Civil War Dbq

The United States of America has always disputed over the amount power the federal government had in regards to what the federal government could control through laws. Federalist and Anti-Federalist argued for years because they could not agree if the United States should or should not have a powerful central government (Kennedy). Even after those parties transformed into different parties, the continuous debate over the amount of power the federal government should have continued. The Civil War was fought over slavery and Southern States seceded from the nation to display dominance over the federal government and eradicate laws made by the federal government the South did not support, such as those regarding slavery (Causes of the Civil War).

President Lincoln had many objecters of the draft during the civil war (Kennedy, 328). The union was not fully united during the war, and people had issues with the government. Lincoln did not want fight a war, and attempted to unify the union with his ten percent plan. 1863 he issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction which would pardon Confederates who would swear to the union, and states only needed ten percent of their voting population to take an oath of loyalty to the union in order to rejoin (Alchin). This lenient plan shows the federal government did not want to increase their power over the states during the civil war, but that would change later on in the war and after the war ended. Attempting to fund the war Lincoln tried to raise taxes twice, but the people resisted, and in response Lincoln had to authorize legal tender called “greenbacks” which no one could refuse since the currency was standardized for the nation (Flaherty, Edward). Lincoln did have to exert some of his power over the people in the union, during the war, revealing how the federal government had little power before, since Lincoln had to increase it. President Lincoln also signed a bill in 1861 that implemented the first Federal income tax (History the First Income Tax). Lincoln signing the bill caused the federal government to increase in size and power it yielded over the people, in order

Economic historians think the war costed the United States 6.6 billion dollars in 1860, without inflation (Ross, Michael). The large loss after the Civil War was from all of the damages, since the war was fought on United States Soil. As well as the cost of the war, the South’s economy was in ruins because of devastating military damages, and the economy previously relied on slavery for free labor, thus the economy plummeted after the war ended leading to poverty in the upcountry (Fonner, 17). By reason of Lincoln freeing slaves in the South, and the South now being under Lincoln’s control, African American women and children were not required to work (American's Reconstruction). This eventually lead to less labor, meaning less profit in the southern economy, harming the economy even more making the South