Abraham Lincoln's A Nation At War

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A Nation at War
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. “ (Abraham Lincoln) After decades of disagreement and division, the southern states couldn’t take any more. The South split off and formed a Confederacy with their own president and fought for their independence. Both sides of the nation fought for 3-4 years, after the many years of fighting both had enough conflict and war. The country finally joined together again in 1865. After the newly found country settled down conflict arose in the peaceful looking nation. The war between the North and South over slavery and religious divisions, both annihilated and created a better country.
A common misconception about the Civil War, is that the north went to war to end slavery. “They wanted …show more content…
“... the idea that this was a war, not just to bring the nation back together, but it was a war to end slavery, to bring equality to black people, and to make them part of American society.”(Yancey 41) This quote focuses more on the part of the war that wanted blacks to be a part of society. Although slaves wanted acceptance, they weren’t able to speak out until after the war. America had been suffering from disagreements for years, when Abraham Lincoln became president the nation spit because they feared man and the law they control over people. “Although the freedom that the Emancipation Proclamation symbolized was generations away, progress toward racial equality through the next century was built on the foundation laid by black and white abolitionists and soldiers and sailors fighting for the expansion of that vision of liberty that had called the nation into existence almost a hundred years before its Civil War.” (Noonan 189) The war did reduce slavery quite a bit, but it didn’t get rid of it utterly and completely. While the war was going, even before the war started, slaves were known to escape to the north looking for freedom. Even after millions of attempts and hundreds of thousands of slaves that were freed during this time, it still took the nation years until slavery was completely abolished and racial equality was in effect. Even though a reason the war started was to end slavery, it didn’t get …show more content…
“At the onset of the Civil War, free black men rushed to volunteer for service with the Union forces. Although African Americans had served in the army … they were not permitted to enlist because of a 1792 law that barred them from bearing arms in the U.S. Army. Free black men were finally permitted to enlist late in 1862…” (“African Americans in the Civil War”) Slavery was a bigger part of the civil war, more than people think. The war wasn’t just to end slavery, though there have been many other reasons the war started. Many slaves who were in the south looked towards the north for freedom. Free slaves in the north wanted to serve in the war and help fight for the union, but lots were not able to serve but helped in other ways. “The South refused to arm blacks but used them to build fortifications and perform camp duties; many Northern officers refused to believe black troops would fight, and so they were often assigned
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