Do you think Lincoln started the Civil War?

Question

I mean if he was such a great man of peace, he could have resigned, saying i will do whatever is necessity to end this problem. he knew if he tried to resupply and send additional troops to Fort Sumter, that the South would fire on them, then the slave issue, i don't understand, how can you fight a war for almost 2 years, and then decide why your fighting it, i think Lincoln knew that England and France were close to coming into the war on the side o f the South and knew he could not win the war, if that happened, so, the only thing he could do to stop them from entering the war , was to ban slavery, knowing that neither country would enter the war under such circumstances. give me your thoughts on this

Answer 1

Slavery did need to be ended...but also Lincoln did not have to invade the South and force it back into the Union...many historians feel that slavery would have probably ended on it's own in about 10 years from the beginning of the war...

the reason for this is that many Southern slave owners saw how the Northern businesses were using "legalized slavery"...you know they would pay an employee $15 a month, but they had to pay to live in their housing and could only shop in their stores...so they got all their money back...

According to the Constitution the South had every right to secede from the Union, because the Federal Government was very overbearing and did not want the states to govern themselves...(The Constitution was set up to have a weak Federal Government and strong State governments...but the Federal got power hungry, and you can see the result of that today...) The main cause of the Civil War was, like most wars, economic...the North put tariffs on exports, but not on imports...this was to force the raw materiel producing South to trade with the North, instead of trading with Europe...the South made more money trading with Europe than the North...in my opinion the Civil War was a illegal war..(People try to say that the war we are involved in now is illegal...the Civil War really was...) they FORCED the South back into the Union...so in my mind Lincoln is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths of Americans on both sides and the riff that still kind of exisits between the North and South now...

The only good thing that came out of the war was freeing the Slaves...for which he is known now as a great President...but during his time he was hated 10 times more than Bush is now...this is all fact...

Answer 2

Lincoln's primary goal, I think, was to keep the Union together. The slavery issue was part of it but not the major part; preserving the Union was the aim. To some degree, the freeing of the slaves, while important and necessary by the Emancipation Proclamation was a bit of a red herring. After suffering from a passel of totally inept commanders (until Grant) the freeing of the slaves served as a rallying point for a Northern population that was war weary.

I think if Lee had won in Gettsburg (he should have gone around to the right like Longstreet wanted!), England may have intervened to help the South. If nothing else, England could have broken up the blockaded ports and allowed weapons and money to flow into the South.

However, I think the North would win. England's meddling would have simply prolonged a horrible war.

Answer 3

The first major land battle was fought at Bull Run in Virginia in 1861. The men who were soldiers in these armies were volunteers who chose to go to war. They wanted to win a quick victory but instead found that there was a lot of marching and drill, living outdoors, disease, bad weather, and boredom. Where did all the soldiers who fought at Gettysburg come from? Why did they choose to go to war? How were the armies different? How were they so much alike? Just who were "Billy Yank" and "Johnny Reb"?

1863 was the most critical year of the Civil War and for the hopes of the Confederacy. For two years, the Union and Confederate armies in the east battled with each other in Virginia and in Maryland. Confederate General Robert E. Lee advised Confederate president Jefferson Davis that the time was right to invade the North that summer. In June, almost 78,000 Confederates made their way northward into Pennsylvania with the support of southern leaders filled with high hopes that another victory would ensure independence for the South. Their hopes were dashed at the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place during the first three days of July 1863.
After the fighting had ended, a portion of the battlefield was purchased as a burial ground for the fallen Union soldiers. The dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery in November 1863 was a very special occasion and Gettysburg had not witnessed such an invasion of people since the battle. They all came to see the dedication and the special guest who had been asked to speak.

Answer 4

The feelings that the south side had in the year 1860 had been building up for a century before all of this. With Lincoln being the first president under a new political party (republican) the first two states seceded immediately. The remaining states were all speaking and voting themselves. One of the Confederate heroes was a cadet at West Point, he was writing home to Alabama and asking what he should do. No, I do not feel that it was Lincoln that got us into the Civil War, He was the man elected when the ill feelings between both sides finally collapsed and he had to deal with it.

Answer 5

To answer your initial question, no. The war was just about carved in stone long before the presidential elections of 1860. South Carolina stated that if Lincoln won the election, they would secede from the Union. Lincoln won, and on Dec 12, 1860 South Carolina started the ball rolling by seceding as promised.

Lincoln's initial reason for fighting the war was to preserve the Union. However, after two years of hard fighting in which the Northern forces were being handed defeat after defeat by the Confederate forces, popular opinion in the North for continuing the warwas fast eroding to the point that many prominent Northern newspapers were openly calling for Lincoln to approach Davis and talk peace. Lincoln knew that he had to do something to get public opinion back on his side; he also knew that the abolition of slavery would give a moral cause to the war that would unite the Northern people behind him. So he chose to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which banned slavery in the South. In actuality, the EP did not completely outlaw slavery because it only applied to "those states currently in rebellion against the United States;" the issue of slavery in the Northern states and the territories was not addressed. Slavery was not made illegal until December, 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment (which the Southern states were REQUIRED to ratify if they wanted to be re-admitted to the Union).

Lincoln's ploy worked, and for this reason he has been hailed as the "Great Emancipator" ever since...which is nothing but a lie. During a debate before the war, when asked about slavery and the possibility of the Southern states seceding if it was abolished, Lincoln said, "If I could preserve the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do it. If I could preserve the Union by freeing some of the slaves, I would do it; and if I could preserve the Union by freeing all of the slaves, I would do it." Lincoln shared the common opinion of slaves by white people of that time - he thought and wrote in a letter that the black man would never be the physical or mental equal of the white man, and in the early 1800's supported an organization called the American Colonization Society. This was an organization that shipped freed slaves back to Africa and deposited them in a colony which later became Liberia.

Lincoln's image as the "Great Emancipator" is nothing but a lie.

He also illegally suspended the writ of habeus corpus at the beginning of the war and used it liberally to imprison and silence the more outspoken opponents of the Northern war. He was later censured by Congress for this, but that didn't happen until after the war was over and he was dead.

Lincoln was a shrewd politician, and he was by no means the saint that history - which was written by the winners, meaning the North - paints him to be.

Answer 6

that is a sophisticated difficulty. a number of it grow to be over a stability of potential contained in the Congress between slave and loose states. Lincoln did not decide on slavery to exist in any new territories added to the U. S. The South felt he threatened its "weird and wonderful corporation" and the perception of states' rights. at the same time as the election consequences got here in, South Carolina seceded, placing off the first images of the Civil conflict at the same time as conflict ships were despatched all the way down to guard a Union military base at fort Sumter, S.C. at the same time as images were fired via the U.S. in a southern state, different states began seceding.

Answer 7

Their was a reason for the war before slaves, half the states committed treason and tried to break away from the union. Lincoln did not start the Civil War the constitutional convention at Montgomery did when the broke from the Union and named Jefferson Davis as their president

Answer 8

slavery needed to be stopped