Civil War and the not used advantages of the South
The civil war was the deadliest war in American history, taking the lives of approximately 600,000 soldiers; so many people had to die just for a conflict over a particular style of life of some individuals. The Southern states depended upon the agriculture that their slaves worked for, including cotton production. When Abraham Lincoln became named President in 1860, his opposition of slavery was seen as a threat to the economic interests of most Southern states. The South responded by seceding from the union and founding the Confederate States of America in 1861. The first state to secede was South Carolina, on December 20, 1860. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed
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Sumter, gaining control over the Port of Charleston. On April 15th, 1861 the New York Times stated, “The Government of the United States is prepared to meet this great emergency with the energy and courage which the occasion requires, and which the sentiment of the nation demands. The PRESIDENT issues his proclamation today, convening Congress for the 4th of July, and calling for SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND volunteers for the defense of the Union, and the protection of the rights and the liberties of the American people”. (Times, 1861). Continuing, after this request of seventy five thousand men, President Lincoln wrote to his Commanding General, at this time General Scott, the following about the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. “TO THE COMMANDING GENERAL, ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES. You are engaged in suppressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of any military line which is now or which shall be used between the City of Philadelphia and the city of Washington you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety, you personally, or through the officer in command at the point at which resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that writ. A. LINCOLN. WASHINGTON, April 17, 1861.” (Abraham, 1861). This was just the beginning of the war of the rebellion, also known as the civil war. Virginia, North …show more content…
The military generals of the South, such as Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Pierre – Gustav Toutant Beaureguard, and Nathan Bedford Forrester just to name a few. Huge names when it comes to leadership of military troops in Americas history. In addition to mention, seven out of the eight military academies, of the civil war era, were located in the South. Supposing, another possible factor that count towards why the south may have had such great leaders. Speaking of great military leaders, in the manner of my thinking, a great leader not only leads his troops during the battles they fight, a great leader needs to motivate and keep up a good moral within his troops, but even more important than that, a great leader needs to know when to stop. On April 9th, after four years of the civil war, General Robert E. Lee stated before his surrender at the Appomattox Court House, “It would be useless and therefore cruel, to provoke the further effusion of blood, and I have arranged to meet with General Grant with a view to surrender.” (Lee, 1865). However, to win the war against the Union it needs more than just a big territory or great leaders, it needs the support of the home government, support of the people, eventually what the Confederate states needed to win was trust, faith and pride and all the other supporting
When we compare the military leaders of both North and South during the Civil War, it is not hard to see what the differences are. One of the first things that stand out is the numerous number of Northern generals that led the “Army of the Potomac.” Whereas the Confederate generals, at least in the “Army of Northern Virginia” were much more stable in their position. Personalities, ambitions and emotions also played a big part in effective they were in the field, as well as their interactions with other officers.
The North entered the Civil War with many distinct assets that rendered them more competent than the Southern states. Those assets consisted of having more men, more financial stability, economic strength, and far reaching transportation systems. According to the book: Why the North Won the Civil War by Donald, David Herbert, and Richard Nelson the primary cause to the North’s success was given by, “the vast superiority of the North in men and materials, in instruments of production, in communication facilities, in business organization and skill – and assuming for the sake of the argument no more than rough quality in statecraft and generalship – the final outcome seems all but inevitable.” In many ways the north, during the Civil, was more economically dominant than the South
In the spring 1861, years of building tensions between the northern states and southern states resulted in the American Civil War. In 1680 an anti-slavery Republican, Abraham Lincoln was elected president causing seven southern states to secede from the union. These seven states included--Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas--. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America. The American Civil War lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 and claimed more than roughly 620,000 lives.
In conclusion, it was obvious from the beginning of the Civil War that the South would not win the war. This having been said, Robert E. Lee was a fine general, but was simply without enough soldiers to lead a successful uprising.
Northern Advantages of the Civil War Some people thought that the winner of the Civil War was determined by the side with the most guns, but the North's victory involved much more. The Civil War produced new technological advances and Lincoln used them to his advantage. One example is how he used trains and the telegraph to help him win the war.
The American Civil War was fought between the North (The Union) and the South (The Confederates), because of the South wanting to secede from the North. Lincoln's election as president in 1860, triggered southerners' decision to secede believing Lincoln would restrict their rights to own slaves. Lincoln stated that secession was "legally void" and had no intentions of invading the Southern states, but would use force to maintain possession of federal property. Despite his pleas for the restorations of the bonds of union, the South fired upon the federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter, in Charlestown, Virginia. This was the event that decided the eventual beginning of the Civil War. Despite the advantages of Northerners, their victory in the ...
