Was the Civil War inevitable? Or could it have been avoided?

The Civil War was Inevitable

Introduction

Concerning the currents state of America, I would confidently argue that the civil war was necessary for the making of American history. It was a fight over humanitarian reasons seeking to determine freedom over uncertainties that deteriorated their social, cultural, and economic bonds. A civil war was inevitable because it followed more than just a crisis over sectional divide; it was centred on conflicting prejudice and principles that emancipated from their cultural and political differences.

Justification

According to Luraghi (1972), many northern state counties had established manufacturing and industrialization between the 1800s. They had adopted living in large cities and doing white-collar jobs compared to the southern people who had maintained their agrarian economic traditions. They relied more on black slaves in their fields to keep their economy at per. The wealthy southern state regained the ground using their wealth over the struggling northern states. These long conflicting economic differences led them to different opinions, interpretations, and generally invoked hatred leading to the civil war.

The creation of the constitution brought about uneven power distribution between the state government and the federal government. The northern states were gaining more power than the south, making the southern states feel like the federal government was taking away their powers and rights. The southern states decided to uphold their government over the federal one inciting a danger over their differences (Farber, 2003).

The United States needed to expand its territories to the west, and any country that joined the union had to shift powers between the two state governments. The southern wanted to take slavery to the west, but northern countries were committed to keeping their white labor in the west. In this regard, the joining states became members of the war by defending their side of interest.

According to Sheehan-Dean (2005), slavery was among the primary cause of civil war. The southern states had embraced the slave trade and engaging in human bondage. This was taken with criticism by the northern states terming it as wrong and evil. Leaders from the north were against slavery, similar to the constitution that prohibited slavery in and out of the union territories. This led to the creation of abolitionists, who opposed the existence and restricted the establishment of human bondage across the union territories. The slaveholding interests grasped dangers to the southern states requesting them to enter into a war.

Abraham Lincoln’s election as the president gave the full northern power over the southern states. This was a clear indication that the southern had lost their influence, power, and the voice to make any other move about and between the states. They did not involve themselves in the election. This incited the southern states to take the only choice that was remaining of embracing their own government and leaving the union.

Withdrawals of most southern states countries from the union to form the confederate states of America heightened the start of the war. The federal government’s work was to enforce the implementation of the state laws of all residents who reside in every state. Engaging in secession was against the constitution. It prompted Abraham Lincoln’s decision to send his troops to stop the withdrawal, negotiate, and take peace proceedings. With the states seceding, it led to the start of the war. Abraham Lincoln’s political negotiations failed, and war became the only option between the southern and northern states leading to thousands of deaths.  He formed a blockade along the southern coastlines declaring all the seceded countries guilty of breaking the international laws.

The political influence in the time of civil war was not avoidable as it based on power to all or nothing at all. The fight between the southern and the northern would have still existed in the sense of acquiring more power. The more one state received more power over the other states, the more it triggered danger towards the weaker states. It was impossible to maintain equal powers with the struggling industrialized northern states and the wealthy farmers from the southern states. The big cause for the war revolved around the sectional interests that made it hard for both northern and southern states to remain socially, economically, and politically to uphold peace.

Conclusion

The civil war remains unique and, as such important to the history of the United States of America as it provided solutions to the conflicting and contradicting information.  The need to fight for the people’s rights and equality closed the chapters of the hereditary ruling. It also put to an end sectional divide as well as an end to slavery, and thus the war was inevitable by all means.

Cited Works

Grant, S. M. (2012). A Concise History of the United States of America. Cambridge University Press.

Farber, D. A. (2003). Lincoln’s Constitution. University of Chicago Press.

Luraghi, R. (1972). The Civil War and the modernization of American Society: social structure and industrial revolution in the Old South before and during the war. Civil War History, 18(3), 230-250.

Reed, J. S. (1983). Southerners: The social psychology of sectionalism (Vol. 14). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

McClintock, R. (2008). Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession. University of North Carolina Press.

Sheehan-Dean, A. C. (2005). A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks. Civil War History, 51(3), 317-324.