Descriptive Effects Of The American Civil War

Original Title: Descriptive Phrase The American Civil War Hurt and divided the nation in such a great number of ways. From the division of family, the horrifying conflicts, and the events that occurred throughout the course of the war, the effects on America were all the same, painful. The harsh division of family, brought on by the war led to hard personal conflicts making the war that much harder to fight. The many conflicts that happened over the course of the war led to great amounts of destruction and loss. There were also numerous different views on the motives of both sides and many which are a play on events in the war and how they effected America as a whole. Divided loyalties were one of the main concerns in the midst of the Civil
War. One of the states where this was clearly an issue was Kentucky. Being a border state between the North and the South there was definitely bound to be divi-sion. The state of Kentucky mainly supported the union but not all parts of the state did. There were tons of soldiers in the area that supported the South even reaching into one-thousand. Overall, the divided loyalties boiled down to question as to which side the state would support. The large scale division basically tore apart people and families due to the choices they had to make (Carson 1). The war affected families in both the North and the South for a number of reasons. The many negative impacts such as shortage of resources or the great loss of people brought large amounts of turmoil and only built on top of the current conflict. The Civil war only made the separation between the rich and poor even greater and left the economic systems strained for resources. For this reason, many soldiers aban-doned their duty and position to run back to their families and take care of them. Lacking men on both the battlefield and at home the chaos continued to build (Golay 92). The War led to a major and devastating conflict between family and brothers in arms. The many conflicts of the war were detrimental to say the least. From the very start, the war turned families inside out. Brothers in arms as well as those related by blood had to make one of the toughest deci-sions of their life and pick a side. This led to the loss of family, support and the wellbeing of and individual. The split of family wreaked havoc on a soldier’s emotional state espe-cially when faced with the possibility that he might kill his brother in the midst of the many conflicts of the war (McPher-son 22). The civil war had detrimental effects not only on family but for the rest of America as well. Over the course of “four years, 620,000 American lives were lost” (Theodoracopulous 1).
One reason for the causalities being so high in number would be the lack of medical care available at the time.
All of the advances that available today were not actually discovered till after the war when realized how important they were. Sol-diers died left and right from simple things like infections and even illnesses that most would consider to be minor today. The make-up of America and its states changed drastically and led to greater problems all around. War, Riots, needless bloodshed… the conflict just seemed to grow. In this time the amount of lives lost was described as a “sea of blood”, hor-rific, and beyond imagining. Comparing to the population in the past 620,000 is an enormous number and the loss is consid-ered one of the greatest in history (Theodoracopulous
1). The fact that almost all of the militia in the north and south were trained at the same facility, West Point, led to even greater issues in the war. Everyone knew each other and because of this, disputes turned out to be much more personal encounters. Family turned on one another over one main thing, slavery. Slavery divided both the north and the south as the south wanted to spread it and the north aimed to prevent it. One thing that led to the violent outbreak known as the Civil War would be the Missouri compromise as it literally drew a line across the nation as to sides “so to speak” as the slave states and the free states (Kindersley 93). Many interesting things can be found out in and about the Civil War due to letters left behind.
In the eyes of many, the war took men away from home. Few joining the war effort had an extended amount of experience in military warfare or on the battlefield in general. This led to a great struggle when it came to the actual meat of the war. Nobody knew what to do and because of that, warfare was sloppy and led to an even greater number of causalities as shown through many of the surviving letters, when soldiers got the chance most chose to write to their families back home. Many described the war for what it was, hell. While they wrote back about their wellbeing there is no sugar coating the tragedies of war. Both sides viewed the war as horrific and scaring. The war drew out far longer than anyone expected end tension rose (Howard
1). While a vast number of men willingly joined the fight there was a draft on both sides to recruit more and more sol-diers. “Both sides believed they were fighting to preserve liberty and extend freedom…”(Miller 6). Both were led to be-lieve that they were right in there cause to fight and contin-ued to carry out their calls of war. In this, the situations of families back home continued to worsen as some were left abandoned (Miller 6). One of the first engagements which led to the civil war would be the attack on Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter, a union con-trolled fort stationed in the south, was originally on good terms as the south would let the union house and supply troops with provisions and necessities regularly. The south eventual-ly blocked off deliverance of these provisions and attacked the fort causing relations to plummet. Only building on the conflict of war, the number of battles and skirmishes reached greatly over the thousands and left the death toll numbers high (Adams 9).