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The South during the Civil War South during the Civil War is a topic that has attracted a tremendous amount of historians. A lot of research has been done on this subject, and within the conceptual framework of this report we will elaborate on South during the Civil War. Certainly, one of the major points to be discussed here would be the differences between the North and the South, since because of those differences the Civil War actually started. We will elaborate on how exactly South was different, what views Southerners held on various issues, and why they decided to secede. Frazier's novel Cold Mountain will also be analyzed here, since it provides us with rather helpful information about South during the Civil War. The South, which was known as the Confederate States of America, seceded from the North, which was also known as the Union, for many different reasons.
The reason they wanted to succeed was because there were four decades of great sectional conflict between the two. Between the North and South there were deep economic, social, and political differences. The South wanted to become an independent nation. There were many reasons why the South wanted to succeed but the main reason had to do with the North's view on slavery. These disputes between the north and south led to the Civil War.
There were reasons other then slavery, that the South disagreed on and that persuaded them to succeed from the Union. The North favored a loose interpretation of the United States Constitution. They wanted to grant the federal government increased powers. The South wanted to reserve all undefined powers to the individual states. The North also wanted internal improvements sponsored by the federal government.
This was more roads, railroads, and canals. The South, on the other hand, did not want these projects to be done at all. Also the North wanted to develop a tariff. With a high tariff, it protected the Northern manufacturer. It was bad for the South because a high tariff would not let the south trade its cotton for foreign goods. (Pollard, p. 77) The main reason for the South's secession was the Slavery issue. The South wanted and relied on slaves while the North believed it was morally wrong.
The South was going to do anything they could to keep slaves. This was the issue that overshadowed all others. At this time the labor force in the South had about 4 million slaves. These slaves were very valuable to the slaveholding planter class.
They were a huge investment to Southerners and if taken away, could mean massive losses to everyone. Slaves were used in the South to help cultivate fields of tobacco, rice, and indigo, as well as many other jobs. The South needed more slaves at this time because they were now growing more cotton then ever due to the invention of the cotton gin. Cotton production with slaves jumped from 178, 000 bales in 1810 to over 3, 841, 000 bales in 1860. Within that time period of 50 years the number of slaves also rose from about 1, 190, 000 to over 4, 000, 000. (Pollard, p. 82) The plantation owners in the South had no reason to agree with Norths plans for abolishing slavery. Southerners compared it with the wage-slave system of the North.
They said that the slaves were better cared for then the free factory workers in the North. Southerners said that slave owners provided shelter, food, care, and regulation for a race unable to compete in the modern world without proper training. Many Southern preachers proclaimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible. But after the American Revolution slavery start to die the North, just as it was becoming more popular in the South.
By the time of 1804 seven of the northern most states had abolished slavery. During this time a surge of democratic reform swept the North and West. There were demands for political equality and economic and social advances. The Northerners goals were free public education, better salaries and working conditions for workers, rights for women, and better treatment for criminals.
The South felt these views were not important. All of these views eventually led to an attack on the slavery system in the South, and showed opposition to its spread into whatever new territories that were acquired. The South wanted to protect their states rights. In 1848 the Union acquired a huge piece of territory from Mexico. This opened new opportunities for the spread of slavery for Southerners. The distribution of these lands in small lots speeded the development of this region, but it was disliked from the South since it aided the free farmer rather than the slaveholding plantation owner.
So now Congress passed the Compromise Measures of 1850 during August of 1850. It dealt mainly with the question of whether slavery was to be allowed or prohibited in the regions acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican War. This compromise allowed abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia and admission of California as a free state. The last main conflict that led to succession was during the presidential election of 1860. The newly formed Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln on principles that opposed the further expansion of slavery. Now with Lincoln being elected the South really felt that expansionism was being threatened, and because expansion was vital to the survival of slavery they also felt their way of life was being threatened.
Because slavery was such an important part of Southern society, the South felt that they could not survive without it. Now they felt there was nothing more they could do. They were convinced that they should make a bid for independence by succeeding rather then face political encirclement. It was all described when a Southern man said "We have at last reached that point in our history when it is necessary for the South to withdraw from the Union. This has not been our seeking...
but we are bound to accept it for self-preservation. " (Pollard, p. 111) This was officially the end and now the South wanted to succeed. Lincoln said that succession was illegal and said that he intended to maintain federal possessions in the South. Southerners hoped the threat of succession would force acceptance of Southern demands, but it did not. Finally the day came on Dec. 20, 1860 when South Carolina adopted an ordinance of succession. (Pollard, p. 174) The other states to follow and succeed were: Mississippi on Jan 9, 1861, Florida on January 10, Alabama on Jan 11, Georgia on January 19, Louisiana on January 26, and Texas on February 1. On February 4 delegates from all these states met in Montgomery, Alabama where they drafted a constitution for the Confederate States of America. (Pollard, p. 176) This outraged the North and what was led to the Civil War. Many different efforts were made to save the Union and prevent a war.
James Buchanan believed the Constitution did not allow the North to take any action against the South. An effort was made on February 4 th by the Virginia Legislature who called a conference of the states at Washington D. C. Representatives were sent from 7 slave and 14 free states. An amendment was passed saying Congress could never interfere with slavery in the states. But it was not ratified by the necessary number of states and was forgotten when the Civil War began.
The existence of slavery was the central element of the conflict between the North and South. Other problems existed that led to succession but none were as big as the slavery issue. The only way to avoid the war was to abolish slavery but this could not be done because slavery is what kept the South running. But when the South seceded it was said by Abraham Lincoln "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. " (Pollard, p. 202) Because slavery formed two opposing societies, and slavery could never be abolished, the Civil War was inevitable. These were all the reasons why the South seceded from the Union and there was really no other way to avoid succession because the North and South had totally opposing views.
