Civil War Essay

10-27-10                                                                                             802
Ms. Seher                                                                         Social Studies


The Americans fought a very bloody war between the years of 1861 and 1865.   It was said that more Americans died than in any other war even if you combine them together.   There were many things that caused the civil war such as the south’s secession, the election of 1860 and the Emancipation Proclamation but the most important thing of all was the division between the north and the south. (The Union and the Confederacy).
The Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free a single slave because it affected only areas under Confederate control. It excluded slaves in the Border States and in such Southern areas under Union control as Tennessee and parts of Louisiana and Virginia. But it did however lead to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment, which became law on December 18, 1865, ended slavery in all parts of the United States. As the abolitionist had predicted, the Emancipation Proclamation strengthened the North's war efforts and weakened the South's. By the end of the war, more than 500,000 slaves had fled to freedom behind Northern lines. Many of them joined the Union Army or Navy or worked for the armed forces as laborers. By allowing blacks to serve in the Army and Navy, the Emancipation Proclamation helped solve the North's problem of declining enlistments. About 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, many of them former slaves, served in the armed forces.
The final straw for the South was the election of Abraham Lincoln who, despite his protestations to the contrary, could not convince the South that he was not a firebrand abolitionist. The prospect of a federal government controlled by the 'Black' Republican Party was too much for some, and South Carolina was the first state to secede, followed quickly by six others. This did not...