Civil War

51due论文代写网精选代写范文：“Civil War”这篇paper讲述的是美国南北战争，即美国内战，也是美国历史上唯一一次内战。参战双方为北方的美利坚合众国和南方的美利坚联盟国。1854年，由于南方奴隶主企图扩张奴隶制度，从而引发了西部农民和来自各州的移民的强烈反击。1860年，主张废除奴隶制度的林肯当选总统，引发了奴隶主的叛乱。次年，南北内战全面爆发。

Civil War A number of historians feel the Civil War was a result of political blunders and that the issue of slavery was not the cause of the conflict. However, this interpretation fails to consider the main causes of the Civil War itself: the expansion of slavery, and its entrance into the political scene. By considering and interjecting the personal opinions of people living in both the North and the South at the time of the Civil War, as well as the political decisions made, one can comprehend the reasons behind the Civil War thus determining its inevitability. Some people believe that the issue of slavery was not a major cause of the Civil War. Some argue that the Civil War was precipitated by careless decisions made by politicians, who caused people to react with emotions that were out of proportion to the actual issues involved. Others feel that the slavery issue could have been solved without war. The problem with these theories is that they do not recognize slavery as the main difference between North and South. One striking difference was that by 1860 the total number of African slaves in the union was around 4.5 million. Four million were slaves in the South in 15 states. 

There were 500 thousand free blacks with 250 thousand residing in the south. They also fail to realize that it was not simply political blunders that caused the Civil War, but the discussion of slavery publicly among politicians. The argument is that as you go farther west into the desert there was not sufficient water to grow crops and going north there were not enough hot summer days or enough nighttime temperatures above a certain point required for growing cotton. The best study on this issue is by Charles Hart. As he read through the Congressional Globe from 1846 to 1861 he noted any Congressman who made a statement about the issue of slavery expansion. Hart wrote the statement down arguing that what the congressional representative said represented his constituency on that issue. He then divided the House and Senate into three groups. One-third of Congress never said anything on the issue. One-third thought slavery could not expand and that an artificial issue brought on the Civil War. 

One-third believed slavery could expand and half of this one-third thought slavery could and should expand and that it was good and needed; the other half thought that it should not expand and President Lincoln thought slavery was a malignancy that should be contained. (Hume, Video Lectures 3 & 6) Considering the timing of the conflict in the theory of the Civil War, the breakdown in the two-party system created a panic which erupted into war. So, it was not the citizens of a country who decided whether or not to go to war, it was the politicians. The reason that slavery could exist without war in America until 1861 was because up until that time there was always enough land to expand. It was when the amount of land available for expansion became scarce that the North and South began to feel friction as to who would control more states, free or slave. The cause of the Civil War was not the issue of slavery but, instead, the cause was whether slavery could expand geographically (Hume, Video Lecture 3). 

The South wanted more slave states, where the North wanted more free states, which would give the North more land and power in the Senate. That tension, when publicly addressed, erupted into war. All in all, the North and the South felt that the other was trying to enslave them. This sentiment among both Northerners and Southerners made the expansion issue so powerful because the more land and power the South gained, the more afraid the North became; as a result the more the North felt they must prevent the South from expanding. (Hume, Video Lecture 6) Texas was a controversy. It was an annex and independent slaveholding nation since 1836. It would come into the union as a slave state but there was considerable Northern opposition; not just Whig or Democrat, but in both parties in the North. 

Texas is finally annexed to the Union just as John Tyler leaves office and James Polk takes office. President Polk realized there was a good deal of opposition to the Mexican War: potential opposition in the Whig party and in the North because of the possible expansion. However, President Polk gains military victories and the war ended in 1848 with the annexation of the Mexican Territories to the Union. (Hume, Video Lecture 4) With the deaths of Andrew Jackson (1845), John Calhoun (1850), Henery Clay (1852), Bennett (1858), Daniel Webster (1852), and Martin Van Buren (1862), among others, many of the reform issues were being faced by new political leaders; facing these issues first as Whigs and Democrats and later as Northerners and Southerners. All of these new leaders appear on the scene about the time of the Wilmont Proviso Crisis; the first great sectional crisis provided by the Mexican War. The Wilmont Proviso Crisis and in a sense the Pandora’s Box that this crisis opened, politically it is the obvious beginning of the chain of events that lead to the Sumter Crisis, secession and ultimately the Civil War. (Hume, Video Lecture 4 & 5) 

There were four political positions to be looked at in the forming of the Civil War. First, popular sovereignty let the people of that particular state or territory decide if they wanted slaves and for the government to stay out of it. Second, the Wilmont position, Free Soilers, held that slavery should be contained and should not be allowed to expand into the new territories. Third, the Southern Nationalists position held that slavery could not be excluded from the territories. The territories belong to the Nation and the 5th Amendment guarantees that you cannot lose property without due process of the law, Congress cannot arbitrarily deprive Southerners by drawing some line out in the territories somewhere and telling them that they cannot bring their property into the territory. The Southerners held that the territories should be open to slavery. Finally, President Polk’s position is to simply extend the 36’30 line. This seemed to work in the Missouri Compromise with the Louisiana Purchase territory. 

