AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

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“…The glories for which Washington had fought, which Jackson had preserved, which million of
Americans loved better than life, seemed on the verge of falling into fragments…”

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AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

 The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy (states that
voted to secede)
 The Confederate States of America was made up of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina – eleven states in total
 The war lasted between 12th April 1861 & 9th May1865
 The Civil War effectively ended on 9 th April1865, when Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union
 President Lincoln was assassinated just five days after Lee's surrender
 The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming World Wars

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IN POPULAR CULTURE …

 Gone with the Wind (1939)

 Cold Mountain (2003)
 Gods and Generals (2003)
 North and South (miniseries)
 Lincoln (2012)
 12 Years a Slave (2013)
 Free State of Jones (2016)

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CULTURAL CAUSES

 The South feared that the North sought to impose its Yankee standards on the Southern mode of living – a fear of
cultural imperialism and the Northern Yankee Culture threatened to meddle with the practice of slavery
 According to Morain,“… Northern Culture and values put together was a belief that success is the measure of
character and the righteous are responsible for the welfare of the community…it was sometimes necessary to use
legal authority of the state by making immoral activities illegal…”
 The History of Mclean County states, “…The North thought of south as lean, lank, lazy, cruel and rioting in
whiskey, dirt and ignorance…”
 In North women were more active, hard working, some of them were becoming doctors, writers or activists in
churches. In South women were still put on pedestal and they had slaves to do all the work

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CONTINUED…

 The spirit of philosophical liberalism and enlightenment which was high in revolutionary days became weak in
South. By 1850, South’s 20 % population was illiterate, whereas in North the rate of illiteracy was 01 %
 According to Morain, “… Imbued with the notion that theirs’ was a superior vision, Northerners dutifully accepted
their responsibility for the moral and intellectual life of the nation and set out to do what needed to be done with
or without an invitation from the uneducated, in disciplined, disinterested and the unmotivated…”
 Of all the civilized traits for the Northerners, the anti slavery trait was the greatest they eagerly wanted to instill in
the South
 South however looked at slavery as “good, and only good, justifiable in the sight of man and God” and that the
system had yielded “untold and inconceivable blessings to the human race”

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CONSTITUTIONAL REASONS

 The South and North interpreted the constitution differently

 South stood for the retention of powers in states and wanted state legislatures to decide issues for example, slavery
 North on the other hand advocated a strong federal government exercising vast powers
 South stated that North was violating the constitutional guarantees in social, political, cultural and economic
domains and therefore invoked their right to withdraw from the union
 North on the other hand refused to acknowledge any state’s right to withdraw from union

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CONTINUED…

Several anti- slavery societies emerged in North:

 The Railroad Society 1820
 Mississippi Colonization Society 1831
 New England Anti Slavery Society 1831
 American Anti Slavery society 1833
 Free Soil Party 1848

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ECONOMIC REASONS

 The industrial North depended on raw material from the agricultural South.
 The South was selling its raw material to Europe for better prices thus, securing raw material for Northern
industries was becoming costly
 The North therefore demanded protective tariffs to be imposed which vehemently opposed by the landlords of
South and West
 South believed it was already heavily taxed with high tariff duties for the benefit of Northern states
 To bend South according to North’s wishes, the north would oppose slavery

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POLITICAL REASONS

Both North and South wanted to be in charge of policy making and the
government machinery. For this reason, each camp tried to gain majority in Congress,
and if gaining majority wasn’t possible, at least they tried to maintain a balance
between the slave and non slave states in the congress, so that the process of
policy making would not be hijacked by either side.
In this connection read the following :

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CONTINUED…

 The Compromise of 1850

 Missouri Compromise 1820
 Tallmadge Amendment 1819
 Willmot’s Proviso 1846
 Kansas–Nebraska Act 1854
 Bleeding Kansas
 Tension over annexation of Texas as a Pro Slavery State
 The Dred Scott Case Decision 1857
 John Brown’s Raid
 Finally Lincoln’s election as the 16th President of USA
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CONCLUSION

 In short term, the civil war brought unparalleled misery

 “ …In the later years of the civil war, the southern civilians suffered terribly as the union armies persued a
scorched earth policy, deliberately devastating the areas through which they marched… ” - The history of free
people by Bragdon & McCutchen
 … The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars ever fought …” - John Keegan
 The civil war was over, however, the crisis was not
 A large army needed to be disband, rearranged into a civilian life and incorporated into war – deranged economy
 The war debt risen from $65 million in 1860 to $3 billion in 1865
 South’s education system, roads and water transport system, seaports, steamboats, all lay in shambles
 The war claimed over 500,000 lives (PTO)
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 However, the brighter side to the civil war was that it resolved some fundamental issues:
 First, the question whether the United States of America was dissolvable union or not. It proved that United States
truly was a union, now and forever. Indivisible under God. It was a triumph for nationalism
 Second, a nation born as a result of the declaration “ life, liberty and property” would not continue to deny the
same rights to people on the same American land
 Third, it ended an era of misery and injustice for millions of Afro – Americans and the unnumbered generations to
come
 With slavery intact and protected, the south was like an able bodied man dependent on the crutches of slavery. The
war ended south’s dependency on the inhumane institution and ushered in an era that caused south, by the turn of
the century, to switch from an agricultural base to an industrial base

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 “… the shameful cancer of slavery was cut away… grave dangers averted, including the constant friction
and conflict between the south and north… a strong and united nation was left free to fulfill its destiny…”
Thomas Bailey

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THANK YOU!

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