The Pros And Cons Of The American Civil War

From 1860 to 1865, the United States faced one of the most divisive events in its history, known as the American Civil War. The war pitted families, neighbors, and friends against one another, resulted in high rates of casualties, and ended slavery in America once and for all. Much debate about the war and precisely what it meant for America has occurred since the time. President Abraham Lincoln once referred to the Civil War as a “new birth of freedom” in the United States, however the war more closely resembled the last fight of the American Revolution.

Though the Civil War occurred nearly eighty years after the American Revolution, the two wars have several distinct commonalities. First and foremost, the ideals behind the Civil War mirror those behind the American Revolution. The Patriots broke off from England initially because they did not believe Britain had the right to tax them without representation in Parliament, but their small struggle for lower taxes became a full scale battle for independence

Unfortunately, the Constitution’s famous line “All men are created equal,” became a grey area when it came to slavery in the new country. The founders faced the uncertainty of whether to go against the rest of the world and rid the country of slavery, or to keep slavery and remain hypocrites according to their own founding documents. Generations of Presidents and other political leaders following the founding of America simply set the issue aside, not wanting to disrupt the peace that had finally come with the end of war. This period of ignorance that befell the government lasted almost half of a century before it became a serious problem for the United States. Because the founding fathers chose to ignore the issue at hand, the American Revolution never really ended until the Civil War settled the conflict of