So, just extend the line and be done with it. Because California was going to become a state upsetting the balance of free versus slave states, Henry Clay proposed the Compromised of 1850. However, this bill did not pass until Steven Douglas picked it up and proposed it as separate pieces of legislation. There are five main points of the compromise. First, California comes into the Union as a free state. Second, the remainder of the Mexican secession territory will be under popular sovereignty. Third, a border dispute arose between Texas and Mexico over the border. Texas would give up it claim to the expanded western boundary and the government would pick up some of the debts Texas had. Fourth, the slave trade would end in the District of Columbia. Finally, a new fugitive slave law was established closing the holes in the old laws. So, it appears that the issue of slavery would have been solved. However, this was not the case. The three factors aiding this were: the Whig party was rapidly declining, especially in the South; there is constant agitation over the new slave law; and finally, Southerners were upset over the Uncle Tom’s Cabin novel. (Hume, Video Lecture 5) 

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of the 1850’s proved to be the next big watershed of the time. Steven Douglas takes his popular sovereignty issue and implements it in Kansas and Nebraska as he did in the Southwest. Potentially some of that territory could become a slave state and many Northerners assumed this would happen. Tremendous outcry occurred in the North because of this. The bill still passed with much turmoil and protest throughout the North with anti-Nebraska meetings. This is how the Republican Party arose. The Republicans eventually take control of the House but not the Senate. It will now become very difficult to compromise for anything. Kansas changed the political landscape and hardened the lines politically. This was known as “Bleeding Kansas”. By the election of 1856 Kansas is the center of attention. The Whig party disappears and the Democratic candidate wins the election. The Democrats split in Kansas; some are for popular sovereignty and others are for slavery. President Buchanan addresses the nation at inauguration that the Supreme Court is going to rule on the issues that are dividing the country; slavery in the territories, the Missouri Compromise, etc. (Hume, Video Lecture 5, McPherson, Chapter 7) The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case had three main points: first, Scott had no right to sue because he was not a citizen; second, the court said that he was a slave because the suit stems from Missouri and Missouri recognizes slavery; and third, although he had no right to bring suit and the country is at odds over the issue of slavery the court said that they would deal with this issue. They essentially ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, that Congress did not have the right to draw some arbitrary line across the Louisiana Purchase Territory when Missouri became a territory. The decision also strikes down popular sovereignty. There is tremendous outcry over this in the North and the decision sectionalized another institution: the political parties and court system. (Hume, Video Lecture 6) The Panic of 1857 puts into the minds of Southerners that cotton can be used as a diplomatic weapon, that it can be used to help the Confederacy where independence could be formed against the North. 

The Panic of 1857 sectionalized the economy. Senator Seward argued for a higher tariff because northern industry needed protection and if they did not get the higher tariff there would be economic difficulties. The South opposed these tariffs. Because the tariffs were going down over the passed years there came an economic depression when the tariffs went down again in 1857. This depression hit the North very hard and confirmed in the minds of the Southerners that they had a stronger economic system because of their cotton industry. The South thought that the North was leaches that profited off the South’s labors. So, if the economic depression of 1857 continued the South thought they could go it alone. This situation made for a one-issue Republican Party. By 1860 the Republicans called for a protective tariff, a specific RR Bill, Homestead Legislation, and for federal aid for internal improvements. (Hume, Video Lecture 6) Looking further, there was also the moral issue of slavery. Slavery was a betrayal to the basic values of Christianity and democratic tradition and it had to be challenged. However, the North did not care about the institution of slavery as long as it stayed in the South. The North was a changing society. It was industrializing, modernizing, and reforming. In the eyes of the Southerners the old North had changed; it had become revolutionary and aggressive. 

