The American Civil War was a major conflict that took place in the United States from 1861 to 1865. It was a war between the Northern states known as the Union and the Southern states known as the Confederacy. The primary cause of the conflict was the issue of slavery and tensions were escalating due to economic, political and social differences between the two regions.
Here are the key events and factors that led to the outbreak of the Civil War:
Slavery: The institution of slavery was deeply entrenched in the Southern states, where the economy was largely based on agricultural practices such as cotton cultivation. Northern states had a more industrialized economy and were increasingly opposed to slavery.
Sectionalism: Over time, regional differences between Northern and Southern states became more pronounced. Economic, social and cultural inequalities contributed to the development of strong regional identities.
States Rights: Southern states asserted their right to self-government and to decide issues such as slavery without interference from the federal government. This led to conflicts over the balance between states’ rights and federal authority.
Political Tensions: The election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860 exacerbated tensions. Southern states saw Lincoln’s victory as a threat to their interests, fearing that he would take measures against slavery.
Secession: In reaction to Lincoln’s election, several Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861.
The beginning of the war
The secession of the Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina in chronological order) in 1860-61 and the subsequent outbreak of armed conflict was the culmination of decades of growing regional friction over slavery. Between 1815 and 1861, the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture – small farms relying mostly on free labor – remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in a vast and diverse transportation system that included canals, roads, steamships, and railroads; financial industries such as banking and insurance; and a vast communications network that included the telegraph as well as cheap, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books.
In contrast, the Southern economy was based on large farms (plantations) that produced mainly commodities such as cotton and relied on slaves as their main labor force. Instead of investing in factories or railroads as Northerners did, Southerners invested their money in slaves – even more than they invested in land; by 1860, 84 percent of capital invested in manufacturing was invested in free (non-slaveholding) states. Still, for Southerners as late as 1860, this seemed like a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s most important commodity, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves, who were ultimately property, had risen at the same rate. By 1860, the per capita wealth of white Southerners was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.
The expansion of slavery into new territories and states was an issue dating back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When slave territory Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated the request for two years before reaching the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first in a series of political agreements between pro- and anti-slavery forces that stemmed from the debate over the Westward expansion of the “peculiar institution”. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the resulting gain of some 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory by the United States added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. The number of Northerners motivated by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labor increased in the 1850s, and as a result, many more people came to believe that slavery should be abolished. White Southerners feared that limiting the spread of slavery would condemn the institution to certain death. Throughout the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians were less able to contain the conflict through compromise. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the openly abolitionist Republican Party, won the presidential election of 1860, seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas) made good on their threat and seceded from the United States, organizing as the Confederate States of America.
In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter at the entrance to the port of Charleston, South Carolina. Remarkably, there were no casualties in this first encounter, which would become the bloodiest battle in United States history. After 34 hours of bombardment, Major Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 men to Confederate troops of about 5,500 under P.G.T. Beauregard. Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina) seceded from the United States to join the Confederacy.
With the outbreak of war, President Lincoln called 75,000 militiamen to duty for three months. He declared a naval blockade of the Confederate states. But he insisted that they were not legally sovereign states, but states in rebellion. He also instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to advance $2 million to help raise troops and suspended the writ of habeas corpus, first on the East Coast and then throughout the country. The Confederate government had previously authorized the call-up of 100,000 soldiers for at least six months’ service, a number that was soon increased to 400,000.
Some have called the American Civil War the last of the old-fashioned wars, while others have called it the first modern war. In fact, it was a war of transition and had a profound impact on the development of technologically modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations.
American Civil War…
- It was the first battle in history in which iron-clad warships clashed.
- The first war in which the telegraph and railroad played an important role.
- It was the first war in which rifled ammunition and cannons were widely used and the machine gun (Gatling gun) was used.
- It was the first war in which newspapers were widely published, soldiers voted in the field in national elections and photographic records were made.
- First war in which medical care for soldiers was systematically organized.
- It was the first war to use land and water mines and the first to use a submarine capable of sinking a warship.
- It was the first war in which armies made widespread use of aerial reconnaissance (via balloons).
The Civil War has been written about as few wars in history have been written about. More than 60,000 books and countless articles bear eloquent testimony to the accuracy of poet Walt Whitman’s prediction that “out of those four years… a great literature will be born”. The events of the war left a rich legacy for future generations, a legacy summarized by President Lincoln as the reunited parts of the United States being “the last best hope of the world.”
Source: https://gurkanozsoy.com/gunluk/1861-amerikan-ic-savasi/