FREE ESSAY ON WAS THE CIVIL WAR WORTH IT?

WAS THE CIVIL WAR WORTH IT?

Was the civil war worth it? I believe that the civil war was worth it. Even though a lot
of negative consequences came out of it, the positive changes outweighed the negative. To
get a full understanding of why it was positive, one will have to understand what were
the causes of war, changes resulting from war, and the consequences. 
The largest cause was the differences in thoughts about slavery. The North and South had
contained their differences over slavery for sixty years after the Constitutional
Convention. Compromise in 1787 had resolved the questions of slave trade and how to count
slaves for congressional representation. Although slavery threatened the uneasy sectional
harmony in 1820, the Missouri compromise had established a workable balance of free and
slave states and defined a geographic line (36*30') to determine future decisions.(361)
Each apparent resolution, however, raised the level of emotional conflict between North
and South and postponed ultimate settlement of the slavery question. (362) 
The Compromise of 1850 which admitted California as a free state, ending the balance of
free to slave states. Territorial governments were organized in New Mexico and Utah,
allowing the people to decide the question of slavery. Slave trade was also abolished in
the District of Columbia. The Compromise of 1850 was the last attempt to keep slavery out
of politics, but the compromise only delayed more serious sectional conflict. (364)
In 1854, Kansas held a vote as whether to allow slavery in the territory, twice as many
ballots were cast as the number of registered voters, a few months later another vote was
held to settle the debate. What resulted was two separate legislatures were formed. One,
banning slavery, the other allowing it. Civil war looked imminent in the near future of
Kansas, and eventually violence broke out. In May of 1856 a mob smashed offices and
presses of a Free-Soil newspaper and destroyed homes and shops. Three nights later John
Brown and few of his men hacked five men to death, the same week Charles Sumner lashed
out against pro slavery and in return was beaten by a cane two weeks later. The New York
Tribune warned "We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people of Slavery.
Between the two, conflict is inevitable." As the rhetoric and violence in Kansas
demonstrated, competing visions of two separate cultures for the future destiny of the
United States were at stake. Despite many similarities between North and South the gap
between the two sides widened. (374) Each side saw the other threatening its freedom, as
hostilities rose, the views each section had of the other grew steadily more rigid.(376)
Five major reasons
Two days after James Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court finally ruled in Dred
Scott v. Sandford. The decision was the blacks were "beings of an inferior order [who]
had no rights which white men were bound to respect ," It also stated that the Missouri
Compromise was unconstitutional. (377)
Lincoln's election of 1860 was possibly the greatest sectional divider. The American
nation, he said, was in a crisis and building toward a worse one. "A house divided
against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half
slave and half free," Lincoln said he did not expect the Union to be dissolved or the
house to fall but rather that it will become all one thing or all the other. He believed
in white superiority, opposed granting specific equal civil rights to free blacks and
said that differences between whites and blacks would forever forbid the two races from
living together on terms of social and political equality, colonization was the best
solution. He also believed that blacks were entitled to the natural rights in the
Declaration of Independence, blacks were his equal.(378) These statements enraged
differing ideas of slavery and the rights of blacks. 
John Brown, unlike Lincoln was prepared to act decisively against slavery. On October 16,
1859 he and a band of 22 men attacked a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He
had hoped to provoke a general uprising of slaves throughout the upper South or at least
provide arms for slaves to make their way to freedom. Federal troops overcame him and
half his men died and he was captured and later hanged. Although he died he wasn't a
failure. His daring raid and his dignified behavior during trial and a speedy execution
unleashed powerful passions. The North-South gap widened.(379)
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded, declaring the experiment of putting people
with different pursuits and institutions under one government a failure. By February 1,
the other six Deep South states also left the Union. A week later the Confederate States
of America was created. On March 4 Lincoln reminded the nation that the only substantial
dispute was that one section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. He said that
he would make no attempt in interfering with slavery and put the burden of civil war on
the South. He then closed his speech with the following as if he had foreseen the events
that would follow: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The
mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the
Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
It was as if Lincoln knew of what was in the near future. On April 12, as Lincoln's
relief expedition neared Charleston, Beauregard's batteries began shelling Fort Sumter,
and the Civil War had began. (384)
Ideas of the war were very miscalculated, many believed the war would last weeks and some
even suggested that the blood that would be shed could be cleaned up with a handkerchief.
The war was also a war of bring the Union back together. The thoughts and ideas of war
and other changes in technologies and culture during the next four years were
extraordinary. Lincoln called for 75,000 state militiamen for only 90 days of service,
this supported the notion that the war would be short. (388) Many instances of poor
treatment of the soldiers and inadequate nutrition and clothing often led to desertion.
An estimated one of every nine Confederate soldiers and one of every seven Union troopers
deserted. Now that many soldiers were deserting or more likely being killed manpower was
becoming very short and the problems critical. This war has already gone longer than
anyone had every thought it would go and thousands had already died. Both governments
resorted to the draft since manpower was low, ultimately, over 30 percent of the
Confederate Army and 6 percent of the Union forces were draftees. These draft laws were
very unpopular and in July 1863, the resentment boiled over in New York City in the
largest civil disturbance of the nineteenth century. A three-day riot erupted as an out
of control mob, mainly Irishmen, burned draft records and the armory, plundered the
houses of the rich and looted. Blacks, hated as economic competitors and the cause of the
war, became special targets, eventually more than 100 people died.(399) What had been
thought to be a quick and decisive war over unionization slowly began to take the shape
of a long drawn out war over slavery where thousands would die.
