Civil War, the greatest war in American history

Essay by JIm chenA+, February 1996

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Civil war was the greatest war in American history. It was waged in 10,000 places-from Valverde, New Mexico, and Fernandina on the Florida coast. More than three million Americans fought in it and more than 600,00 men died in it. It was not only the immensity of the fight but the new weapons, the new standards of generalship, and the strategies of destruction which made the Civil War an event present ever since in the American consciousness.

Here are some of the crucial events of the war: the firing of the first shots at Fort Sumter; the battles of Shiloh, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; Sherman's dramatic march to the sea; the surrender at Appomattox. In fact, Civil War wasn't simply the story of great battles and great generals, it was also an elaborate portrait of ourselves, American people- individuals and families, northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, slaves and slaveowners, rich and poor, urban and rural.

Twenty years before Civil War started, South and North didn't have a good relationship already and there were many issues that they didn't agree on each other such as Clay's compromise, Fugitive slave act, Pottawatomie massacre, etc. The Southern states supported slavery because the slave population held more than 40 percent of the entire population and also they needed slavery for their industrialization. Therefore, if they freed all the slaves, someone would predict, many whites would have no jobs and many things would be up-side-down. As the result, controlling over slaves was very important for the Southern. But the Northern were opponent of slavery since the slavery population took less than 10 percent of the entire population and Southern states were already free. Then something really happened when Abraham Lincoln, a known opponent of slavery, was elected president. The Southern states then decided to secede,