The novel Cold Mountain helps us a lot to understand the South during the Civil War. This novel chronicles the long journey home of a Civil War soldier, Inman, to Cold Mountain in North Carolina. The story begins in a military hospital, and Inman's neck wound, a long difficult-to-heal horizontal slice received in battle, is drawing flies. Inman is a moral man, and the brutality and killing he has witnessed on the battlefield lead him to leave the hospital AWOL and journey secretively, by foot, back to Ada, his love. The trip is perilous; Inman is subject not only to the difficulties of near starvation and a poorly healing wound, but also the cruelties of people he meets along the way. However, every so often, he is also succored by compassionate people, such as the goat woman who provides the cure for his neck wound, if not for the wounds inside.
Intertwined with Inman's story is Ada's: her preacher father dies of tuberculosis, leaving her utterly unable to provide for her own basic needs on the farm. Fortunately, a self-reliant young woman, Ruby, joins Ada on the farm, and helps transform both the farm and Ada. The book details the ways of nourishment: physical (precise descriptions of food, its paucity and preparation) and nonphysical (themes of love, generosity, intellectual curiosity, and spiritual questing underpin the book). Cold Mountain itself provides both types of nourishment by offering hope, goals, shelter, food and a place where love and forgiveness are possible despite the savagery of man.
Cruelty, pain, and deprivation are, however, ever-present realities in the book: many wounds, killings, and deaths are described. These descriptions are not gratuitous, but rather elicit continued reflection on the human condition. For instance: "In his Inman's experience, great wounds sometimes healed, small sometimes festered. Any wound might heal on the skin side but keep burrowing inward to a man's core until it ate him up. The why of it, like much in life, offered little access to logic. " (Frazier p. 327) One wonders how the war-torn country could ever heal its wounds, its horizontal slice.
The book opens with a Confederate soldier waking to the sound and touch of flies in the hospital ward where he has long lain gravely injured. Confined to what he sees framed in a nearby window, Inman's thoughts carry him back to battlefields where "the Federals crowded up behind them in such numbers that they looked like the long blue shadows of houses at sunrise. " (Frazier, p. 118) Inman seeks solace in memories of home, where "mornings on the high bald were crisp, with fog lying in the valleys so that the peaks rose from it disconnected like steep blue islands scattered across a pale sea. " (Frazier, p. 121) Fundamentally changed by the harm he's seen men perpetuate on their brothers, Inman soon deserts, setting out on foot toward Cold Mountain and Ada, the woman he loves. Beginning with the summer of 1864, Cold Mountain chronicles approximately six months in the lives of Inman and Ada. Their personal journeys -- - Inman's physical one through the southern Blue Ridge Mountains and Ada's personal one from helplessness to self-sufficiency -- - run parallel to each other.
Frazier plays out their travails in alternating chapters of such even and dispassionate prose that the most ordinary description hits all the harder for its matter-of-fact tone: .".. in the early pale light his first true vision was of some foul variety of brown flatland viper sliding flabby and turd like from the roadway into a thick bed of chickweed. " (Frazier, p. 160) Battling hunger, fatigue, nature, and a Home Guard exacting swift justice to every unlucky "outlier" captured, Inman plods westward toward Cold Mountain. Under skies "the color of hammered pewter" and along rivers that bring to mind trout "bright and firm as shavings from a bar of silver, " Inman encounters a self-styled preacher who'd kill to hide the lesser sin of lust; slatternly sisters who'd rather rut than eat; a widow, a baby, and a hog left to the caprice of renegade Federals; and a goat woman dispensing cheese and healing. Every delay along the way gives us insight into what the Civil War truly wrought, but for Inman "who hated most moving retrograde to his desires... every step east he trod was bitter as backsliding. " (Frazier, p. 172) Meanwhile, left alone and penniless by her father's death, Ada learns how to manage the farm she's held at arm's length. A young woman, Ruby, comes to work the land with Ada, saying, ."..
if I'm to help you here, it's with both us knowing that everybody empties their own night jar. " (Frazier, p. 209) Ruby forces Ada off the porch rocker and into the fields. Through days of weeding, planting, and butchering, the book-wise Ada becomes "increasingly covetous of Ruby's learning in the ways living things inhabited this particular place. " (Frazier, p. 212) Different in so many ways, Ruby and Ada slowly forge a singular friendship that's a delight to witness. All this is unknown and far from Inman as he walks on. While Ada and Ruby toil for the present and plan hopefully for the future, the dispirited Inman is more inclined to reflect: "He had long since decided there was little usefulness in speculating much on what a day will bring. It led a person to the equal errors of being either dreadful or hopeful. " () And this is what Frazier ultimately doles out -- - equal measures of dread and hope.
Cold Mountain is the story of two parallel journeys: Inman's physical trek across the American landscape and Ada's internal odyssey toward an understanding of herself. What makes Frazier's novel so satisfying is the depth of detail surrounding both journeys as well as his description of Civil War South. Frazier based this story on family history, and in the characters of Inman and Ada he has paid a rich compliment to their historical counterparts. Frazier's novel, as well as research conducted by numerous historians, is a lot of help when one tries to learn about the South during the Civil War. Certainly, South was quite different from the North, and those differences discussed in this report played a fundamental role in the beginning of the Civil War. Southern lifestyles were different from Northern, and people themselves were different to an extent that they could not find a Compromise and had to go to war with each other.
Words Count: 2, 441. Bibliography Frazier, C. Cold Mountain. New York: Random House, 1997. Pollard, E.
A. A Southern History of the War. New York: Harper Collins, 1985.
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Research essay sample on The South During Civil War
