CIVIL WAR

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The American Civil War began on April the 12th, 1861.
The main reasons for it was that Union (the North part of United States) wanted the south (Later Confederate States of America) to stay with the Union as a single country. Thins since the south states didn’t want to stay in the Union if Abraham Lincoln became president. Anyway, he did. The lawyer Abraham Lincoln became the president of United States and the south left. Of course you cannot just leave a country whenever you feel like it and this wasn’t an exception. The south states got together and became the Confederate States of America. One of their greatest desires was to become independent. The Confederates also had some thing that became quite important or “big” during the war. This thing was slavery. The Confederate States used to ship over slaves from Africa to work for them. And the Africans were and usually are colored, and just like that the discrimination had begun as well. “Any poor white person meant more than a colored.” This was something that the Union wanted to change to. So now we have two reasons: Independence and slavery.


The Confederates got their own president on February the 9th. His name was Jefferson Davis and he was the first, only and last president of those states. The war itself began on April the 12th. It was in South Carolina, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, which was one of the last forts in the Confederate States but belonging to the Union. This was also one of the reasons why Lincoln wouldn’t let it go just like that. Even though, he lost, and the Confederates won. The Civil War had begun.


A few days after the attack against Fort Sumter the state Virginia, from the Union, refused to send soldiers of any kind to the Confederate states and left the Union to join the Confederates. As a reward the Confederate’s capital got changed, the new capital became Richmond, in Virginia. Five weeks later some other states came too, these states didn’t get awarded like that but the joined the Confederates who were just growing. These states were Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee.


During the Civil War

Now the Confederate States of America were quite big. And since the United States didn’t have too many states to get rid of, there were some difficulties. The Union fought well to keep their eleven states from leaving. At the same while the Confederates were fighting almost that well to stop them. There were lots, and lots of different attacks all over the country that all were big losses. During one of these twenty-six thousand people, or soldiers were hurt in some way. They were killed, injured or missing. The different states all had huge armies. Huge! The Union had an army with two – three million men while the Confederates had their army with more than a million soldiers. Only the numbers are enough to convince almost anyone who the winner was. It is said that the Confederates general Lee was very good and that he was one of the reasons that South could keep going for so long.

One of the tactics the Union used was to send ships over to South to stop the Confederates from sending cotton to other countries. This was, of course, a success. This made its difference and the Confederates had some issues while trying to transport their cotton. One of America’s first attacks of “fights” between these kinds of ships actually happened back then, during that time. The Union army actually tried to cut the Confederate States into two pieces once. You could say that they did almost anything to succeed, especially considering their actions.

The Confederate States of America were:

1. Alabama Montgomery
2. Arkansas Washington
3. Florida Tallahassee
4. Georgia Milledgeville (Macon)
5. Louisiana Opelousas
6. Mississippi Jackson
7. North Carolina Raleigh
8. South Carolina Columbia
9. Tennessee Nashville
10. Texas Austin
11. Virginia Richmond


The end of the Civil War

To actually say the exact date of the end is, according to me, too risky, this since there is not only one date, but several different ones, and since I wasn’t there to judge, I’ll take the ones that convinced me. One of those dates is on April the 9th. This one’s confirmed by three completely different sources. April the 9th, in 1865, was the day General Lee gave up. Since he was the main person in the Confederate’s army, he was also the person the entire thing depended on. It was said that the only reason the Confederates held on for that long was thanks to him. But the possibility for the Confederate States to win was still very small, considering the size of their army.
The Confederates:
Soldiers: 1 064 000
Killed: 258 000
Injured: More than 137 000

The Union:
Soldiers: 2 200 000 – 2 800 000
Killed: 360 000
Injured: 275 200
One other date is on November the 4th, when the last Confederate force surrenders in Liverpool, England. There is one more date or month, rather, worth mentioning: May 1865. May was the month when all the remaining confederate forces surrendered. Of all the states in the Confederates, Georgia was the last one re-uniting to the Union. Luckily the dates all are in 1865, and the year can be confirmed for sure.

The American Civil War didn’t just affect the United States, but also the rest of the world. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln didn’t live too long to enjoy the happiness of the victory long enough. Just a couple of days after the Union had won, the president was watching a play, when he got shot and died, after several hours of unconsciousness. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, just got imprisoned, and released after a while. He actually sold some of his belongings to his former slave Ben Montgomery. Since the Union won, the Confederate states had to stop any kind of slavery, and that affected their economy quite much.


Things that happened after the war

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who fought for the civil rights. He was born on January the 15th in 1929. He was an educated reverend. In 1957 he started “Southern Christian Leadership Conference”. It was some kind of organisation that worked for the “human rights” or civil rights. He had to do this since the Civil War didn’t actually change the whites’ thoughts about the colored former slaves. Even then, almost a hundred years later, the colored ones had a tough life in the United States. That was why Martin Luther, who was black himself, fought for just that. He held lots of different demonstrations and that king of things and his work wasn’t unappreciated. You could almost say that he was doing the same thing as the Union during the Civil War. The thing with Martin was that he, at the tender age of twenty – thirty, put almost all his life on this case. He was a fighter. In 1963 he took two hundred thousand people with himself to Washington and held the speech “I have a dream”. He went there to require same rights for both blacks and whites. Martin did lots of things and for that he got a reward, the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1868, shortly before one of his demonstrations in Tennessee. Now he is celebrated the third Monday of January each year.

My thoughts

It’s hard to imagine how it could have been if this war hadn’t begun or if Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t fight for his, and every other colored person’s, rights. Though, I do know that things would have been a lot different than now. Even though, these things like discrimination and looking down to others, isn’t that unusual. Even if i...