Saturday, April 3, 2010

The United States versus The United States


The Civil War had such a pivotal impact on The United States especially the South. Not only was the South’s culture integrated with slavery but their economy was almost entirely reliant on as means of agricultural production. With this said, the divide between the North and the South has been commonly misunderstood for ages. The Civil War was not a war between slavery versus non-slavery but a war of change, a change from state control and federal control. The emancipation proclamation was a ploy to keep European nations, whose economies heavily depended on the south’s textile production, from aiding the southern confederacy.

when Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation many Union regiments refused to fight as the President had compromised their reason to fight. Lincoln, at the point of a gun in many cases, forced the soldiers back into the fray and the turmoil subsided rather quickly. By the way, the Emancipation Proclamation was merely a political move to keep European powers from joining the South in their struggle. England, for example, was in a deep economic depression because so much of their economy was based on the textile trade which was decimated when Lincoln’s blockade keep the world’s largest supplier of cotton from shipping. In addition, not a single slave was freed by the Proclamation. If one reads it closely, it frees only those slaves still in Southern-held territory – a sovereign nation where he had no authority. He couldn’t free the slaves in the North or Northern-held territory as he has no right as President to usurp existing laws.

Northern aggression also provoked Virginia, who initially did not want to leave the Union but instead negotiate, only to succeed after federal troops marched through their territory without the states approval. At this time, there was no constitutional rule which made this viable.


In the beginning, the term ‘The United States’ was plural but Lincoln’s vision was singular as it is today. The South was forever changed after this monumental movement in history but it also be forever influenced by the this past.

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