The United States Civil War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The United States Civil War - Essay Example Cultural and social historians felt that it was due to the differences between the civilizations and values. While revisionist historians believed that the issue was slavery.1 Historians do agree that the North wanted to embrace modernity thereby ending slavery while the South efforts were to preserve slavery and its agrarian way of life. Davis, the first president of the Confederate States and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States; the Union emphasizing strict compliance to the United States Constitution and support for the Union; the Democratic Party was divided into two parties, one representing the North and the other representing the South. Both believing that slavery ought to continue, however, the North thought the federal government had the right to prohibit slavery in territories. Although the Republican Party was anti-slavery, they did not advocate putting an end to slavery but wanted to prevent its expansion into territories that had not yet become states. And the Southern states seceded from the Union and established the Confederate of America when the federal government prohibited the expansion of slavery.2 In the midst of such chaos, why did the South lose the United States Civil War Ned Harrison, a writer in Greensboro, North Carolina, who specializes in military history, thinks the fundamental economic superiority of the North; a basic lack of a military strategy in the way the South fought the war; the Southerners unskilled performance in foreign affairs; the South's lack of a dominating civilian leader; the Confederate Constitution's over-emphasis on individuals' and states' rights and failure to stress the responsibilities of the individual or the state to the federal government and Abraham Lincoln were the reasons why the South lost the Civil war.3 Abraham Lincoln's role as president of the United States during the Civil War was that of a conservative revolutionary. His goal was to conserve the Union as the revolutionary heritage of the founding fathers. Lincoln, a strategist and war leader, was responsible for the Union victory. Lincoln, a superb leadership as president, commander-in-chief and head of the Republican Party, knew and understood the meaning of freedom, the limits of government power and individual liberty in time of crisis and the problems of wartime leadership. Determined, he liberated four million slaves, and overthrew the social and political order of the South.4 James M. McPerson, professor of history at Princeton University, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner of Battle Cry of Freedom, says the Union's extraordinary leadership was the reason why the South lost the Civil War. As the war progressed, Northern military leadership developed a rational strategy for victory which destroyed the Confederate armies and their resource of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation. The Union's military strategies on the battlefield completely demolished the Confederacy's ability to wage war. And the combined strategic leadership at the political level with Lincoln and the military level with Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan resulted in Northern victory. William C. Davis, former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated and author A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy, says the South lost because