Very few singular events have occurred in in America’s 200+ years of being a country that have a defined a generation, but the Civil War is one of them. Historians have gone as far back as the founding of the country to explain the events that triggered the war. Throughout their childhood children hear that slavery caused the war, or that it was a war for states rights, or even in very southern states that this was “A War of Northern Aggression” but no matter how you put it the true start to the war was the Secession of the south. Its the factors that lead up to this event which Willentz discusses in the reading.<\/p>\n

Tension had been growing in the country especially regarding slave politics. Lincoln’s election marked the growth of the Republican party, especially in the north. But this didn’t sit so well in the South. Although the Southern Democrats were divided they stood together in opposition to Lincoln. They saw Lincoln’s election as “the North’s embrace of John Brown” (Willentz 434) who was a radical who had, in 1859, led a raid on an armory supported by a group of radical slaves. Although he failed he later went on to write from jail in a manner that gathered support for his cause and in turn for abolitionists. This angered the southerners to say the least and talk of secession began to circulate. “Angry Southerners now asked…whether the South could any longer “live under a government, a majority of whose subjects or citizens regard John Brown as a martyr and a Christian hero” (Willentz 425)<\/p>\n

Although the South was angry they did not stand together all the time. As seen in this post<\/a>\u00a0many non-slaveholders opposed secession while others wanted to secede right away. But an important thing to note is that there was very little support for Lincoln in the South. He didn’t win any states in the election and although there were those who didn’t want secession right away most people in the south were opposed to the ideals on Lincoln and supported the states rights and slavery claims of the Secessionist states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very few singular events have occurred in in America’s 200+ years of being a country that have a defined a generation, but the Civil War is one of them. Historians have gone as far back as the founding of the country to explain the events that triggered the war. Throughout their childhood children hear that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Torn America”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,266,327],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-civil-war","tag-secession","tag-willentz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}