The American civil war: causes and conflicts

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The American Civil War, which began in 1861 to 1865, has gone down in history as the one of the most significant events to have ever occurred in the United States of America, thus far. At that time, questions had arose wondering how the United States ever got so close to hitting rock bottom, especially being that it was a conflict within the country itself. Hostility steadily grew through the years dividing the nation further and further, and finally leading to the twelfth day in April 1861 in Fort Sumter, North Carolina. The American Civil War was an irrepressible battle and aside from the obvious physical effects of the war, the disagreement over states rights, the act of slavery, and the raising of tariffs played crucial roles in the division of the country as well as the conflicts that followed.

At the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, he reflects back to the start of his presidency,

“All thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. Both parties deprecated war. Nonetheless, the war came.”[1]

A civil war is a struggle for power inside a nation.[2] Ironically, the American Civil War was of no such thing. It was not a war over who would govern the United States. The South simply wanted independence from the Union and to come together and form the Confederacy. However, from the viewpoint of the North, it was a war of Southern Secession. In 1858, William, H. Seward, the soon to be Secretary of State, described the differences between the North and South as an “irrepressible conflict.”[3] In 1860, once Lincoln came into Presidency placing Seward in his Cabinet, the misconstrued perspectives of both sides had grew larger and more violent, and with th...

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...lead to what we now know as the American Civil War. The war began with eleven Southern states seceded the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The first two years of the Civil War showed great hopes for the Southern troops after winning several victories. Those hopes soon turned to doubts after their major losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863. From that moment forward, the Northern troops went on to conquer the south, where they finally surrendered in April 1865.[?] The war that was once thought to be completely avoidable, turned into the exact opposite and that much worse. The American Civil War was the most bloodied American war costing over 600,000 lives, more casualties than the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, World War I and II, and the Korean War combined. This war will forever be known as the most significant event in American history.

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