In the fall of 1862 Lincoln began a slow shift in the war's purpose linking emancipation
with military necessity. In reply to his non-action on slavery Lincoln stated: "If I
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I would do it by freeing some and leaving
other alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do
because I believe it helps save this Union."(400) Finally on January 1, 1863 Lincoln
issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it was an act of justice warranted by the
Constitution upon military necessity. What had started, as a war to save the Union now
also became a struggle that if victorious would free the slaves. (401)
The unorganized battles turned in to organized battles then turned into campaigns of
annihilation. The idea of cutting the enemy off from needed supplies was implicit in the
naval blockade. Economic or total warfare was a relatively new and shocking idea. Sherman
refined this idea by consuming everything that could be used to support or supply armies
leaving desolation in their wake.(404) On April 9, 1865 Grant accepted Lee's surrender at
Appomattox, the war was finally over after four long years. Nearly 360,000 Union soldiers
and 258,000 Confederate soldiers died during this battle that many had thought would be
short and having little or no death.(412)
Many wartime changes proved more permanent than Lincoln had imagined. Wartime financial
necessities helped revolutionize the country's banking system. In 1863 and 1864, Congress
passed banking acts that established a national currency issued by federally chartered
banks and backed by government bonds. The country once again had a federal banking
system. Northern farming became more mechanized, while many people were beginning to read
newspapers and magazines with a new eagerness, and used mail often. (408) 
Now that the war was over many had to ask themselves, what had the war accomplished. We
certainly know death and destruction, and that the war had devastated the South, many
great cities lay in ruins. But on the other hand the war had resolved the question of
union and ended the debate over the relationship of the states to the federal government.
The war had also resolved the issue of slavery that so long had plagued American life.
(413) We will have to look at two different sides of the conclusion of war to really
decide whether it was worth all that had resulted. These two sides are the issues of
physically rebuilding the North and South, and the status of Africans-Americans. 
President Johnson, in his second of two reconstruction proclamations, accepted the
reconstructed government of North Carolina and laid down the steps by which other
southern states to reestablish governments, which included ratifying the Thirteenth
amendment. (420) Within eight months all the southern states were already admitted into
the Union and reconstruction seemed to be over but was it and should it be over so soon.
Unhappy with this Congressman Stevens of Pennsylvania and Senator Sumner of Massachusetts
rejecting Johnson's position that the South was already reconstructed, Congress exercised
their power and refused the representatives from the South and set up a committee to
investigate conditions in the South. Resulting from these investigations and rejection of
Johnson's positions, Congress sent the Fourteenth Amendment which gave African-Americans
citizenship and equal protection of the law and the right to vote for males, for
ratification, which they rejected. (421) In 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment became part of
the Constitution, finally giving the right to vote to the African-Americans. (424) The
Republican governments created the South's first public school systems. As in the North,
these schools were largely segregated, but for the first time rich and poor, white and
black alike had access to education. One thing that the freedmen had was a strong desire
for education. In October 1865, Ester Douglass found 120 dirty, half-naked, perfectly
wild black children in her schoolroom in Georgia. Eight months later, she reported that
they could read, sing hymns, and repeat Bible verses and had learned about right conduct
which they tried to practice.(428)
(431) While the South's reconstruction dealt more with laws dealing with blacks the
northern reconstruction dealt on economic revolution. The Central Pacific and Union
Pacific railroads were meeting in Utah linking the Atlantic and the Pacific for the first
time. The iron and steel manufacturing and western settlement of the mining, cattle and
agricultural frontiers were surging. (433)
The status of blacks in America was a very heated debate after the Civil War. Slavery was
ended, blacks received the right to vote, and were considered American citizens, but did
their status change dramatically. Maybe not at first but eventually it did. While many
white southerners braced to resist reconstruction and aimed to restore their old world,
nearly four million former slaves were on their own and facing the challenges of freedom.
Everything-and nothing-had changed. Legal marriages, legitimacy of children, access to
land titles, and choosing of surnames were important moral things the blacks received.
(418) With the white man trying to hold on to his old world, many black codes were passed
limiting many of the activities blacks could do, putting restrictions on the 13th, 14th
and 15th Amendments. The Freedmen's Bureau was a small government agency whose main task
was to promote African-Americans' economic well being. The bureau had a Herculean task on
its hands, many blacks broke contracts, ran away, engaged in work slowdowns, burned barns
and otherwise resisted. The freedmen refused to work at any price and refused to sign
contracts, basically they were still being treated as slaves and couldn't get out of the
vicious cycle.(426) 
To go along with the unfair treatment of the Freedmen and slavery like lives, President
Hayes would not enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, initiating a pattern of
executive inaction not broken until the 1960's.
Many troops had not been trained in any type of battle techniques and during battles
would generally attack in a mob type fashion, unorganized. Most of the bloodshed resulted
from changing military technology. The range of rifles had increased from 100 yards to
500 yards. While some troops had these newer rifles some did not and attacking infantry
soldiers regularly faced a 500-yard dash into deadly fire.(392)