Effects Of Civil War On America

When the Civil War is discussed it is often over simplified by saying things like “The war was started by arguments over slavery and ended when the North won.” Although as a general statement this would be correct, it is still not identifying what the war was and what happened. As much as people don’t want to admit it, the war was and still is a much heavier topic that is disrespected by not delving into it.

To effectively explain how the Civil War affected America, we must explain what the war was about and what happened during the war.

The war started for a controversy over slavery. The main argument was that on one side people argued for the slaves freedom or in the very least better treatment, while on the other side were slave owners. Now to a majority, slave owners were owners of businesses, plantations, and/or estate in need of lots of workers but didn’t want to pay very much for the work. Slave owners made the argument of if they were to let their slaves go they wouldn’t have any workers and if they payed for more stuff to give their slaves better things, then they wouldn’t have anything left to pay for food. This is the most agreed upon cause of the Civil War.

The Civil war is currently the only known war to only consist of American forces on American soil. The Civil War costed more American lives than both World War One and World War Two combined. President Lincoln gave the famous Gettysburg Address towards the end of the war as well as signing the 13th Amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The divide of the North and South still shows although in a few different ways today. The dialect is one of the more common differences. The war brought about the reunification of the North and South as well as an end to slavery.

The war itself did not do much other than cause the deaths of 620,000 people and rework how the government functioned. The government changed in the manner that it had to add the 13th amendment and classify how far the federal government could interfere in state matters. Voting laws changed, as did citizenship laws. Slavery was abolished in America only to be replaced with segregation, racial discrimination, and civil rights injustices.