Abraham Lincolns Role in the Civil War - Term Paper Example

? Abraham Lincoln’s Role in the Civil War The American Civil War was an internal war in the United s that clashed over the withdrawal of the Confederacy. Began in 1861, the war lasted a total of four years. The reasons and grounds were complicated, and ever since this battle began, its causes have been heated with a lot of controversial issues. Enslavement, nevertheless, was the chief cause of the ever-increasing political conflict and opposition around the 1850s. There were numerous leaders who greatly contributed to the development and, eventually, the conclusion of this four-year war that killed millions of innocent lives. They, in many ways, have shaped and formed what is known as The Civil War today. Whether to instigate or to stifle the war, these leaders have unquestionably played a great part in it. Among these leaders was President Abraham Lincoln. He, throughout his presidency, has greatly molded and influenced the development and the end of this war. He, in a way, played a role in both the start and end of the Civil War. Many factors indeed instigated the Civil War. The trigger that ultimately pushed war into action was Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential elections. During the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party spearheaded by Abraham Lincoln had pushed against magnifying slavery outside the states in which it previously subsisted. The Republicans intensely promoted patriotism, and in their 1860 manifesto they denounced disunion threats as affirmations of treason. This fervent drive to abolish slavery sprung from President Lincoln’s belief that slavery was the main cause of the war. In his second inaugural address, he said, "These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.”1 In retort to an anti-slavery Republican as the winner of the Presidential election, nearly a dozen Southern slave states in America affirmed their separation and breakaway from the United States. Many of these Southern whites that belonged to the Confederacy felt that secession had grown to be their only choice, as the people understood that Lincoln was against slavery and approved of Northern appeals. Together, they formed the Confederate States of America, better known universally as the Confederacy. Both the leaving presidency of President James Buchanan and the entering government disallowed the validity of secession, regarding it as rebellion. The other eight slave states turned pleas for secession down at this point. There was no nation in the world that acknowledged the Confederacy. As the Confederacy formed, the remaining twenty-five states reinforced the federal administration known collectively as the Union. Conflicts started on the April of 1861, when Confederate powers struck a U.S. military installation located at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. After they severely bombarded the fort, the fort surrendered. A few days later, Lincoln called for a multitude that numbered around 75,000 from the states to recapture the fort and additional national property. Instead of furnishing troops for an assault on their fellow Southern states, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee made a decision to join these states in withdrawal. Lincoln’s response of calling for a legion of volunteers led to statements of secession by these four slave states. This reaction to Ft. Sumter was a devastating call for war to support national morality. Only the state of Kentucky made an effort to stay neutral. A congregation of young men all throughout the land was in a great rush to enlist. Both sides built armies as the Union grasped control of the Border States during the early phases of the war and formed a naval barrier. Land combat in the East was indecisive between 1861 and 1862, as the Confederacy retorted Union efforts to seize its capital, Richmond, Virginia, particularly throughout the Peninsular Campaign. In the September of 1862, the Confederate movement in Maryland terminated in defeat at the battle known as the Battle of Antietam, which deterred British interference. Abraham Lincoln unswervingly made upholding the Union the fundamental goal of the war, though he progressively observed slavery as an essential concern and made ceasing it a further goal. Days subsequent to the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which officially established the end of slavery as a war goal: “All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”.2 Furthermore, Abraham Lincoln, as he was giving his 1858 House Divided Speech, appealed for America to “arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction”.3 Majority of the political clash throughout the 1850s concentrated on the extension of slavery into the newly established lands. President Abraham Lincoln indeed believed and stressed, like many abolitionist leaders, Jefferson’s assertion that all men were created equal, and therefore, should be treated equally. As a strong affirmation of Lincoln’s stanch belief in the value of equality, he gave his and America’s most famous and most well known speech – the Gettysburg Address. In this speech, he fully emphasizes how significant the role of freedom and equality has been in the foundation of the United States of America, saying his most celebrated line, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal.”4 In just over two minutes, Lincoln redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the preservation and holding together of the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" which in a new Union would bring true equality to all of its citizens, which would ensure that democracy would remain a viable form of government and which would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant. After four long years of struggle, predominantly within the Southern slave states, the Confederacy gave up and slavery was declared illicit all throughout the country. Concerns that instigated the war were partly solved throughout the subsequent Reconstruction Era, yet others lingered unsettled. Indeed, the Civil War was one of the most disastrous and deadliest wars in the history of the United States. More Americans lost their lives than in all the other wars merged. More than 600,000 people perished in battles, from illness, or as a consequence of the Civil War. Brother clashed against brother and the entire country was ripped apart. Finally ending in 1865, the period that encompassed the time after the Civil War is recognized as the Reconstruction. During this challenging time, the Southern states were progressively welcomed back as one again part of the Union and the areas that were devastated by the war were reconstructed. Because the Emancipation Proclamation was founded on the President's war authorities, it only comprised land controlled by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation turned out to be a great lasting symbol of the Union's mounting pledge to add unrestraint to the Union's meaning of freedom. Lincoln also played a prominent part in swaying the Congress to vote for the 13thAmendment, which made slave liberation complete and permanent. Finally, slavery was effectively ended, and, although slavery was not officially outlawed until the passage of this 13th amendment, the slaves were set free upon the end of the war. Reconstruction, the plan to rebuild America after the war, began. Industrialism began as a result of the increase in wartime production and the development of new technologies. Bibliography Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address. Bartleby.com. May 05, 2012. http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html Lincoln, Abraham. “Emancipation Proclamation”. Civil War Trust. May 05, 2012. http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/emancipation.htm Lincoln, Abraham. “House Divided Speech”. The History Place. May 05, 2012. http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/divided.htm Lincoln, Abraham. “The Gettysburg Address”. In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, 234-238. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1955. Read More