The American Civil War

The American Civil war was the bloodiest war in American history. This is proven because, it had a little over 600,000 casualties. That is more than all other wars starting from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. (Wow, right?!) Hey, I am Homeschooled Hero, and this is my essay, for history, on what I found most interesting about the American Civil war. I hope that you guys, and girls, enjoy this essay!

The Civil War wasn’t a war that anyone really wanted to fight. Not to say that anyone ever wants to fight in a war, but this one was definitely not like that. This war was fought because the Union, or the more commonly known “North”, was trying to take away the Confederacy’s rights to own slaves, among other things. The war was not started because the North wanted to abolish slavery, heck, even some of the Northerners had slaves themselves, hypocrites. The problem with this misconception is that, people start to think that the South was full of racists who don’t care for human rights. Some people in the south were that way though, but not everyone who owned slaves were bad to them. Most people, today, believe that every single slave owner was bad to their slaves, which is completely false! The thing is, some slave owners set up a way that when they died their slaves were set free! The problem with this is that it has to be written in order for it to work, and most people didn’t know that, so then people stole the slaves when the person died, and now (today) people think that these men and women only ever tortured slaves. The other thing that people get wrong about this war is that, Blacks or “African Americans” were the only people being discriminated against. Well, I have news for you, Asians were being discriminated against too. They were actually treated a little bit worse than blacks were.

The first “battle” of the Civil War was the battle of Fort Sumter. This fight took place in, duh, Fort Sumter in South Carolina. One of the contributing factors to start this battle, was Abraham Lincoln, the current president, not making a stand for either sides of the conflict. This really made both sides mad. Lincoln wasn’t a true supporter or abolitionist towards slavery. He thought that he should just try to preserve the Union, unfortunately this kind of blew up in his face. Instead of his actions keeping the two sides of the conflict together, the two sides split apart. Thus creating the first major step in the opposite direction that Lincoln wanted to go. The next step, to really kickstart the war, was the battle at Fort Sumter. Well, the general of the Confederacy knew that the fort was open for the taking. He also knew that if he could keep his supplies coming, he would be good for a little while. Well, the fort was in South Carolina, a Union state, and the Union hadn’t announced war against the Confederacy, and vice versa. Then the general moved his troops into the fort without the consent of anyone else higher up. The Union then began to complain to Lincoln so much that Lincoln had to take action. Lincoln asked and then ordered the troops to leave the fort. The general didn’t move his troops out so, Lincoln brought his fleet, in the water, to intimidate them to come out. The soldiers still didn’t move out. So, Lincoln ordered a barrage on the fort, there ended up being a 34- hour long barrage. The troops eventually did leave the fort. Luckily nobody died until, on accident, one person hit a mine and died because of it, thus really starting the war.

One thing that makes me really mad is when people say that Lincoln’s main goal was to abolish slavery. This makes me mad because it is completely FALSE! He wasn’t an abolitionist, he wasn’t a supporter, he was just a man who had been elected president and wanted to keep the United States, united. The problem is that people always want to believe whatever they heard from somebody who was misinformed.  People these days tend to believe what others tell them without fact checking it first. This is why people always think that Lincoln was an abolitionist. Since people just “buy into” that stuff, I get angry and people then say that I am a racist and that I am trying promote slavery.

One of the things that I am supposed to be writing about, is my favorite part about the war. Well, I don’t think that you can have a sane reason for why you have a favorite part of any war. Except for maybe the ending. Then, if that is the case, that’s fine. I guess that my favorite part of the war was the surrender of Robert E. Lee. The reason that this is my favorite part is because, it shows the start of a country mending wounds dealt from both sides of this conflict.

What I really thought was interesting was that Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant both looked up to each other. Even though they were on opposite sides of this war, they still looked up to each other. Since they looked up to each other, Grant made Lee’s surrender conditions as light as possible considering the situation. I thought that was cool because he did that. I don’t if anyone else would do that if they were in his shoes. The next cool thing that happened was, the Union army gave the Confederacy some of their rations for the march back home. Then, around 4 pm, the Confederacy began it’s long march home and the Union began cheering over their victory. Now, I didn’t see anything wrong with this until Grant made a great statement, “Stop men, we don’t cheer over the loss of our own countrymen.” I thought that this was a great thing to say because it really showed the process of bringing the United States back together again. I am, personally, really glad that this wasn’t like “Humpty Dumpty,”   because if that were the case, we would not be in the great place that we are today.

In conclusion, I think that the American Civil War was very important for history. If this event hadn’t occurred,  life wouldn’t be the same and people would definitely not be the same. I don’t know what I would do if this war hadn’t gone on because then a lot of American history would be missing. I don’t even know if we would have slaves or if I would be a slave. All in all life would be way different than it is today. Please like and leave comments! Let me know what you thought of this essay via email, or the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe for more.

Until next time, your friendly neighborhood Homeschooler…