Civil War

In 1854, the Republican Party was formed. It united the industrialists of the North, the free farmers and many inhabitants of the towns who were all against slavery. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) became a leading figure in the party. He was the son of a poor farmer, a settler of Kentucky. His father could not even read. Their rich neighbour, a planter and slaveholder, took a dislike to the Lincoln family, because they were friendly with the Negroes. As a result Lincoln’s father had to sell his farm and move west, to the new territory. Young Lincoln helped his father on the farm. He was a n excellent worker and was well known for his physical strength. Lincoln took up different jobs in his youth. He was a clerk in a store, a raftsman on the Mississippi River. He was respected in his home country and was elected postmaster. During the period he held his post, he prepared for his law examinations. In 1848 Lincoln was elected member of Congress. In 1858 during the election campaign the whole country followed with great attention the speeches made by Lincoln against his opponent Senator Douglas who supported slavery. He said: “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Here is another part of his speech: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”

Lincoln lost senatorial race, but in 1860 he and Douglas faced each other again – as the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. By now the tension between North and South was extreme. Southern whites believed that the North was preparing to end slavery by bloody warfare. Douglas urged southern democrats to remain in the Union, but they nominated their own separate presidential candidate and threatened to secede if the Republicans were victorious.

The majority in every southern and border state voted against Lincoln, but the North supported him and he won the election. A few weeks later, South Carolina voted to leave the Union. It was soon joined by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. These 11 states proclaimed themselves an independent nation – the Confederate States of America – and the American Civil War (1861-1865) began.

Southerners proclaimed that they were fighting not just for slavery; after all most Confederate soldiers were too poor to own slaves. The South was waging a war for independence – a second American Revolution. The Confederates had the superb soldiers, cavalrymen and generals, but they were greatly outnumbered by Union (Northern) forces. The southern railroad network and industrial base could not support a modern war effort. The Union Navy quickly imposed a blockade, which created serious shortages of war material and consumer goods in the Confederacy. To fight the war, both sides suspended some civil liberties, printed mountains of paper money and resorted to conscription.

Lincoln’s two priorities were to keep the United States one country and to rid the nation of slavery. Accordingly, on January 1, 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted freedom to all slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy.

The Southern Army (Confederates) won some victories in the early part of the war, but in the summer of 1863 their commander, General Robert E. Lee, marched north into Pennsylvania. He met a Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle ever fought on American soil took place. After three days of desperate fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the important city of Vicksburg. Union forces now controlled the entire Mississippi Valley, splitting the Confederacy in two. In 1864, a Union Army under General William T. Sherman marched across Georgia, destroying the countryside. Meanwhile, General Grant relentlessly battled Lee’s forces in Virginia. On April 2, 1865, Lee was forced to abandon Richmond, the Confederate capital. A week later he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, and all other Confederate forces soon surrendered. On April 14, during the celebrations in Washington Lincoln was assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth. Though nothing could change the development of the events after the victory of the North.

The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in American history. All of America’s later wars would be fought well beyond the boundaries of the United States, but this conflict devastated the South and subjected that region to military occupation. America lost more soldiers in this war than in any other – a total of 635,000 dead on both sides.

The war resolved two fundamental questions that had divided the US since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided, once and for all, that America was not a collection of semi-independent states, but a single indivisible nation.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 862