Abolitionism was around before the 1830’s but, it became a more radical during this time. Before 1830, Benjamin Lundy ran a anti-slavery newspaper. In 1829, Lundy hired William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison went on to publish his own newspaper the Liberator.
First, the South couldn’t have won the civil war because state’s rights prevented unification of the South. The very issue that created the Confederacy helped to destroy it. In waging war, the South faced problems of politics and government that greatly complicated its problem of economic mobilization. No one would deny the troublesome effect of the conflict generated by differing ideas of how best to protect liberty and to organize southern society for the war effort. Southern people insisted upon retaining their democratic liberties in wartime, which proved fatal for the South. They had to struggle with a “confederacy formed by particularistic politicians [that] could hardly be expected to adopt promptly those centralists polices which victory demanded” (Donald, p. 26). Individual state governors fought bitterly with Jefferson Davis to prevent him from consolidating power to fight the war. They withheld troops and supplies while the Confederate Congress spent its time arguing over the rights of the states instead of prosecuting a war of national survival. Many internal conflicts within the South were acquiring and weakening the South’s unity. Internal conflicts caused confederate officials to choose between moving troops from the coasts and strengthening their armies, or leaving the...
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as president in the United State. But, the United States had been divided in the 1850s, due to the question about expansion of slavery and the rights of the slave owner. The issue of slavery had heated the nation to the boiling point. Fourth Months later, after Abraham presidential election, the seven states in the deep southern part of the United States, like South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia. Louisiana, and Texas, had seceded and seized many federal facilities. Although President Lincoln is the president of the United State, he still had no official powers to do anything about the Southern forming a new nation. On April 15, Lincoln called 75,000 volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion, and to reverse the seven states to vote in favor of session. After the nation drifted toward conclusion, Abraham Lincoln traveled all over the North, so he can make campaign speeches for the Republicans party. Abram Lincoln used his influence, as the leader of the Republican Party, by reaching out to the political leader of the Republican party, writing privately letters, demanded that the Republican party needs to hold firm to its opposition to the extension of slavery and to also reassure the southern that the Republicans composed no threats. When Civil War begins, Abr...
The majority of speculations regarding the causes of the American Civil War are in some relation to slavery. While slavery was a factor in the disagreements that led to the Civil War, it was not the solitary or primary cause. There were three other, larger causes that contributed more directly to the beginning of the secession of the southern states and, eventually, the start of the war. Those three causes included economic and social divergence amongst the North and South, state versus national rights, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case. Each of these causes involved slavery in some way, but were not exclusively based upon slavery.
During the war, eleven states seceded from the United States: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The southern states that chose to secede from the nation formed the Confederate States of America. The Northern states still considered themselves as the United States and strove to restore the rebellious Southern states to that union. The President of the United States at the time was Abraham Lincoln. The Confederate States of America also had their own president, Jefferson Davis. The casualty of the Civil War would surpass all American wars up to Vietnam War combined.
At the eve of the Civil War, it would’ve seemed that the south had the edge in military. Why? Because the south had strong and talented officers such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The south also had a larger army in terms of size, and all the military colleges were in the Confederacy except for West Pointe. One of the few disadvantages of the south was the lack and shortage of appropriate war attire such as shoes, etc. Despite having a smaller size, the north had greater manpower and a stronger, unified government. The north also lacked many talented military leaders when the war was off to a
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
Why did the southern states believe they could win the civil war? The southern states, known as the Confederacy were very confident going into this war that they could successfully defend their rights' and their way of life. They had many reasons for being so confident. First, the southern leaders were sure the north was not going to have a full-scale military conflict. They thought that a compromise and peace agreement could be reached after a short period of fighting. Second, the south was going to fight a defensive war. Third, the southern lifestyle made them familiar with firearms and horseback riding. Therefore they would be better soldiers than the northerners. Fourth, the south had a great source of wealth in its cotton exports and felt they would be able to fund the war. Last, the south thought that France and Britain would come to its aid. The south didn't want to defeat the north they wanted a compromise. Therefore, the north would not have the authority to govern them. The south did not have to win the war, it just had to keep the north from winning. On March 7, 1861 Jefferson Davis selected John Forsyth, A. B. Roman, and Martin J. Crawford to represent the Confederacy in a meeting with Lincoln's administration. Not trying two overpower anyone, the Confederate leaders said they simply wanted to be left alone. The Confederates thought to defend its region from being taken over and to keep its armies from destruction they would have to fight a very well planned out defensive war. The Confederate armies did not have to invade the north to win that kind of war. They need only to endure long enough to force the north to the decision that th...
The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, or simply the Civil War in the United States, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865, after seven Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America . The states that remained in the Union were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.