Main Causes Leading to the Civil War

There are lots of theories about the civil war and the issues that set the downturn in 1961. Many historians have numerous thoughts concerning this problem. This essay will mark out one of the most important but not so obvious causes: a great fail of the Peace Conference in finding the alternative decision to the upcoming problems. Despite the fact that Lincoln announced that his administration tried to avoid the civil war, the slave states have been already preparing for this war. At that time the so-called Confederacy was created and the remaining four slave states joined it. In the total there were eleven states ready to fight. Of course, Lincoln ordered to create a blockade in order to control the neighboring states. All those events continued to disdain people more and more (Howard Jones, 1999).

Another reason can be the secession of the above mentioned eleven states. On the other hand, people considered the main problem to be the difference between the states’ economy in the North and the South. The president Lincoln in order to take any actions to change the situation issued the document which called “The Proclamation of Emancipation”. This document had to put the end to the slavery. So, out of this fact we can say that the real reason for the Civil War was connected with the slavery (Frank J. Williams, 2006).

According to all the above mentioned facts we can say that the true reason which led to the Civil War actually is a complex of problems. Besides that, the so-called historical revisionists were trying to show that the role of slavery was not so important. But, in fact, slavery was the only reason that led to the growing tension among political institutions. Of course, after the Republican candidate won elections, most of the southern states decided that their only way out of the situation was to reunite (James C. Bradford, 2010).

The goals were so simple: people from south were fighting to avoid slavery. At the time the northern part of the country tried to prevent them from uniting and then made Lincoln’s idea to destroy slavery as a minor option (Foner, Eric, 2011).

That was all for the reasons that in fact were aggravating the situation, but as for the war itself, it is historically known that it began when the army of Confederate opened fire on the federal army and made it give up. All these events led to the four-year bloody war. As a result, the Confederacy that was created at that time has been defeated, the slavery was cancelled and began the long and complicated process of Reconstruction. The funniest thing about the war is that the armies of the Confederate were commanded by unlucky leaders. The new concept appeared after the war has ended, and now the United States became not a group of small states, it became the only state.

As a conclusion I can tell that at first sight there was nothing to compare between the North and South as the Union had 23 states, while the seceding Southern states had only 11. As for the population, there was the same situation – the North had twice as much people, excluding the fact that out of 9 million people 3.5 million were slaves. The Northern part had a total advantage over the Southern states. Furthermore, the Union had a great number of financial and commercial sources, that is why the war has lasted for 3 long years.

Actually, the Civil War has an important meaning as it had a huge impact on the development of technology and modern weapons. It brought lots of innovative ideas in technics. It is the first war in which the railroads and telegraph was used, the first war that introduced machine gun and the first war which has got widespread newspaper coverage. The United States began a new life (Shelby Foote, 1998-2000)!

Works Cited

Howard, Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (1999), p. 154.

Foner, Eric. “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery” (2011). p. 74.

Frank, J. Williams, “Doing Less and Doing More: The President and the Proclamation—Legally, Militarily and Politically,” in Harold Holzer, ed. The Emancipation Proclamation (2006) pp. 74–5

James, C. Bradford, A companion to American military history (2010) vol. 1, p. 101

Shelby, Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, 3 vol. (1958–74; reissued in 14 vol., 1998–2000);