Civil War Dbq Analysis

The Civil War was the bloodiest war the United States has ever fought - killing over 620,000 Americans and causing more destruction than any other war. Long standing conflicts and disagreements made the violent war seem inevitable years before it happened, and led to it becoming a major turning point in US history. Americans have struggled with sectionalism since the colonial days, as seen in the issue of slavery and states rights, and the passing of documents and compromises such as the Articles of Confederation in an attempt to unify the colonies. During the period around the Civil War, the universal idea of manifest destiny reignited sectionalism between states because of arguments over whether to admit new lands in the West as slave or
An example of disagreement over slavery can be seen in the Bleeding Kansas conflict, when Southerners committed voting fraud in order to have Kansas be admitted as a slave state. The conflict was seen by political figures in the North such as Charles Sumner as a violation of equal rights and the embodiment of the South’s “madness for Slavery” regardless of the Constitution (Source 4). When considering the point of view of documents which criticize the South’s actions on the topic of expanding slavery such as this one, it is important to note the bias of Northern politicians against the South and increasing opinions against slavery. Kansas was a new territory added to the United States at the time, one of the many territories that would cause a problem over whether to permit slavery or forbid it. In an attempt to resolve the clash over slavery, the Compromise of 1850 was created, giving populations in newly acquired territory the right to popular sovereignty - to vote for whether they wanted slavery or not (Source 1). In context, this would prove fatal and lead to the breaking of the Missouri Compromise line, and caused an even tighter rivalry between North and South over where to allow slavery. Slavery was so influential on the Civil War that even in the middle of the war, it was still
The Union had a much more developed and strong government and various technological advantages over the Confederacy. For example, the North had over triple the amount of factories that the South had, six times the workers in those factories, and over double the railroad mileage compared to the South (Source 5). Contextually, these advantages in manpower and technology in the North were long term consequences of the North taking advantage of advancements in technology and having a solidified government in comparison to the South, which stuck with a plantation model based on growing cotton and had little to no government after their secession from the Union. The North’s dominance over technology and manpower gave them a more stable base of resources going into the war than the South, which basically only had cotton and not enough food or manpower. The Union’s use of their technological power gave them the ability to win battles by a landslide and leave cities as large as Atlanta, Georgia completely leveled in the wake of military advancements such as General Sherman’s March to the Sea (Source 7). The photo of the destruction left by the Union army shows the capability of the technology that they possessed in comparison to the Confederacy, and how organized the Union army was because of their strong leadership. Contrastingly, Confederate leadership was