Civil War Essay

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The Civil War was perhaps when America was at it's lowest in history, and ironically, at the same time, one of it's greatest. It was a time where, the once indivisible nation of freedom fighters shed the blood of their neighbors, sons, and even brothers. The American Civil War ultimatly tested the strength and resovle that the American people as a whole actually posessed. The causes of this war, the war that has been deemed resonsible for the most American casualties, can be traced and anaylzied, based on thier relevence and significance. The Northern and Southern regions of the United States developed along and among different circumstances and opinions. The South remained a prominent agrarian economy that exported cash crops like tobacco and cotton, while the North became sufficiently more industrialized, utilizing mass production and inter-changeable parts. Different social policies and political beliefs developed. All of these elements led to disagreements on issues such as taxes, tariffs and internal improvements as well as states’ rights versus federal rights. Despite many efforts by men who sought peace, inevitably, the North and South would not be able to settle their different views on slavery and politics and would ignite a civil war. The Civil War was steeped in diversity. Mainly in social and economic factors, in both the North and the South. The South, agrarian focused, utilized slaves to, among other things, work the large plantations that, for example, exported cotton, tobacco, and dyes. On the dawn of the Civil War, some 4 million slaves and their descendants worked under very harsh and brutal conditions as slave laborers in the South. Slavery was so interlocked in the Southern economy and society that the rat... ... middle of paper ... ...case of Kansas, immigration en masse to Kansas by activists from both sides ended up causing a local civil war in Kansas. The Southerners saw slavery as their source of living while, Northerners viewed slavery as morally unacceptable and wrong. Most people just wanted to find a balance of power to prevent the nation from collapsing into a civil war. Unfortunately, though with good intentions, Clay’s legislation failed to prevent a civil war and stop the nation from plunging into despair. Even though many were opposed to a Civil War, and despite the best efforts by men who sought to preserve peace, such as Henry Clay and President Abraham Lincoln, the North and South would never had been able to sort out their political and social differences peacefully, and so a great Civil War ravaged the no longer “United” States, claiming the lives of thousands of American men.

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