... However, the North would claim victory. Within that victory was 625,000 lives lost. It was perhaps one of the most destructive wars in the United States’ history. The Civil War started over conflict because of the differences between the free states and the slave states. Many thought that the war went on due to the act of abolishing slavery within the southern states, but was that really the cause? While reading through sources, a common question re-appears, was it really slavery that caused the...
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...perspective on the city of St. Louis and the entire state of Missouri. Missouri has played a major role in the history of the United States of America in particular when it comes to the western expansion. The museum had an abundant amount of information about different aspects of Missouri history including but not limited to the Native American settlers, The Lewis and Clark expedition, The Louisiana Purchase, Civil War, The Missouri Comprise, Civil Rights acts, enslaved African Americans and even information down to one of the latest historically issues the Michael Brown case of Ferguson Missouri. I decided to focus more on The Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Missouri Compromise created a huge quarrel between the northern and southern states. The purpose of the Missouri Compromise was to conserve a balance between power in the Congress within the freed slave states and the non freed slave states. The southern states were against the Missouri Compromise and they argued that it evoked the Congress the power to create laws regarding slavery. The southern states relied on slaves economically because the...
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...The factors that contributed to the Civil War were of many between the North and the South. From Lincoln being elected President of the United States, to disagreements between the Northern states and Southern states based on their rights and federal rights. Part of the disagreements was the debate over slavery and its outcome for the future. The fight for slaves versus having a democracy led to the Fort Sumter event that began the war. Before Lincoln was even inaugurated, the South was very angry in the decision of the election. They had felt that Lincoln was going to abolish slavery. In fact Lincoln was not going to interfere where slavery was already taken place, but just not to expand slavery in new states. The South felt threatened by...
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...Ayomide Sekiteri United States History to 1865 Due: November 19, 2012 For Cause and Comrades A war is a state of open, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried nations, states, or parties. The civil war was not a war between two countries fighting for land or control. The civil was within America, where citizens were dividing in their ideals and motivations. Northern states and the southern states differing ideals lead to fighting which separated them. Every war has its reasons whether it is a good and acceptable reason or a bad reason. People are killed in the heat of battle and the country itself can be damaged because of war; people want a reason for why their fighting. Some wars are inevitable and some are not, it all depends on what they are fighting for. In James M. McPherson’s book “For Cause and Comrades” he discusses the reasons why men fought in the civil war. 1. What are the primary sources used by McPherson to explain the motives of the 3 million soldiers who fought in the Civil war? What are the advantages and drawbacks to this approach? In the book, For Cause & Comrades—Why Men Fought in the Civil war, James M. McPherson uses collected diary entries and letters written by soldiers that were fighting for either the Confederate or Union army as his primary resources for this book. McPherson gives us these primary sources to give us insights into the life of soldiers fighting in the civil war. He explains that the “evidence consists of the personal...
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...1 Defending the Defenseless During the American Revolution, slavery was in the process of being abolished in Europe and in the Northern states of America. Even though parts of the world were willing to free slaves, the Southern states found ways to defend slavery. In Paul Finkelman’s book Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, Finkelman provides the writings of many white leaders from the South who believed that slavery was essential to America’s society. The white leaders who spoke about proslavery included a broad range of defenses to justify themselves because they wanted Americans to believe that slavery had a lasting impact economically, religiously, legally, and racially. One of the defenders in Finkelman’s book was Thomas R.R. Cobb. He justified slavery by arguing the effects of abolition in the United States. Cobb said, “The emancipated negroes do not enjoy full and equal civil and political rights in any State in the union, except the State of Vermont” (Finkelman, 79). He was convinced that those who became free of slavery did not live a better life. He believed that any African American slave who is free is not capable of living successfully and “His moral condition compares unfavorably with that of the slave of the South” (Finkleman, 79). This argument states that African Americans who are enslaved are in better hands with the slave owners and therefore they should remain as slaves. Cobb’s defense was justifiable because he...