So, secession for the South had become a necessary counter revolution to get out of the union with the new aggressive North. (Hume, Video Lecture 6; and McPherson, Chapter 3) Mary Boykin Chesnut of South Carolina wrote in her diary: December 6 [1860]. To day the election for delagates to the [Secession] Convention comes off…. All the canadates say secede, and, of course it will be done. And I hope it will be done quickly. Then will come the tug of war, but let it come. It can be no worse than the oppression of the North…. June 10, 1861….We only want to separate from them [Northerners], and they put such an inordinate value on us, they are willing to risk all – life and limb and all their money – to keep us, they love us so…. June 28, 1861….We are an unwilling bride. I think incompatibility of temper began when it was made plain to us that we get all the opprobrium of slavery and they all the money there was in it – with their tariff…. July 24. [1861]… We begin to feel that it is a dreadful reality, that we are in the midst of a desperate war, and no one can tell when it will end. It is bad, very bad. But of the two evils, let us choose the least. Better war to the knife, than to be subgagated – than to be slaves to King Abe. Let them come on, Let us fight on to the last man. When they conquer us there will be nothing left for them. August 18, 1861….The idea that we [Confederates] want to invade or subjugate! We would only be too grateful to be left alone. (Linden and Pressly, pp. 5-7) South Carolina seceded, because Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was voted into office. The Republican Party threatened the South’s expansionism and therefore Southerners felt that they had no other choice but to secede. The Republican Party, however, had no intention of ending slavery in the South or freeing the slaves; they just did not want slavery to expand. Slavery was at the heart of the conflict between North and South, and that the expansion of slavery was an act of aggression. (Hume, Video Lectures 5 & 6) 

The United States was divided into three groups by the time the Civil War began: those who believed in the complete abolition of slavery, those who were against the expansion of slavery, and those who were pro slavery. Many historians like to believe that the moral aspect of slavery is what made it an explosive issue. McPherson states, “Few white men questioned the morality of black slavery before the eighteenth century. Bondage was the most ancient and universal form of labor in the history of civilization. Philosophy and religion in the premodern era justified slavery as one of many forms of subordination to authority necessary for social order. But by the second half of the eighteenth century, four currents of Anglo-American and French thought converged to form the basis for an emerging international antislavery movement” (McPherson, p. 43). It was the moral issue of slavery, which gave the struggles over slavery their significance. It should be realized, however, that the abolitionist philosophies were considered radical at that time. The abolitionists were a minority, compared to more conservative Northerners. The abolitionists, however, did play a major role in shaping the views of many Northerners. 

They wrote papers denouncing slavery, held rallies, and published works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which not only forced people to discuss slavery openly, but also created a general distaste for slavery and the South. (Hume, Video Lecture 5) George Templeton Strong of New York wrote in his diary: December 1. [1860]…What has created our present unquestionable irritation against the South' What has created the Republican party' Its nucleus was the abolition handful that has been vaporing for thirty years, and which, till about 1850, was among the more insignificant of our isms. Our feeling at the North till that time was not hostility to slavery, but indifference to it, and reluctance to discuss it. It was a disagreeable subject with which we had nothing to do. The battles in Congress about the right of petition…made little impression on us. But clamor of the South about the admission of California…introduced the question of slavery to the North as one in which it had an interest adverse to the South. That controversy taught us that the two systems could not co-exist in the same territory…if we allowed slaves to enter any territorial acquisition, our own free labor must be excluded from it…we might have forgotten it had not S. A. Douglas undertaken to get Southern votes by repealing the Missouri Compromise…then came the atrocious effort to force slavery on Kansas by fraud and violence…and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that set all Northern women crying and sobbing…The Fugitive Slave Law stimulated sectional feeling by making slavery visible in our own communities, and…the intolerable brag and bluster and indecent arrogance of the South has driven us into protest against their pretensions, and into a determination to assert our own rights in spite of their swagger… December 2, Sunday….I fear Northerner and Southerner are aliens, not merely in social and political arrangements, but in mental and moral constitution. We differ like Celt and Anglo-Saxon…. (Linden and Pressly, p. 9-10) The majority of the North felt to aid or abet the extension of slavery is wrong. However, they had no problems with slavery as long as it remained in the South. This opinion dates back to the Missouri compromise that forbade slavery to exist beyond the latitude 36’30, in an attempt to keep slavery out of politics and out of the North. But, unfortunately due to the expansionism that followed with the annexation of Texas, and debates over what should be done with the lands gained in the Mexican War proved to be impossible. (Hume, Video Lecture 4; and McPherson, Chapters 3 & 4) The pro-slavery South was, in many ways reacting to the North’s attack on slavery and its expansion. Slavery was an institution that must have continued to grow for its survival. Simply stated, it was a profitable institution. The cotton that necessitated slaves is also a crop that dries soil rapidly, necessitating new soil to be used quite often. Moreover, expansion for the South meant growth, politically, socially and economically, and it meant more political power. It is human nature to want to make what one has larger and stronger, just as the South wanted to expand and gain power. 

