United States History between 1607 and 1876

The Civil War , fought from 1861 to 1865 , was much like the American Revolution , in that it was a pivotal moment in the history of America However , it was different in that , during the Civil War , brother fought against brother rather than uniting against a common enemy . Many factors contributed to the outbreak of the war , but the most important was the issue of slavery

In existence since the earliest days when America was little more than a group of colonies , slavery had now become a huge source of contention within the

country . On one side were the slaveholders , who believed it was their God-given right to own human beings , and treat them as property . They had convinced themselves that slaves were less than human , and therefore , were not privy to the same rights and freedoms as the whites

On the other hand were non-slaveholders . This particular group could be separated into smaller groups . There were those who did not own slaves because they did not have the funds to do so , but agreed wholeheartedly that blacks should be viewed as less than human . There were those who disagreed with the concept of owning another human being , but agreed that blacks were not equal to whites in any way . Finally , there were those who felt that slavery was an abomination , and it must be eradicated by any means necessary . In the end , slavery would begin to come to an only through the passing of a major act on the part of President Abraham Lincoln before the issue was dealt with in a definitive manner

When Lincoln became the president , his stance on the issue of slavery was a bit difficult to understand . He felt that slavery should remain as it was in the South , but that it should not be spread into new territories that would eventually become states . This viewpoint can be seen in the many times Lincoln expressed that his desire was not to end slavery , but simply to contain it where it already existed . Morally , he disagreed with slavery , but like many whites who felt slavery was immoral , he also believed there was no place in America for blacks once they were freed . Therefore , when midway into the war , he presented the Emancipation Proclamation , it was considered to be a radical action on his part

Initially , Lincoln was hesitant to include slavery as part of his list of war aims . He had been insisting from the start of the way that the issue at hand had nothing to do with slavery , but rather had to do with the fact that the South did not have legal rights to secede from the Union . Therefore , his primary goal for the outcome of the Civil War was to preserve the Union , which had been broken when the Southern states seceded in 1861

His hesitation also stemmed from his sensitivity to the popular aversion against abolitionism and the accusation that it was the cause of the war furthermore , he recognized this...