History of the American Civil War

By Tanmoy Seth and Hannah Bouwmeester

The Big Battlefield

Regardless of how smart and intelligent humanity becomes, we never seem to stop fighting with others for reasons known or unknown. A great divide exists within many cultural, political, and social realms and these divisions can lead to devastating chasms that cause wars and destruction. These wars are not only harmful to the people affected and the economy but also leave permanent scars in the minds of millions who are brutalized along the way. Almost every conflict starts from a disagreement in ideology, or rather due to differences in human psychology and the way we process disagreements. The American Civil War, one of the most devastating wars of our American history, is a prime example of the destructive effects of the conflagration that happens when two sides simply cannot agree on one solution.

Fuel to the Fire

The United States had been seeing good growth during the middle of the 19th century, even though there was a significant economic difference between the Northern and Southern territories. This economic gap, along with the practice of slavery in the Southern region, further fuelled many conflicts. Things took a bad turn with the formation of the Republican Party as an opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which came up with the motive of opposing slavery extension into the West. These differences grew further with the election of Abraham Lincoln as the first Republican President in 1860 when seven states split out to form the Confederate States of America. As they say, “every fire needs a spark,” the bullets poured by the Confederate army on the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861, ignited the Civil War.

Names engraved

Fatalities kept on increasing along the 1200 miles stretch from Virginia to Missouri, where almost a million men fought each other. Worst was yet to come, as the numbers grew and the war converted into a strategized battlefield. The massive outrage sparked fumes in different pockets of the nation, thus giving rise to many other battles like Fredericksburg in Virginia, Antietam in Maryland, Shiloh in Tennessee, and the famous Gettysburg battle in Pennsylvania. The whole ordeal lasted till the spring of 1865 when eventually the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, was captured. Though the exact number of casualties could never be claimed, estimates put the losses at a whopping 620,000 men. The number is astonishingly higher than the fatalities of both World Wars combined; however, it embraced a new beginning for the nation that was free from slavery. To many, the price of war was worth the ultimate outcome of freedom to thousands of enslaved and abused humans.

The Verdict

While history has it engraved that the economics of slavery led to this bloody conflict, is it the only reason that led to the war? Though the key cause remains to be the enslavement of black people, issues with political control and states’ rights fueled the conflict as well. The victory of President Lincoln, without a single Southern electoral vote, indicated their loss of influence over the federal government to abolish unsupported federal laws. Thus, excluding the Southern states from territorial expansion towards the West and political influence. Secession was the only way left, thereby leading to this massive bloodshed permanently recorded in our history.

The efforts of the brave soldiers gave birth to a strengthened U.S foreign power and ensured ever-growing support for the international abolishment of racial slavery. War is never the preferred first option to solve major conflicts, however, in the case of demolishing hatred, inequality, and inhumanity, as in The American Civil War, history teaches it is, at times, a necessary and effective choice.