John Nix
Kevin Thomas Harrel
His 105 Section 28
8 December 2009 The Formation of the Confederacy: An Inevitable Occurrence When looking at the history of the United States it is necessary to look at our past in two separate halves: the first half being everything before the Civil War and the second half being everything after the Civil War. With this being said, it can be reasonably argued that the Civil War is one of the most critical events to every happen in our country’s rich history. The devastating war took over half a million American lives in just a little over four years. This tragic event in history, up until Vietnam, claimed more American lives than any other war (Rubin 11). In hindsight it is clear that this war should have been avoided at all cost but during the late 1800’s the tension was so high and hostile that the war was inevitable. Sectionalism had increased so much during that period that even citizens thought of their country divided into two halves, being the North and the South. Each section considered themselves as right and proper while the other as ridiculous and wrong. These tensions kept building until the thought of secession became not a question of if but rather a question of when. According to Cole C. Kingseed, author of The American Civil War, the seeds of the Civil War can be planted as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1787. By the time of the convention five states had already abolished slavery, which made the southern states tentative to join the union for the fear of not having their slaves counted for representation in congress. A compromise was made that allowed for three out of every five slaves to be counted as the population. The slave owning states made it very clear that the only way for a union was for slavery to be legal in the southern states. Before the United States of America formally came into