American Civil War Turning Point Analysis

The American Civil War was a grave turning point in the history of North America. It was a conflict that pitted the Northern states of the American union against the Southern states. The war raged for four years, from 1861 to 1865, and was marked by some of the fiercest military campaigns in modern history. The civil war was a terrible rift in our nation, fought between the northern states, known as the union, and the southern states, known as the Confederate States of America. The people’s opinions were so divided over the issues of the civil war. Eventually, the south succumbed to the north and surrendered on April 9th, 1865 but not before the war had caused 618,000 deaths. This horrible not only fought because of the issue of slavery but
Several compromises were made in order to avoid tensions rising such as the Missouri Compromise. By the 1850s compromise no longer seemed possible. The Democrats had become a party increasingly rooted in the Southern states, with the Northern political scene in a state of disarray. Out of this turmoil, emerged the Grand Old Party, also called Republican Party, in 1854. However, the repeal of act by the Kansas-Nebraska act but things remain unstable. Tensions would rise again when we acquired the new territories from Mexico. For several years it caused tensions with the South wanting slavery and the North opposed to it. Eventually the Compromise of 1850 would quell the tensions. The Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Acts were very advantageous to the South. In both pieces of legislation the south gained things that would aid them in their campaign to expand slavery. The advantages the south included a stronger fugitive slave law, the possibility for slavery to exist in the remaining part of the Mexican Cession, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the eventual plan to build the Southern Pacific Railroad. Thousands of proslavery Missourians crossed the state line into Kansas when they learned that popular sovereignty would determine the fate of slavery. They grabbed as much land as they could and established dozens of small towns. These “border ruffians”
The two new parties formed were the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats. This election was the final event that caused the South to leave the Union which eventually led to the Civil War. On presidential election, Lincoln did very well in the northern states, and though he garnered less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationwide, he won a landslide victory in the electoral college. Even if the Democratic Party had not parted, it is likely Lincoln still would have won due to his strength in states heavy with electoral votes. Lincoln did not carry any southern states. The issue of secession was being talked about even before the 1860 election, and Lincoln's election intensified the move in the South to split with the Union. And when Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, it seemed obvious that the nation was on an directed path toward war. Indeed, the Civil War began the next month with the attack on Fort