What Was The Tension Between The Confederacies And The Union

With the United States being created shortly after the revolutionary war, it soon fell into another crisis, and that crisis was the tension between the confederacies and union both having different views and political ideas on how this country should be ran. Some believed it should retain its current state and nothing should be changed, while the other, being the union, believed that equal rights should be a liberty everyone deserves regardless of who they are and what they did. With this being a border between the two parties, the confederation believed they should all be a sovereign states while the union wanted to be one united nation with a sovereign government. These ideals soon caused a rift between the two and which ultimately lead to
the civil war. Beginning with ideas, tensions, and compromises evident at the nation's founding, starting in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, the crucial compromise to preserve the Union going forward was the Northern acceptance of the continuation of slavery. In the minds and eyes of some Americans, this compromise put the Constitution at differences with the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." Which defeated the overall purpose of it. Within the coming years, westward expansion with a different economic systems, growth patterns; and differences over slavery and the Constitution begin a power struggle with the union and the confederation (or, the North and the South). By the 1850s, the shift in the balance of political power toward the North, and the growth of the new “anti-slavery” Republican Party, had made slaveholders and Southern politicians fearful and upset for their place within the Union and for the future.
Positions hardened as Republicans asserted the sanctity of majority rule, slaveholders saw a growing threat to their way of life, and everything that they had built off this system of slavery. Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency in 1860 on a platform of preventing the continuation slavery to the States propelled them of the Deep South to secede from the Union and form a new confederacy for the defense of slavery. And way of
life

The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Lincoln won the election in 1860 which made him the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of states, seven slave states in the Deep South seceded and formed a new nation, which became to be known as “the Confederate States of America.” The Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused the legitimacy of secession because it showed signs of them breaking away from all of the other states rather than try to find a compromise. They feared that it would harm or go against democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually cause a rift in United States into several small, broken countries and could have cause large problems between the North and South.

The more notable event that triggered and instantly sparked the war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861 (James Mcpherson). Claiming this United States fort as part of the south, the Confederate army opened fire on the troops that held it and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender. Lincoln called out the militia (roughly estimated to be 75,000 volunteers) to suppress this attack and to help bring Fort Sumter back into their side. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas-realized that they could not escape war. Compelled to choose sides, they joined the Confederacy. With these four states joining the confederacy and not the union, this crippled the union and began forming a line between them losing and winning the war, the tides were surely not in the Union’s favor at this point in time. By the end of 1861 almost a million armed men confronted one another along a line stretching nearly 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri (James Mcpherson). Battles had already taken place near Manassas Junction in Virginia, while this was happening, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories with small battles began to create a new state which is now known as West Virginia. At Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina are key locations for which the union set up their navy to help block off confederate ships from having access to the outside world for any sort of help or trade, making the war stay between the two sides. In a way, the Union and Confederacy had the same goal in mind, to preserve a way of life for everyone within the States.
But all similarities ended there because both sides wanted a different way of life preserved. Confederacy had a goal in mind that was to secure independence from the North and “to establish independent nations free from Northern political oppression and the repression of slavery” (Olson-Raymer). The War from beginning to end became an icon for everyone during this period, either they moved forward with life as a whole together with freedom for everyone or they retained their old ways and kept freedom as a privilege for those who have it. This was firmly believed that the Constitution protected slavery, but the Union had seen a better way for this to work, a way without the need for slavery and for a way for everyone to live together. Southerners, therefore, had the right to do what they believed as it was the only way to defend their right to own slaves and their belief in states' rights to do what they believe. Their actions, therefore, were defense as they felt like they had no choice but fight back because of the “oppressive” politics of the North Union - Its initial goal was to reconcile the Union, while it’s mid-war goal became to reunite states under a Union in which slavery was not
tolerated. The war from beginning to end would be a noble crusade for democracy for all people, not just in America, but throughout the world. This goal was grounded firmly in the belief that the South had no right to secede from the Union and that secession was treasonous and paramount to an act of war against the Union. Their actions, therefore, were defensive as they had no choice but to call for troops after the firing of Fort Sumter. As the war continued, the Confederacy's goals remained the same though the Union's goal did change. When it became clear that the North might lose the war and would only win with great difficulty, it became necessary to change the reason for fighting. Freeing the slaves became that reason. Thus, the new Union goal was to retain and reshape the Union by reuniting the states under a union that no longer enforced slavery. (Olson-Raymer)