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...During the 1830s and 1840s in America, there were several political events that divided the nation. Three of these were the abolishment of the Second Bank of the United States, the signing of the Indian Removal Act, and the abolitionists' antislavery offensive in 1835. One point of national controversy was regarding the existence of a national bank. The First Bank of the United States was a centralized, national bank chartered in 1791 for a term of 20 years. Its purpose was to hold federal funds and help stabilize the country's finances. When the bank's charter expired in 1811, Congress created a Second Bank of the United States whose charter was to expire in 1836. President Jackson was distrustful of banks and was very much opposed to having a federal bank. When Senator Henry Clay proposed an early rechartering of the bank in 1832, the bill was passed in Congress but vetoed by President Jackson. According to Jackson, the federal bank was unauthorized by the Constitution and destructive to states' and individual rights. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Bank War. Those who were in favor of the bank tended to be bankers, developers, and those in the business community. Since the wealthy were the ones who had the most to gain by having a national bank, the bank gained a reputation for being pro-aristocracy and against the common man. Those in the Senate who supported the bank were angered by this move and censured Jackson, but the censure was eventually removed...
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...The history of slavery in America dates back to the seventeenth century when slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619. The era of slavery in US can be broadly divided into three sections, The Antebellum, Slavery during the Civil War, The Reconstruction We will be focusing our attention on the lives of slaves during the Civil War - a war many believe was fought for their emancipation. But before we get an insight into this subject, it is important to know in brief the events that led to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was elected the President of United States in 1860, and this propelled anxiety and fear in the minds of the southern states who believed that the government will pass laws that will dampen their economy and the 'southern way of life.' This was primarily because of the reason that northerners hadn't too much at stake in the institution of slavery. Their economy chiefly depended on industries and factories. South, on the other hand, depended on slaves heavily for their work. The plantations of indigo, tobacco, rice, and cotton (after the invention of cotton gin) required hard labor and the slaves were made to work for long hours so that profit was maximized. Many people believe that the Civil War was about North's struggle to emancipate the slaves and South's fight to continue the slave trade. However, it should be remembered that the North did not go to war to emancipate the slaves, instead Abraham Lincoln, before becoming the President...
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...smart move and a massive ethical victory to every slave in the U.S. Another effect was that it turned the war into a Northern crusade against slavery, and made the South seem like villains in comparison. It freed the slaves from their servitude, and gave the union a moral high ground to fight from. The Union would later win the war, but what would have happened if Lincoln had never given his groundbreaking speech? Although Lincoln did not believe in equality between the races, he would give the speech that...
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...a product that is at once a product and an agent of historical process”. According to both of these men the role of an individual is a person who not only can change history alone, but that, social forces with this individual make history. Abraham Lincoln was a man who is considered “a great man” and who is a great example of Thomas Carlyle’s idea of “The great man” and “the role of the individual”. 16th president of the United States of America, Lincoln built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. He gathered most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause, and On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy, and that it would also change the course of history for centuries to come. A Republican, Lincoln, after the Confederates attacked fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, was willing and would stop at nothing to defend the Union as well as Federal Law and was willing to use force. He gathered 75,000 volunteering souls from various states and as some states joined the Confederacy and four stayed with the Union, the Civil War...
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...in the 1700s enslaved Africans were the backbone of manual labor. Although slavery was used throughout all the colonies, there were indeed notable differences between the way slavery worked in each region of the colonies. The amount of slaves in each colony, the labors they did, and the disciplinary systems were seemingly different between the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. If you were to look at the number of how many slaves were owned in each of the colonies you would see the huge differences in percentages of slaves in each colony. According to the first U.S. census in 1790 the population of the New England colonies was around 827,222 with 3,763 being African slaves so .45% of the population were slaves. In the Middle colonies...
