Southern Problem In Fact The North example essay topic

I agree with the idea that the North had won the Civil War before it began to the extent of Lincoln's conservative political stands. Trying to receive the favor of the South while winning in the North would require Lincoln to take neutral stands in heated political issues like slavery. It wasn't really wan by the North until he broke away from these stands to enact the Emancipation Proclamation and turn the tides of war in favor of the North. "This Lincoln always publicly condemned the abolitionists who fought slavery by extra constitutional means - and condemned also the mobs who deprived them of their right of free speech and free press".

(Hofstadter, Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth) Other than that, the North had the upper hand in nearly all aspects that really mattered in times of war. With this information it is clear that without Lincoln's conservative political stands a "Quick War" would have been much more realistic. Either way, the North had won the Civil War before it began. While the North thought about attacking and invading, the South thought about defending and causing attrition. As the Civil War came underway the South's military, smaller than the North's, would take heavy blows from the decisions of the Confederacy. First of all they knew that if all their plantation owners fought in the war, their crops would possibly die out or not produce as much.

To combat this problem they decided in the Conscription law that if someone had twenty or more slaves, they didn't have to fight in the war. This caused the price of slaves to increase and caused crops from small slave holding plantations and yeoman farmers to do terrible. Since most Southerners fell into that category, the South would really feel the damage. Also the Impressment Act would take food from farmers to help feed the armies. This would demoralize the small Southern farmers and cause desertions, poor riots and ultimately put a negative face on the new confederacy.

These internal divisions weren't only a Southern problem, in fact the North had bitter divisions over conscription, taxes, suspension of habeas corpus, martial law and emancipation. "If anything, the opposition was more powerful and effective in the North than in the South". (Why Did the Confederacy Lose? , pg 120) However the powerful opposition in the North was not as crucial in sharply decreasing support. The Southern yeomen farmers who originally supported and fought for the Confederacy were alienated over time because of inflation, food shortages, high taxes and the idea that they were fighting to protect slavery. It would be like a baseball team fighting to protect their right to play with footballs. The South's dominating strategy in winning the civil war was attrition.

They believed they could wear down the political will of the North if they held out long enough to make the Northerners tired and question value of the means to achieve the ends. Military stalemates, guerilla war tactics and inconclusive battles would help the South achieve this goal. "Confederate armies did not have to invade and conquer the North: they needed only to hold out long enough to force the North to the conclusion that the price of conquering the South and annihilating its armies was too high, as Britain had concluded in 1781 and as the United States concluded... ".

(Why Did the Confederacy Lose? , pg 117) The South really enjoyed McClellan's performance in the Southern theatre with his tendency to retreat when he could have won. This was another helpful hand the South would need to cause attrition. In response, Lincoln knew he had to do two things to prevent attrition and win the war more quickly. He needed to fire McClellan, and shift the theme of the war in the view of the North so that it would not lose its thunder. He did this by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and converting the war for unionism into the war for morality.

The wave of support behind the moral war from the North was a blow to the hopes of attrition that the South depended on so much. Slavery was a curse to the Southern war effort. The South could not win this war alone, they knew they needed the support of the British, and since the South supplied most of their cotton, it only seemed reasonable that they would be supported. However this would not work first of all because the British were anti-slavery. The South had no means of negotiation because of the earlier cotton surplus, making cotton in Britain sustainable without Southern importation for the next couple years.

The British would then start relying on Egypt for cotton, completely dashing all Southern hopes of having British support. Slavery once again proved itself as a Southern curse that would not let them win the Civil War. Many Southerners felt guilty about fighting to preserve slavery and doubted the confederate cause. .".. the "guilt" thesis - the suggestion that many Southern whites felt moral qualms about slavery which undermined their will to win a war fought to preserve slavery. The South, wrote historian Kenneth M. Stamps, suffered from a "weakness of morale" caused by "widespread doubts and apprehensions about the validity of the Confederate cause". (Why Did the Confederacy Lose? , pg 127) Southerners who felt guilty in this way would feel better about defeat and see it as a way to get rid of the moral burden of slavery. The conservative stands Lincoln originally held were broken with the Emancipation Proclamation, causing a massive internal struggle in the South to bring them down.

This is why the North had already won to the extent of Lincoln's conservative political stands. "Having taken an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution, which protected slavery, "I did not consider that I had a right to touch the 'State' institution of 'Slavery' until all other measures for restoring the Union had failed... ". (Who Freed The Slaves, pg 203) The attrition strategy was halted with the mental conversion of the war being a moral war and the internal divisions in the South would finally clinch victory for the North. However all other advantages were possessed by the North and therefore the North had won the Civil War before it began to the extent of Lincoln's conservative political stands. source: Myself... after reading The Enduring Vision - American History textbook.