fired on Fort Sumter, and it ended on May 26, 1865, when the final army of the Confederacy gave up. There were positive and negative results to this war. Over 600,000 lives were lost, and valuable property was destroyed. In the bitter rubble left over from the war however, over 4 million black slaves were granted their freedom.

The most important and critical reason for the war was slavery. The Southern states, in conjunction with the eleven states that produced the Confederacy, relied upon slavery in order to assist their economic system. Those who live in the South had slaves at their disposal to grow mainly cotton, among other crops. Despite the fact that owning slaves was against the law in the North, there was only a minute amount of Northerners who passively disagreed with it. The primary dispute of the North and the South on the day before the war was if slavery should be allowed in the Western regions freshly gained at the time of the Mexican War, which included: Part of California, New Mexico, and Utah. Those who opposed slavery were worried about the expansion, mostly because they were unwilling to go up against in contest with slave labor. ("The First General Order") In 1860, the North and the South had matured into two distinctly separate territories. Different political, economic, and social ideals that came from the colonial era, slowly caused the two to drift apart even farther. They both attempted to dictate their opinion on the country entirely. Even though concessions held the Union together for a great number of years, in 1860 the state of affairs had reached its boiling point. After Abraham Lincoln became president, by the South felt that slavery was being threatened and commenced war. Through the first portion of the nineteenth century, financial diversities between the territories also grew. By 1860, cotton was the South's main crop, and it defined fifty-seven percent of all exports from the U.S. The extreme worth of cotton was the main reason the South relied on the plantation system and its vital element, which was of course, slavery. (Foote 79)

By this time, the North had a strong foot-hold on the Industry. It needed labor, but not in the form of slavery. The North also supported immigrant migration. European immigrants were employed in the factories, they built Northern railroads, and established themselves in the West. Hardly any immigrants settled down in the South. (Foote 94)

The South, was resistant to the industry, and produced little materials in that way. Nearly all of the goods the South needed had to be imported. This of course, caused the Southerners to disagree with the tariffs that were put on items that were imported, and raised the prices of the items that were manufactured. The industry in the North, however, insisted upon the high taxes in order to guard its manufactured goods from competitors in other countries. ("Protective Tariffs")

Prior to the Civil War, the government's main origin of income was the tariff. Few other sources of income were readily accessible, one reason being, there was no such thing as personal or corporate income taxes. The tariff funded many changes made for the better made by the government, such as turnpikes, canals, and roadways. The South was more interested in keeping the tariffs down, so they chose not to do any type of improvements. ("Protective Tariffs")

The ever-growing Northwest Territory did not have a decent exchange when it came to grains and cattle. It needed centralized enhancements necessary to endure, and so they were in great support of the Northeast's insistence of high tariffs. Because of this, the Northeast personally backed most of the improvements that were financed through the federal government in the Northwest Territory.

Accordingly, despite the fact that both the South and the West were rural farming territories, the West decided to become allies with the North's point of view instead of the South's. Financial urgencies put a point on divided conflicts of interest, adding to the animosity of the different regions. When the South pulled away and seceded, they overtook and established themselves in many of the federal strongholds either inside their own borders, or offshore. There were just four that the Union still had control over. Fort Sumter guarded the port in South Carolina. The remaining forts were in Florida: Fort Taylor at Key West, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, and Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, and. Out of all these forts, the most essential one was Fort Sumter.

Progresses in technological development allowed both regions to manage the large distances their armies were fighting. The Civil War was the first sizable battle that focused on the telegraph and railways. Railways quickly transported a great amount of soldiers fighting, and great amounts of provisions; the North held nearly two times as many miles of railway lines than the South held. Communicating via the telegraph granted the governments on opposing sides the abilities to organize military actions on vast, territorial fields. (Foote 441)

The soldiers also benefited from many different new progressions in military technology. The most essential was the rifled musket that most of the soldiers on both sides wielded. Preceding the Civil War, foot soldiers almost always had wielded smoothbore muskets, which were guns that did not have rifling inside the barrels. According to The Rifled Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth, the smoothbore muskets had an direct reach of 295 feet. Because of this, assembled firings had a great possibility of being successful, since one flank could establish an attack and would not have any major fatalities until they reached the top of those who were on the defending side. The rifle musket, with a sufficient reach of up to 900 feet, granted those defending the ability to separate advances before they reached their areas. In conjunction with battleground outposts, the rifle musket varied military maneuvers by making attacks on the defensive locations more challenging. The rifle musket gave the defending forces sizable control. ("The Rifled Musket")

Newer technological advances created ironclad warships, that both territories put into operation; the placement of armed balloons for aerial intelligence operations on the combat zones, which were mostly used by the North; the successful sinking of a Northern war vessel by the South's submarine, which was named the CSS Hunley; and the mobilization of sizable amounts of troops equipped with repeating firearms, mostly used by the North. The engineering for all of these firearms and ships was around prior to the Civil War, but the armies had never practiced it so the technology so extensively before. ("The First General Order")

In hindsight, people must surely be surprised that the war lasted an entire four years. The North seemed to have many more advantages in favor of them than the South. The twenty-two states that decided to stay a part of the Union in 1860, had a total population of twenty-two million. The eleven states that formed the Confederacy only had a population of nine million, and that total included nearly four million black victims of slavery. The majority of industrial plants that were able to create war items were situated in the Northern territory, and it also had plentiful railways. The North also possessed a merchant marine, and was able to manage transactions globally. However, the South, was an agricultural region. Even though the farmers generated goods that Europe desired, especially cotton, the South unfortunately had hardly any ships, so its primary ports were shortly shut down. A lot has been said about the predominance of Southern officers. Even though Lee was a better match for every competitor with the exception of Grant, Grant was able to defeat General Lee by having more soldiers on the battlefield, and a strong perseverance. The North nor the South had a corps leader equivalent to Stonewall Jackson, but he was died during the first half of the war. The Western Union commanders clearly surpassed their opponents. There were no confederate commanders who could compare with Thomas, Sherman or Grant at all. In naval affairs, Farragut, Porter, and Foote had no competitors in the Confederacy. (Foote 442)

Not much differentiation can be made of confidence in the North or the South. Abandonment was prevalent for both territories. The North had those who opposed the war, those who enlisted just to collect a bounty and leave, its working class who were discontent with the laws to draft men to fight in the war that were passed by Congress, and a multitude of people living in the North had grown tired of the battle before it finally ended. Dodging the draft and evading taxes happened frequently in the South, and an abundance of wealth was gained by crooks who would favor running indulgences, rather than war provisions, through the barrier. ("The First General Order")

The South had felt it had two essential advantages. First, it had no need to suppress the North. The South believed it could win the war merely by protecting its land and by anticipating for the North to feel so frustrated by multiple defeats that it would award them freedom. Secondly, the South could function with curtailed inside formations, therefore making more efficient use of its lack of soldiers.

The end of the Civil War brought about a major metamorphosis of the social classes in America. There were officially no more slaves, and it also paved the way for the Reconstruction in the South. The Civil War was one of the greatest tragedies ever in the history of America, but afterward it led to more unity in the country.