Paper Topic:

o How and why is the Civil War a second Revolution?

The American Civil War was the most important event in all of American History . Never before in American history had there been so much at stake at one time . Great men emerged out of that war since great men and a great country cannot emerge , unless they are first tested by a great struggle . Never before in American history , had the will and future of America been tested to such a degree . Some historians could have pointed out that from the start of the war in 1861 until right before the battle of

Anita in September 1862 the war was being fought over state 's rights vs . the preservation of the union and the desire to contain the spread of slavery . Slavery had been the issue in American politics in the years leading up to the civil war . The Kansas Nebraska Act , the Dred Scott Decision , the formation of the Republican Party in 1854 , all pointed to the divisive issue of slavery and how it was splitting the country However , Abraham Lincoln , in his famous debated for the Senate seat of Illinois in 1858 reassured his opponent Stephen Douglas and the country that he was not an abolitionist and that if he could preserve the Union by only containing the spread of slavery , he would do that , but that the country should not hope to remain half slave and half free . Burns , Ken The Civil War . Boston : PBS Productions 1989 Lincoln won the Republican election because he was a moderate on the issue of slavery . However with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation after the Union victory at Anita , the war would forever be seen as the second American Revolution

With the election of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th President of the United States , the powder keg that had been the issue over slavery erupted with the secession of South Carolina on December 20 , 1860 and the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April of 1861 . Commanger , Henry Steele . Documents of American History . New York : Century Publishers 1947

. 89 The majority of southerners , many of whom had not the money to even contemplating owning even one slave , was rebelling against the assault the federal government , in their minds , had made on their state 's rights a right that they had held as sacred since Thomas Jefferson made the same impassioned plea towards such a balance of power . The question of slavery had been on the forefront of the country 's beliefs since the signing of the Constitution , yet the issue was sidestepped due to its controversial nature . Thomas Jefferson offered legislation during the Constitutional Congress which would have forbade slavery but the southern states would not vote for such a Constitution and the issue was abandoned at that time . However , in the Declaration of Independence , Jefferson wrote : We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are created equal . Endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights , that among them is life liberty and the pursuit of happiness...

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