Civil War Essay

In order to have the Civil War, there were events that led up to it. First, the
Anaconda Plan was one of the main factors. The Anaconda Plan was when President

Lincoln and General Winfield Scott made a blockade of southern ports and took control

of the Mississippi River so they could “squeeze” in on the south from the east and west

and defeat them. In addition, there was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was a law that

established Kansas and Nebraska as territories with popular sovereignty. Another

example of problems in territories was the Missouri Compromise, which admitted

Missouri and Maine as a free state while setting a line at Missouri’s southern border

where all Louisiana Purchase territory would be free. Finally, there was the March to the

sea, which was when the war was starting to come along.


One of the most important activities soldiers did was write home letters. Writing

letters was a way a way that soldiers could express their feelings and what they were

going through being in the war. Also, writing letters was a way for soldiers to relieve

their stress and it also gave them great joy, especially when their family members would

write them back. Soldiers also wrote letters so that people that weren’t in the war could

be updated with what’s going on during the fight. One excerpt from a letter from Newton

Scott of Co A 36th Iowa Infantry says: “To Miss Hannah Cone I will inform you with Pleasure that I am well at the Present time & I Hope that when this reaches you that it

many find you well I can tell you that the Boys are Generaly Well at the Present & in verry Good Spirits….. But anough of that We arrived at St. Louis about 2 oclock on the morning of the 26th inst We was most all Sound asleep next morning at daylight We went up on Deck & we considerble that we never See Before the Steam Boats was up & down the River Wharf as far as we could See…..Well Miss Han I will tell you that I & Will Has written about a dozen letters Since we left Home & Recd. But 2 or 3 letters This is the 2d. one that I have Writen to you & Recd. No Answer”. This letter, written November 30, 1862, shows that soldiers enjoy writing to their families as well as their families writing back to them.



A key factor that led to the war was the Missouri Compromise, which was made
in 1820. This compromise banned slavery from much of the Louisiana Territory, while keeping the balance of power between slave and Free states in the Senate. This compromise broke the ‘deadlock’ in the Senate, but no one liked this. People from the North were furious because of the ban of slavery in the Louisiana Territory.

Another key factor that led to the war was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act was made in 1854 and it “opened Kansas and Nebraska to settlement under the banner of popular sovereignty. Kansas erupted in violence as proslavery and antislavery settlers battled for control of the territory” (History Alive p.115). The Kansas-Nebraska Act made Northerners upset. They thought the Missouri Compromise put the almost all of the Great Plains “off-limits” to slavery. A lot of the Northerners were scared that slavery would spread across the country, so to prevent it from happening, antislavery activist and settlers came together to create a new political party in 1854, which was the new
Republican Party took a stand against the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas- Nebraska Act (p.111 History Alive). One of the big events that led to the war was the Election of 1860. This was when Abraham Lincoln, a republican candidate won the election with most of his votes being from minorities. Seeing that how people were scared that Republicans would come between slavery, a lot of slave states seceded. On April 10, 1861, Southern forces attacked Fort Sumter, which began the Civil War (p. 115 History Alive).
During the war, there was a strategy that was sure to win the war. After the fight in Bull Run, President Lincoln saw he needed to conceive a plan for a war that was not going to be short. So, he and General Winfield made a plan which was to “surround the South and squeeze it to death, like an anaconda snake crushing its prey”. In order for this plan to prevail, the Union had to set up a line of ships that would stop ship traffic from coming in and out of the South, called a naval blockade. The blockade kept the South from having Europe trade cotton for supplies that would be needed in the war. Then, the Union navy captivated the Mississippi River, which separated Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas from the rest of the South. After that, the Union went east and conquered the Deep South. Lastly, the Union forces invaded Virginia and “lop off the enemy’s head, in
this case the Confederate capital of Richmond (p.118 History Alive 10.2 four Long Years of War). There were a lot of events going on during the war. For example, the
Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation, which was made in 1863 by President Lincoln, was a proclamation freeing all slaves in the rebellious states (History Alive, p.131). Even though Lincoln made this proclamation, this did not give freedom for most slaves until the end of the war.

Not only did men attribute to the war, women contributed to the war. They had supplies and were soldiers, spies, medical personnel, and farm and factory workers. One of the women Angelica Church wrote a letter home to her brother, Philip J. Schuyler on July 11, 1804. She wrote to him saying that General Hamilton was wounded by “that wretch Burt” (Letters from the War- the Cause, p.25). Also, Confederate nurse, Kate Cumming wrote her about feelings towards the conditions of the war. She said that it was “Nothing that I had ever heard or read had given me the faintest idea of the horrors witnessed here...The men are lying all over the house… just as they were brought in from the battlefield… We had to walk, and when we give the men anything kneel, in blood and water, but we think nothing of it”.

Another important document that President Lincoln made was the Gettysburg Address. This document was a dedication of a cemetery where men from the Battle of Gettysburg. In this document, Lincoln told the Union that fighting to preserve a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. It was then when Lincoln made a statement concerning the nation saying that from the war, there would be a “new birth of freedom”. After losing at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the Southerners had to defend their land, even though there was “dwindling resources”. In order for the Confederates to give up, General Grant conformed of a policy that’s known as the total war, which was a call for doing whatever was needed in order to undermine of the enemy was able to fight. But in order to do so, General Grant had to make a very strong plan; he needed to lead his forces to Virginia in order to come between General Lee’s army and take the Confederate capital of Richmond. During this time, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman waged a “campaign of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas” (p.121 History Alive).

Next, there was Sherman’s March to the Sea. This march was when “the Union won the war in 1865 after General William T. Sherman waged total war across Georgia and General Ulysses s. Grant captured Richmond Virginia. During this march, Sherman’s troops stole money from houses, burned fields, and killed livestock. Then after taking the port of Savannah, Georgia, Gen. Sherman turned back north and went through the Carolinas. While Gen. Sherman took control of the war, Grant and Lee were trapped in a combat in Virginia. Even though they lost many fights, Grant still fought in Richmond; and on April 3, 1865 he captured the capital, which gave Lee no other choice but to surrender (p.121 History Alive).

One of the major turning points in the war and in history was when the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was formed. This was a unit of all African-American soldiers. On July 18, 1863, the regiment “stormed the Confederate defenses at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. But, not all went as planned. In result, more than forty percent of the regiment was killed. In a newspaper, a journalist said that “two hundred thousand troops for whom it was a pioneer [first experience] would never have put in the field”. Even though this regiment didn’t prevail, there were other black regiments that fought. Most of the units were freedmen, which are freed slaves, in the Confederate Army, which includes the 1st South Carolina Volunteers and also, the 1st and the 3rd Louisiana regiments. After seeing how great these troops were fighting, especially in the Louisiana battle, one white officer wrote that “you have no idea my prejudices with regard to negro troops have been dispelled… [They] behaved magnificently and fought splendidly… They are far superior in discipline to the white troops, and just as brave.”

The Civil War was not a quick war- it was very long and deadly. Southern “writer and author of three-volume history of the Civil War” Shelby Foote was asked “How did the war change us and what did we become?” He responded by saying that “the Civil War was one of those watershed things…The nation had come face-to-face with a dreadful tragedy and we reacted the way a family would do with a dreadful tragedy….And yet that’s what made us a nation.” This shows that not everyone was displeased with the war. Most people thought that the way was senseless but others, like Shelby Foote thought it was great and that it pulled our nation together and made us closer than we were before.