Causes Of The American Civil War

The American Civil War. The most devastating war in the history of America, fought for a long and brutal four years from April 1861 to May 1856. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states which grouped themselves as the Confederate States of America. The most tragic and heartbreaking fact of this war was the terrifying number of casualties which amounted to about 1.1 million in total. Underlying causes of this bloody conflict trace back to contrasts in the very fundamental routines of everyday life in the 1600’s between colonists in the Northern and Southern states. Everything (besides the mutual desire to secede from England) was different in the purposes of settlement, which affected opposing views on concepts of education, economy,
He had his own reasoning and way of doing things, but he also knew how to listen to both sides of suggestions. Since abolitionists had easy access to the White House, Lincoln received pressure from multiple significant figures to emancipate slavery. These people included former slave and African-American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, and Charles Sumner, a Republican senator, who tried to persuade Lincoln to abolition slavery once and for all. When war broke out in 1861, abolitionists and Radical Republicans urged Lincoln to use his war powers to strike against slavery, It was heavily argued that the Union could not be maintained unbroken with the existence of slavery. Wendell Phillips, an American abolitionist suggested Lincoln to “seize the thunderbolt God has forged for you, and annihilate the system that has troubled your peace.” However, there was only criticism on Lincoln’s tardiness to move on the slavery question. At this time, Douglass demanded “an immediate end to slavery, equal rights for all men and women, and the redistribution of land,” and argued that “distinct races lived peacefully in the enjoyment of equal rights” without civil wars. With the abolition pressure accumulating and loss of patient in the country, Lincoln had an evolution of feelings and began to accept both abolition and black rights. He soon came to sympathize with the idea that citizenship rights to blacks could not be
Douglass pushed for the recruitment of the black population into the Union Army, saying that the Union army then “fought with their soft white hand, while they kept their black iron hand chained and helpless behind them.” This alone gave Lincoln a reason to deal more directly with slavery, because recruiting slaves into the army would translate to many benefits. At that time, the Union was losing battle after battle. In order to execute any movements on the issue of slavery, there first needed to be a Union victory; however, the North needed more manpower to physically fight the war. This is when abolitionists put up the idea that slaves could be recruited into the army as soldiers for the Union. Not only would it solve the population issue, it could also represent a threat to the South that if they failed to surrender, their slaves would be freed. Freeing the slaves would transfer a massive workforce from the Confederacy to the Union, an advantage of additional labor to the Union and depriving the Confederacy of labor. It opened up to black volunteers, Northern free Negroes and Southern ex-slaves. Abolitionists knew that if slaves participated in the duties of a citizen, such as serving in the war, they would be lawfully freed citizens. If Lincoln didn't act immediately, the war could have stretched out for much longer than it already had. The Proclamation