Causes and effects of the American civil war
Table of Contents
Chapter 1/Intro: What is the Civil war?
Chapter 2: Conflicts between northern and southern states.
Chapter 3: The beginning of secession and the first battle
Chapter 4: Secession
Chapter 5: Reconstruction
Chapter 1/Intro:
What is the civil war?
If
you are interested in learning more about the American history, you’ll definitely
want to know more about the American Civil War. The American Civil War had more
casualties than World war 1 and 2 combined.
The
American Civil War occurred from 1861 to 1865.It was a war
between 2 groups of states in America.
First,
one small group of states seceded from America and called themselves the
confederate states of America or the Confederacy. The confederacy wanted to
leave the union and make a separate state of their own.
The
states that stayed with America were known as the union.
At
that time Abraham Lincoln was president.
The
Confederacy did not want war, but Abraham Lincoln could not let states separate
from the union because it would set a bad example for the future.
So
the Civil War started.
Chapter 2: Conflicts between northern and
southern states.
Now
I will tell you the conflict between northern and southern states which led to
secession and ultimately the Civil War.
One
big conflicting problem was slavery.
The
northern states went with free slave labour for everything and didn’t have
those many slaves. So when Lincoln put out his anti-slavery stand the northern
states were fine with that.
Although,
the southern states depended on slaves for their work and household chores.
When they heard Lincoln’s anti-slavery stand they thought they might get in
trouble.
Another
conflict problem was economical differences.
The
northern states were more into city life and had an industrial lifestyle. They
also had loads of money.
The
southern states were more into farming and plantations and had an agricultural
lifestyle. They mostly depended on cotton.
The
southern states felt like they should have more control over the federal
government and federal laws. They felt like the government was ignoring the law
in the constitution where states had the right to make decisions for themselves.
Chapter 3: The
beginning of the Civil War
Now I will tell you about how secession started and
about the first battle that led to the beginning of the Civil War.
These conflicts that I just told you about in the last
chapter continued with the southern states.
Finally, South Carolina had enough on December 20th,
1860 it became the first state to secede from the U.S.
2 weeks later, six other states seceded from the
union. Those were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
These states joined and called themselves the Confederate states of America.
The first battle was the Battle of Fort Sumter. It was
held in Charleston, South Carolina. The Confederacy wanted to take over the
fort held by the union in South Carolina since it was a confederate state. They
successfully took it.
Chapter 4:
Secession
In
this chapter I will be telling you about the different types of states in the
Civil War.
Some
confederate states were Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, North Carolina, Tennesee,
Arkansas and Georgia.
Some
of the union states were Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Iowa,
Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Border
Slavery states were states which mostly had slaves in them, and everything was run
by labour. Those states were West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri.
Territory
states were states that were overseen by the U.S government. They had no hand
in the Civil War. Some of those were Colorado, Utah, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Chapter 5:
Reconstruction
After
the Civil War ended the southern part of America was in ruins. This is a short
story of how everything got rebuilt.
The
purpose of reconstruction was to make the south part of the union again.
Many
people wanted to punish the south for their secession other people wanted to
forgive the south and let the healing of the nation begin.
Right
after the Civil War ended Lincoln got assassinated and President Andrew Johnson
took over.
President
Andrew Johnson was from the south so he wanted more lenient laws for the south,
but Congress refused and gave much harsher laws.
President
Johnson was also a racist so he demanded that all black people to be working
for an owner.
Also
there were ‘black codes’ passed out which meant that black people could not
vote, go to school, or even have a job. These laws caused a lot of conflict
between the north and south as they tried to reunite after the Civil War.
After
that, 2 amendments were added to the constitution.
The
14th amendment was that all black people that are born in America
are counted as American citizens.
The
15th amendment said that all black people had the right to vote.
Then,
the southern states started readmitting to the union.
After
that, the Union started helping the southern states a lot by building schools
and roads and got farms running again.
Then
came the carpetbaggers. Carpetbaggers are people who migrated from the northern
to southern states and started making money out of the rebuilding of the south.
Finally, reconstruction ended in
1977.
Conclusion:
From
all this, I conclude that there were people with different thoughts in America.
Some
people were very racist and considered themselves superior due to their skin
colour and some people considered freedom as their basic right for all and then
there were few who didn’t like the laws and wanted to create a country with
their own set of rules.
I
conclude the Civil War was a cold and bloody war that didn’t need to happen.
GLOSSARY
Casualties
– People killed or injured in a war or accident
Conflict
– A serious disagreement or argument
Secession
– The action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body
Slavery
– The practice or system of owning slaves
Anti-Slavery
– Opposed to the system of slavery
Labour
– To work really hard
Chores
– A routine task
Economical
– Giving good value of return in relation to the money, time, or effort
expanded
Industrial
– Relating to or characterized by industry
Agricultural
– Relating to agriculture
Federal
– Relating to or denoting the central government as distinguished from the separate
units constituting a federation
Ruins
– The physical destruction or disintegration of something
Assassination
– The act of assassinating someone
Lenient
– More merciful or tolerant than expected
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