CIVIL WAR HIGHLIGHTS POLITICS OF THE WAR 1861 1865 TIM COOKE Smart Apple Media
4 Politics of the War Introduction While the fighting went on politics in the North continued much as normal The Republicans and the Democrats vied for power In the South on the other hand political parties were banned At the heart of the Civil War was a political question what should happen about slavery When war began however few politicians mentioned slavery In the North President Abraham Lincoln said that he was fighting to hold together the Union In the South Confederate politicians said that the war was necessary to uphold the rights of the states Lincoln came from the new Republican Party which opposed any spread of slavery The party was barely seven years old when the Civil War began Thanks partly to the North’s victory in the war it would dominate U S politics for some 70 years Lincoln managed to gather people with a range of political opinions and get them to work together for the Union cause Confederate Vice President Alexander H Stephens spent much of the war criticizing President Jefferson Davis
Introduction 5 The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D C was built in the early 20th century to commemorate the president who saved the Union In the South meanwhile the Confederate President Jefferson Davis faced a more challenging task The Confederacy was founded on the idea of states rights and many Southern politicians disliked the idea of a national government In order to make the most of the South’s relatively scarce resources the government also introduced many unpopular measures In this book Politics of the War describes the various actions taken in the Union and in the Confederacy to support the war effort It explains the relative strengths of the two economies It also examines the war’s lasting impact on American politics A timeline that runs across the bottom of the pages throughout the book traces the course of the war on the battlefield and other developments in North America and the rest of the world At the back of the book is a Need to Know feature which will help you relate subjects to your studies at school
