When the civil war began, Lincoln and many Northerners viewed it as a war to save the Union. By the end, it had become a war to end slavery in the United States as well. How and why did this change come about?
“Civil War, a war that redefined national and regional identities and became an enduring tale of noble resistance in the South and, for the rest of the country, a mighty moral struggle to erase the stain of slavery.” (1) The aforementioned assertion is half true, but most of its part is rather controversial. While almost every American believes that the Civil War was all about slavery, let’s go down to the history of the bloodiest war in the US history.
When we talk about the Civil War, one needs to keep in mind that people take it differently in South and North. For northerners it was a war in the name of the Union, as firstly they fought to save it from the collapse. For southerners, on the contrary, the war was a chance to defeat their lifestyle and principles. Southerners fought to preserve their liberty, refusing to fully obey the federal government. So, as it can be easily noticed, the main cause of the war was not to end the slavery. A lot of historians claim that it the war had the “same roots as most wars: territorial aggrandizement, political power, and economic supremacy”(2)
The turning point of the war was the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued in 1863. This executive order has freed all the enslaved individuals in the Confederacy. “More significantly, it changed the goal of war to one not only to preserve the Union but also to end slavery.” (3) Only from that moment southern men began to fight against the end of slavery, and the war started to be about a confrontation between two systems - slavery and free wage labor.
One can make a conclusion that the Union did not start the war to end the slavery, however from the very beginning southerners understood that they have to fight and protect slavery. Sounds absurd, but the question “why so” still remains unanswered.
Works Cited
Perry, James DeWolf. "Civil War's Dirty Secret about Slavery." CNN. Cable News Network, 12 Apr. 2011. Web. 09 Sept. 2013. <http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/12/perry.browne.civil.war/index.html>
"Digital History." Digital History. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2013. <http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2>
"A War to End Slavery." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web06/>
