American History The Civil War - 1138 Words

War makes us what we are. It changes our lives and makes our past into the future. One of the most important events in American history was the Civil War (1861 to 1865). The Civil War changed thousands of lives and our nation. At the beginning the Civil War, it divided our country but at the end of the Civil War, it brought our country back together recreating the United States. â€Å"But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads†-Shelby Foote. This quote is right; the Civil War defines our nation as a country based on Independence and freedom. Our country could not be what it is today, without us going through the†¦show more content†¦The Civil War was caused by Sectionalism. It was a War with many battles. Document D says that, â€Å"Now everybody knew at the time that it was of an unbalanced mind, and that the United States of America had no north, no south, no east, no west.† This document is telling us that we had no direction to go, we were lost. â€Å"He began to preach the strange doctrine of there being such a thing. He began to have followers.† It was not until we went through many crossroads, that we had directions. We started having a future and we started to know who we were. One of the crossroads our nation had to go through was succession. When President Lincoln was elected as president of the United States seven southern states seceded from the Union. After he was inaugurated as the 16th president, four more seceded. Many of the states that seceded thought they were losing control of the Federal Government and that soon the Federal Government was going to outlaw slavery. In Document B, it says that, ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, free. The Southern states knew that since Abraham Lincoln was president, slavery would not be able to spread. South Carolina was the first one to succeed from the Union. As shown in Document B, â€Å"On the 4th day of