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...The Confederate Flag was adopted by the Confederate States of America around February of 1861 to serve as the official flag of their movement towards the expansion of utilizing enslaved African people forced into America through the slave trade. “We know, as Confederates knew, that their dream of independence and liberty was based on a social and economic foundation of black labor” (Binnington 4) The south had their ‘black labor’ for years; however, soon this did change. The March after the Confederate States succession, Abraham Lincoln was elected president and, though stating he would not try to end the use of slaves, he ran on a platform that was against the expansion of slavery. Ultimately, this led to the Civil War between the anti-slavery...
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...of citizenship for Mr. Scott, stating that “no person with African blood could become a U.S. citizen” that outraged the North. The court voted 7 no, 2 yes and added that all black people were property, and Congress had no ability to abolish slavery. President Buchanan abstained and refer to the Supreme Court decision. The South was pleased with the verdict. In the scale of this incident will grade as deep and consequential. The Abolitionist Act of 1830s is the law that the North tried to enact upon the United States, this law attempted to abolish slavery immediately. The North supported the Act by enforcing freedom to slaves in the northern states and rebelling against it. The South reacted negatively and requested immediate action from the North, to stop the pro abolishment actions. The North ignored the request. On a scale from shallow to deep this was in the middle. The Fugitive Slave Act was an act in 1793 stating that you must return all runaway slaves. If you did not return the slaves you were fined or prosecuted. People of the North were forced to obey the law or break it and facing the consequences. In contrast the South benefited when runaways to the North were returned. This Act was agree upon the creation of a “free” state (California). On a shallow to deep scale I would rate this probably mid to deep. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very inspirational book, it tales the story of a girl who visited her uncle in the south. He happened...
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...Limit your submission of the Timeline Part II up to 250 words per topic/subtopic. For example, if a topic is divided into 3 subtopics, you may write a maximum of 250 per subtopic listed. Be sure to cite all sources. Major Event/Epoch in American History | Time Period/Date(s) | Description and Significance of the People/Event(s) to American History | 1) The evolution of the institution of slavery from the Colonial Period to the 1860s. | 16th Century – 19th Century | I found this excerpt from Robert Francis Engs from the Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia: The history of African American slavery in the United States can be divided into two periods: the first coincided with the colonial years, about 1650 to 1790; the second lasted from American independence through the Civil War, 1790 to 1865. Prior to independence, slavery existed in all the American colonies and therefore was not an issue of sectional debate. With the arrival of independence, however, the new Northern states--those of New England along with New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey--came to see slavery as contradictory to the ideals of the Revolution and instituted programs of gradual emancipation.1 | 2) The socio-cultural impact of the abolitionist movement including: a) The effect of Uncle Tom’s Cabin b) The Kansas-Nebraska Act c) The...
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...not write the history of the United States, he wrote the story of a group of men, whose remarkable personal qualities made possible the emergence of a new independent country. Although, the members of the group were different in their personalities, backgrounds and experiences, it seems like all of them shared a superhuman gene of the ability to change the history. Since Founding Father’s agendas on the political course of the U.S. had differed drastically, they were not friends and, often, even allies. However, the devotion to the U.S. independency was literary in their blood, so it made them...
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...The mid-19th century is a historic period in the history of the United States, one that shaped the nation we now know. In the year 1861, the tension that had long been brewing between the north and south exploded and led the nation to war. The catalyst was Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election. As an anti-slavery Republican, the southern states feared his agenda and chose to secede from the Union. The Confederate States of America was formed and the refusal of said states to rejoin the Union led to a Civil War, neighbor against neighbor, each fighting for what they believed to be right. The four years of the war were costly, both in monetary value and lives lost; and the effects were long lasting, shaping the nation into what it would become and stand for, even over a century later. The Civil War, often referred to as The War Between the States, lasted four years, from 1861-1865, and shaped the nation of America into what it currently is. Historian Shelby Foote spent a great deal of time researching this monumental period of American history to pen her famous civil war narrative. Foote believed that the Civil War defined the nation and that to understand the character of America, it is important to study this war. What I believe Foote meant was that the nation was at a crossroads. It was deeply divided and no longer could it continue on as such. Either the nation would have to abolish slavery, or fully embrace it. However, given the freedoms the founding settlors...
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