The Southern politicians did this through many political moves such as the Annexation of Texas, Bleeding Kansas, the Ostend Manifesto, and through the Dred Scott decision. All of which infuriated the North, and convinced them that the South was trying to dominate America with slavery, making the North the submissive subjects of a slave driven oligarchy. Frederick Douglass of Rochester, NY wrote in his periodical: [The secessionists] have completely shot off the legs of all trimmers and compromisers [in the North], and compelled everybody to elect between patriotic fidelity and pro-slavery treason…. Is it said that we exult in rebellion' We repel the allegation as a slander. Every pulsation of our heart is with the legitimate American Government, in its determination to suppress and put down this slave- holding rebellion…. (Linden and Pressly, p. 11) The Republican Party was formed in opposition to Southern expansion. Their platform was the Free Soilers, Free Men and Free Labor. The Republicans were anti-South but they were in no way an abolitionist party. They believed that slavery was a flawed system that made the South inefficient and that because the North’s free labor system was superior it must be guarded from Southern aggression. When the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, the South felt that its expansionism was being threatened, and because expansion was vital to the survival of slavery they also felt their way of life was being threatened. Because slavery was such a substantial part of Southern society, the South felt that they could not survive without it. Therefore they were not willing to compromise with the North and President Lincoln will not compromise on the issue of slavery. The South has at last reached that point where it was necessary for them to withdraw from the Union. They were ultimately bound to accept it for self-preservation. (Hume, Video Lectures 4, 5, & 6; and McPherson, Chapter 5) David Golightly Harris of South Carolina wrote in his diary: April 19…Then we heard the cannon fire eight times. From this I infer that another State had forsaken the Abolition rule & has joined the Southern Confederacy. (Linden and Pressly, p. 7) Although slave owners only made up 25% of the southern population it was a central component of their society. To own slaves was a sign of wealth and social prestige; poorer farmers who could not afford slaves had a goal to work for or they could rent a slave. Even those who were extremely poor and had no hope of ever owning a slave supported slavery, for no matter how poor a white man was in the South, they were still not at the bottom of the social system, as long as there were slaves. Lincoln secured 4% of the popular vote in the South, only running a ticket in the upper 5 states, where in the North he received 54% of the popular vote. This reveals the unity of the South in their dislike for the Republicans and Lincoln. If the South had been more divided they might have been more willing to negotiate a compromise, but this simply was not the case; “…to ‘entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over…. Filibustering for all South of us, and making slave states of it, would follow…. The tug has come & better now than later” (McPherson, p. 148). 

(McPherson, Chapter 8 & 9; and Hume, Video Lectures 5 &6) Frederick Douglass of Rochester, NY wrote in his periodical: The Government is aroused, the dead North is alive, and its divided people united. Never was a change so sudden, so universal, and so portentous. The whole North, East and West is in arms. Drums are beating, men are enlisting, companies forming, regiments marching, banners are flying, and money is pouring into the national treasury to put an end to the slaveholding rebellion…. (Linden and Pressly, pp. 11-12) The central cause of conflict between North and South was slavery, but it was only in its expansion and attention that it was given through politics that it became a powerful divisive force that could not be solved by compromise. The issue of expansion and the entrance of slavery into politics made it into a public issue, and once the issue became public the conflict had to be solved. From looking into the thoughts of Northerners and Southerners alike, a greater appreciation for the conflict was given. Tragically, compromise was impossible, as each section felt that its personal liberty was at stake, and as a result this conflict could not be solved without war. Competing nationalisms, political turmoil, and the definition of freedom, preservation of the Union, the fate of slavery and the structure of our society and economy could all be listed as significant contributing factors to the Civil War. Unfortunately, this war was to prove to be the bloodiest war in the history if America. Bibliography:  McPherson, James M. 2001. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. Third Edition. McGraw-Hill. New York, NY.  Hume, Richard. 1996. Civil War and Reconstruction. DDP video lectures 1-6. Washington State University. Viewed 2002.  Linden, Glenn M. and Thomas J. Pressly. 1995. Voices From The House Divided: The United States Civil War As Personal Experience. McGraw-Hill, Inc. -C

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