American civil war

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the American civil war during the periods of 1861 through 1865. This paper will look at how the war started, the purpose of the war. Who were the first soldiers, and who were allowed to fight and who were not. This paper will also look at blacks before the civil war, during the civil war and after the civil war. The writer will attempt to explain the treatment of blacks in the North and the South, during the civil war. A slave can be defined as, one who is the property of and bound to obedience to another. One who is entirely under the influence and, a helpless victim according to The Concise English Dictionary.

The war was not against slavery, but a war to save the Union, stated Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln sees slavery as inhumane, he was not an abolitionist, nor was he planning to implement any social and political equality for the white masters and their black slaves.

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President ...

Summary Map of counties covered and not covered by...

Photograph of a reproduction of the Emancipation P...

To the Northerners slavery was not their problem, it was the South's problem. Soldiers in the North had no intention to go to the war to free black slaves from slavery. Soldiers in the South were fighting to preserve slavery, because slavery meant free labor, growth, prosperity, large profits and slaves living in bondage. For the blacks both the enslaved and partially free blacks, for them the war meant freedom, an opportunity to prove bravery, loyalty, and possibility of equality in the far future.22

While the Civil war was in progress a lot of Southern slaves mainly those living several kilometers from the fighting scene or battle lines had very little knowledge of what was happening. Most continued to pick cotton or tobacco on the plantation. Some slaves were knowledgeable of...