The Civil War at 150

April 12, 2011 marked an anniversary of dubious distinction in American history. That date commemorated the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

Next to the founding of the American Republic in 1787, the Civil War is the most significant event in the history of the United States of America. As of this writing, it is the last war to have been fought on American soil. To this day, it remains America's bloodiest conflict, having killed almost as many military members and civilians in four years as were killed in all other of America's wars combined. Consider the following:

The Civil War's Legacy of Blood

CIVIL WAR (1861-1865)
(From All Causes - wounds in battle, disease, etc.; Figures Rounded)

Union Deaths: 362,000
Confederate Deaths: 258,000

Total Deaths, Civil War: 620,000

ALL OTHER U.S.WARS:
(From All Causes - wounds in battle, disease, etc.; Figures Rounded)

American Revolution (1775-1781): 4,435
War of 1812 (1812-1815): 2,260
Mexican War (1846-1848): 12,300
Indian Wars (1817-1900): 1,000 (est.)
Spanish-American War (1898): 2,400
World War I (1917-1918): 116,500
World War II (1941-1945): 405,400
Korean War (1950-1953): 54,300
Vietnam War (1964-1975): 58,200
Gulf war (1990-1991): 529
Global War on Terror (2001-Present) 6,000 (est. to 3/11)

Total Deaths, All Other U.S. Wars: 663,324

The Civil War: A Historical Overview

The Civil War began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina. Several batteries of Confederate artillery, under the command of General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, opened fire on Fort Sumter, thereby igniting the four-year conflict that changed forever the course of American history, geography, and society.

Before the Civil War, the United States were a loose union of states joined together by the Constitution, but riven by sectional conflict between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Some historians trace the seeds of the Civil War all the way back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. During that long hot summer, tensions seethed between southern delegates that wanted to preserve the institution of slavery and northern delegates that wanted to see the "peculiar institution" eventually abolished. During the seven decades following the Constitutional Convention, political tension between northern and southern states continued unabated, despite several attempts at compromise. By the 1850s, when several states, including Kansas and Nebraska, sought admission to the Union, sharp political divisions had graduated to violent confrontation in "Bleeding Kansas" and at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Outright war between North and South was becoming increasingly inevitable.

The breaking point came in the Presidential election of 1860. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the standard-bearer of the newly formed Republican Party, defeated Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and two other candidates to become the nation's 16^th President. Lincoln, perceived by Southerners as favoring the abolition of slavery, didn't get a single electoral vote from the southern bloc of states. Within two months of his election, seven states of the Deep South, including South Carolina, seceded from the Union. The stage was set for civil war.

The war that began in Charleston Harbor in 1861 ended four years later, almost to the day, in the front parlor of a farmhouse in Appomattox, Virginia. During those four years of war, over 3 million northerners and southerners answered the call to arms, either to preserve the American Union or to ensure its permanent dismemberment. Nearly 19 percent of those who served on both sides of the Civil War never returned from answering that call.

The Civil War's Lasting Legacy

The effects of the Civil War on the course of American history, geography, and society were profound. After the Civil War, the United States was a nation of states bound tightly in perpetual union forged by the crucible of war. Between 1865 and 1912, twelve states - the entire heartland of the nation - entered an American Union no longer riven by violent sectional divisiveness. As the nation continued its westward expansion, it also began flexing its industrial might.

But the Civil War also left a sorrowful legacy of political and societal ills in its wake. Racial segregation was institutionalized throughout the United States by the passage of "Jim Crow" and other discriminatory laws designed to ensure white supremacy and the oppression of African Americans and other non-white races. Another century would go by before the United States began efforts to ensure the equality of all people, regardless of race or color.

As we begin commemorating the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War in 2011, let us pause and reflect on the lasting legacy of that war. Let us resolve to put into action the words spoken by President Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1865, during his second inaugural address:

" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

SOURCES:

The Civil War: a Narrative, Volume 1 - Fort Sumter to Perryville, by Shelby Foote. (New York: Random House, 1958)

Battle Cry of Freedom, by James M. McPherson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.)

Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, by Richard Beeman. (New York: Random House, 2009.)

Battle of Fort Sumter - Wikipedia.com

America's Wars: Casualties and Veterans - Infoplease.com

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address - Bartleby.com