War is the sum of all evil, and the American Civil War is the epitome of that statement. More Americans lost their lives in the Civil War than all other American conflicts combined. Also know as the War Between the States it started in 1861 and ended in 1865. A war that tore families and friends apart, no other war in American history is as epic as the Civil War. More Americans lost their lives in the Civil War then all other wars America has fought in combined. This was a war that had brother versus brother, the enemy spoke the same language and lived next door to one another and even the state neighboring them. This war was a tragedy of Americans killing Americans. More books have been written about the Civil War than any other war in history. The war was fought between the Northern State or The Union and the Southern States, The Confederates. Both the north and the south claimed to be fighting for freedom. It is common that most people think the war was started because of slavery in the south, this was not the case. In 1863 Jefferson Davis said “The South was forced to take up Arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and state sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of our revolutionary sires”. President of the United States Abraham Lincoln said “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists”. However war changes everything and within a year of the war both Lincoln and Congress decided to make emancipation of slaves in the United States a policy. There is no doubt that there were many abolitionists in this country at the time even while many thought slavery would eventually die of natural causes. There are many events leading up to the start of the Civil War. The issue of slavery was not defined in the Constitution in 1787 and the founding fathers left the decision up to the individual states. For seventy years the issue of states rights and slavery were discussed, debated, and often physically fought over in congress. Southern states like Virginia became uneasy of the Federal Government after the election of President Abraham Lincoln from the new Republican Party. Southern states like Virginia believed that they had the right to secede from the union. “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceable withdraw”, writes Henry Cabot Lodge. State rights were one of the biggest issues amongst the states that wanted to secede from the Union.
