American Civil War

American Civil War

Introduction

African Americans had helped force emancipation by their decision to leave the plantations, so black leaders helped push into effect the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union army. At the beginning of the war, few people outside the abolitionist and free black communities believed in recruiting blacks. There was just too much prejudice. The racist thinking of the day considered blacks too cowardly and undisciplined for soldiering. And the notion of giving guns to blacks in order to kill whites even if those whites were traitors to the Union was anathema to the vast majority of northerners. But as the war ground on and casualties mounted the unthinkable became possible, then desirable.

On the other hand, from the moment southern guns fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, African Americans clamored to serve in the military. Unlike whites, blacks understood from the beginning that the war would ultimately decide the fate of American slavery. This, they believed, was their struggle. And, as Frederick Douglass understood, "once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, 'U.S.,' let him get an eagle on his buttons and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States." Indeed, in 19th-century America, citizenship was often defined by one's willingness to serve one's country in the military.

Politicians hesitated, fearing northern public opinion and potential racial conflict in the ranks of soldiers. But public opinion in the North was changing and changing fast. As the idea that the war was about abolition as opposed to simply preserving the Union began to sink in, more and more whites came to accept the idea that if blacks were going to benefit by the war, they ought to share in the fighting and the dying. New technologies including the grooved bore rifle that allowed for greater accuracy over long distances led to unprecedented carnage on the battlefield, as commanders were slow to adjust their tactics from older patterns of massed troop firing. Adding to the bloodshed was the recognition that the Civil War as a war of attrition. In other words, northern commanders were increasingly concluding that the only way to win the war was to grind down both southern armies and the South's ability to make war. Such a strategy required the North to sacrifice enormous numbers of soldiers and material, knowing that the region's greater population and resources would outlast those of the South.

Civil wars usually known as “war between the nations”, occurs when the equipped forces of a sovereign state and rebel organizations of that nation are in conflicts. There are two types of wars such as Revolutions and Secessionist. When rebels try to defeat and control existing government, is a result of Revolution Civil Wars. In Secessionist Civil Wars, rebels try to control the territory of the original nation by creating another independent nation state out of ...