America has been part of some devastating battles in its long history. The First and Second World Wars were extremely difficult conflicts that strained national resources to the max. But none of these conflicts can compare to the Civil War, not only in terms of brutality and devastation of human life, but also in terms of the damage to the social fabric that this terrible conflict caused.
America prides itself on never having a battle on its home soil. Other than Pearl Harbor and 911, we have never been attacked on our own soil. So it took a war of brother against brother, American against American, to make war within America's borders even possible.
The war statistics are staggering for a relatively short conflict. The war began on April 12, 1861. It was the Confederacy that made the first blood attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Civil War Battles and Legendary. We have come to honor the dead on both sides of this bloody conflict by preserving many of these historic battlefields to this day.
Throughout the war the North had an advantage in preparation, equipment and supply. But General Lee, who commanded the Confederate army, was a brilliant strategist, and battles often resulted in massive casualties on both sides. When the final census was taken, over 970,000 American citizens had died in the Civil War. While this cannot be compared numerically to the massive losses in the two world wars that would later come, this number represented 3% of the US population at the time. And since the vast majority of the war dead came from America's youth, the hope for its future, the obstacle this war had on the development of the American economy was truly remarkable.
In modern times, we look back on the Civil War as a titanic battle to end the horrors of slavery in this country. And certainly, the Civil War is and will forever remain a central part of black history and the beginning of the civil rights movement in America. But the causes of the civil war were complex and varied, which only made it more difficult to negotiate and resolve the war before the conflict.
Part of the issue at hand was balancing states' rights to self-determination with the federal government's rights to determine state affairs. On the surface it may seem trivial compared to ending slavery, but in context it was a critical relationship that needed to be ironed out in light of our not too distant memory of our revolution against England for trying to impose undue controls on the colonies.
Americans are a fiercely independent people, and this independent spirit was born in the battles of the Revolutionary War, where America firmly declared that they would no longer bow to a king or allow a centralized government to have such extensive control over individual lives. Outrage over how England tried to enslave the colonies was the foal that caused the explosion known as the Revolutionary War. And great efforts have been made to ensure that the Constitution and other critical documents contain language to ensure that the federal government is severely limited in its interference in the lives of its citizens.
Additionally, keeping the union as one country was also at issue in the Civil War. But it was the moral issue of slavery that made the Civil War such an emotional issue that caused people to fight with such fury in defense of their side. Ultimately, even Abraham Lincoln made slavery a central reason for the war and decided that the end of this barbaric practice would be the legacy of this terrible conflict.
But one thing that was also a legacy of the Civil War was a determination that we as Americans would never again turn our war machine on our own citizens. The war tore families apart and literally caused a war of brother against brother. Since the reconstruction and reunification of America, the country has had a bruise on its national psyche because of this war, and this bruise reminds us that we are one people and we would always be one people committed to the causes of truth, justice and the American way. of life.
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