The American Civil War Was A Death Filled Four Years

In 1830, the Jackson administration instated the Indian Removal Act. This act removed the Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make way for an increase of additional American immigrants. This act forced many Native American tribes from their homes including five larger tribes, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creek, and Seminole. These tribes had populations were estimated to be around 65,000 people strong that lived in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. (Foner, 2012) The American Indians fought for their rights and beliefs through the American court system. Their other objective other than fighting for their rights was but in the end, they were forced out of their homes to move

Times were a lot different back in the 1800s as compared to today, and unfortunately, for the minorities of the day, most white people did not see them as equals. The Civil War was testimony to this horrific fact. America was expanding rapidly on the heels of the gold rush and the boom of industry. This expansion posed a major problem in regards to the Native American. Most of the southern and eastern tribes had already been removed from their lands and forced to move west in the 1830s.1 Later, in 1867, a peace commission was appointed to persuade western Native Americans to relinquish their land and move to reservations. Once moved onto these reservations, the Native Americans would be wards of the government until they learned to be more like the white people.2

Another cause for poor relations between Native Americans and European Settlers was the constant push for acquiring new land by the Colonists. The Native Americans did not just want to give up their land and this resulted in war between the Indians and the Colonists. During this time Native Americans were sold into slavery belittled and removed from their land, due to the fact that the Colonists had more advanced technology and weapons. One of the major wars was the French and Indian War which resulted in the removal of Native Americans from their land and many casualties on both sides. Over time many battles were fought over land, even after America was an established country with presidents, laws, and court systems. Native Americans were continually pushed out of their land for hundreds of years while they were forced to move west. The constant push of Native Americans out of their land would cause an event known as the Trail of Tears where thousands of Indians were removed from their land by the Indian Removal Act. “In 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the "Indian Removal Act." Although many Americans were against the act, most notably Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett, it passed anyway. President Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. The Cherokees attempted to fight removal legally by challenging the removal laws in the Supreme Court and by establishing an

Native Americans in the American Civil War composed various Native American bands, tribes, and nations. Native Americans fought knowing they might jeopardize their freedom, unique cultures, and ancestral lands if they ended up on the losing side of the Civil War. A few Native American tribes, such as the Creek and the Choctaw, were slaveholders and found a political and economic commonality with the Confederacy.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War exposes a different perspective of the Civil War that is sparsely discussed and challenges the reader to broaden their views and beliefs of the war. Author, Drew Gilpin Faust, conducted nine chapters, or the new and transformed ars moriendi, primarily focusing on the past and present of the Civil War and its soldiers.

The Civil War is the deadliest war in American History. Between 1861 and 1865, over 600,000 brave souls lost their lives at nearly 10,500 battles. By the end of the war, there were nearly 200,000 African-Americans that fought on the side of the North, with 80 percent recruited from slave states (Half Slave and Half Free, 240). Wars are fought over irreconcilable differences. There may not be one specific cause. Directly or indirectly, slavery was intertwined in many of these differences and the physical conflicts that arose between the North and South. The moral versus practical issue of slavery evoked the passion necessary to unify the people to persevere through the great hardships that were to come.

There were several motives for the removal of the Indians from their lands, to include racism and land lust. Since they first arrived, the white Americans hadn’t been too fond of the Native Americans. They were thought to be highly uncivilized and they had to go. In his letter to Congress addressing the removal of the Indian tribes, President Jackson

The United States of America divided by different beliefs and ideas in 1861. Therefore, states were demanding to split up America because of the vast different beliefs. The southern states of The United States formed “Confederate States” because of the desire of central power and state’s rights. They believed that the northern states were trying to take away southern values and society (Blight, p.43). The Confederate states consisted of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, and Louisiana.

One of the key factor contributing to the Civil War was States Rights. This refers to the struggle between federal government and individual states over political power. One side argued for greater state’s rights and those arguing felt that the Federal Government needed to have more control over states. The states felt they should have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts. Meaning that states had the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. When nullification would not work and states felts that they were no longer respected, they moved towards secession from the Union. The southern people were viewed as democratic and depended slaves for the plantations, they were devoted to agriculture and shipped cotton up north and favored low tariffs.

During the Civil War, there were two sides, the Confederate Army and the Union Army. While the Confederates fought for slavery, the Union fought for their freedom. While the

On the other side was the Union, also known as the Yankees; a group determined to put out the rebels of the South, and preserve the nation that was created in 1776. Like the Confederates, the Union also found support in the memory of the Revolutionary War. Union soldiers fought the “Traitors who sought to tear down and break into fragments the glorious temple that our forefathers reared with blood and tears” (Mc.Pherson 28). If the south was to secede it would have destroyed and undermined the power and authority of the Constitution, and therefore break the union that made up the United States of America. The Union soldiers referred to the Confederates as the “Rebels”, who did not deserve to be part of the united nation for their selfish and inhumane habits, yet their land belonged to the country as a whole. A soldier in the Sherman army wrote to his wife “We want to kill them all off and cleanse the country… their punishment is light when compared with what justice is demanded” (Mc.Pherson 40-41). Union militias could not bear the thought of secession, for they “will be held responsible before God if we don’t

The Indian of Removal Act affected 5 Indian nations directly. Andrew Jackson made the Indians walk from Mississippi to present day Oklahoma which the Native Americans renamed the trail of tears. The Supreme Court voted that the Indian Removal Act was unconstitutional but Andrew Jackson went along with his plan. This act that Andrew Jackson committed affected our ties with the Native Americans and caused the Native Americans to show hatred to us. Many native american complied to being forced out of their territory but some of them fight back which started small battles.

In 1803 part of the land that would someday become Ketchum was a small portion of the land that was acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. This land was unsettled and deemed only suitable for Indian relocation. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed The Indian Removal Act and all Indians West of the Mississippi were forced to move to the Indian Territory. Once the tribes arrived in Indian Territory they began to rebuild. The struggles to rebuild lasted many years and some tribes never flourish as they once did. Many of the effects of the forced relocation are still felt today. Because of the forced removal the Indians did not trust the federal government. When the civil war began in 1861 many of the Indians sided with the confederates due to the lack of trust they had with the federal government and many of the tribes fought alongside with the Confederate army.

The result of the four-year long Civil War, was a nation in need of much repair. The split of the union dividing North and South was centered around their opposing views on slavery. These tensions placed black slaves in the middle as an object the was in a tug of war between the two sides. In the end, slavery was abolished and the rights of freed slaves were thus added to the Constitution in the fourteenth amendment that prohibited their exclusion from the unalienable rights of a United States citizen, " nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (doc 13). Despite the new addition to this law, the

Confederate States of America, the name adopted by the federation of 11 slave holding Southern states of the United States that seceded from the Union and were arrayed against the national government during the American Civil War.