Civil War Changes The Nation -by matt G. and nick

The civil war changes the nation

The Civil Way caused political, economical, technological and social change. 360000 union soldiers and 260000 Confederate soldiers died. The amount of deaths from the Civil War was more than all other American wars combined.
The Civil War increased the government’s power and authority. They passed income taxes and conscription laws that gave control over citizens. After this, no state ever threatened secession again. Economically, the gap between the North and South was widened greatly. The North’s economy boomed, while the South’s economy declined. Due to destruction from the war, massive amounts of industry and farmland were destroyed, ending slavery as a labor system.
The civil was has been called the First Modern War for many reasons. The musket balls that were fired were made of a softer lead, which was much more destructive. The invention of the land mine and the hand grenade changed war tactics and increased war casualties greatly. The invention of the Ironclad ship was a major advancement because it could splinter wooden ships by ramming them, and it could withstand cannon fire. After this invention, all wooden ships for war became obsolete.
At the end of the Civil war, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment permanently changed the lives of African Americans by ending slavery in the United States. On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth crept up behind Lincoln in Fords Theatre and shot him in the back of the head assassinating him.

The Civil War Changes the Nation

The civil war led to political, economic, technological and social changes in the United States. The war itself ravaged the human population taking the lives of 360,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers. During the civil war, the federal government passed laws which gave them more control over citizens. While the Northern states flourished, the Southern states became a rural wasteland for poor industry and farming.

The war led to technological advances in warfare. New weapons included the rifle and the minie ball, which is a soft lead bullet. Grenades and landmines were enhanced to change modern warfare forever. Wooden ships became obsolete to the newer ironclad ships which were more durable and lethal.

As a result of the war, the government passes the Thirteenth Amendment which bans slavery. Due to the radical social changes within America at this time, certain individuals did not approve of Lincoln's controversial views. John Wilkes Booth, an actor and active support of the South, did not approve of these changes.

On April 14, 1865 Lincoln and his wife attended a British Comedy at Ford's Theater. During the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth snuck behind and fired a shot into the back of Lincoln's head.

With the war over, slavery and secession were abolished. However, the country still faces potential and current problems.

- Felix and Kevin

Life During the Civil War

Despite the atrocities that the Civil War wrought on American life, many social improvements emerged in response to the nation's underlying problems. These issues, such as insufficient war medicine, unjust drafts, and discrimination within the military were brought to the attention of the American public during the war and many quickly acted to fix them.

One of the these improvements was the American Red Cross, which Clara Barton, a dedicated Union nurse, founded after coping with the inadequate medical care of both Union and Confederate soldiers. The lack of medical technology combined with the squalid conditions on the battlefield, such as sparing diet and exposure to excrement, stimulated the contraction of dysentery and diarrhea and the spread of body lice. War prisoners commonly fell ill with pneumonia in overcrowded and unsanitary war prisons, which seldom provided enough food, space or medicine. Thousands of women from both the North and the South rose to the challenge of caring for these sickly soldiers. The Union alone provided 3,000 army nurses, one of whom was Clara Barton.

The Civil War also underscored the injustice of forcing citizens into war. In an attempt to augment battalions after heavy casualties and desertions, the North and the South enacted a draft, which was met with violent remonstrance. Draft riots sprang up in cities across the North, such as the one portrayed in the final scenes of Martin Scorsese's historical film Gangs of New York.



And even in the fight to rid the States of discrimination, African-American soldiers in the Union Army were paid less than their white counterparts and were assigned to separate regiments. Perhaps even more outrageous is the fact that black soldiers constituted about 10% of the Union army, even though the North's black population was a miniscule 1%. In the modern U.S. military, soldiers are not separated by ethnicity nor are specific racial groups targeted for service.