The Killer Angels and Slavery

When a researcher studies the causes of most wars, the causes for nearly any war are usually innumerable. However, there are a select few wars that even in the presence of several different motives, one underlying object or ideal seems to always be the root of the problem. One prime example of this idea is the American Civil War wherein almost every individual soldier had a different reason for being on the battlefront. One nation whose people had grown into a melting pot had slowly been torn down the center for several decades before the inevitable war came. Slavery seemed to affect everything in the United States during the time leading up to, during, and even after the Civil War. Thus, the issue was unavoidable, and whatsoever conflict arose from this issue was not only important to those involved, but the entire country. With the issue of slavery at the national level that it rose to be at, there was absolutely no way the war and the prevailing awkwardness that followed the war could have been avoided.

The seeds for the Civil War were sown roughly around the turn of the 19th century, over fifty years before war was declared. This is when the northern states began slowly abolishing slavery one by one, thus awakening the South's fears of an eventual demand for the freedom of slaves in every state. The southern fear of abolishment was well founded due the sheer importance of slavery to the economy in those southern states. Since the South was more rural than the North, a trend continued to the present time, plantations flourished and the need for manual labor was omnipresent. This became even more prevalent with Eli Whitney's relatively recent invention of the cotton gin. According to many, slaves were the southern economy. Thus, the majority of the southerners surmised that if slaves were taken away, the southern economy would be taken away alongside them. This caused a demand for a sort of fallback plan so that the south could keep their remaining slaves since the slave trade was outlawed in 1808. Thus, the Missouri Compromise was put into place. This was the first widely apparent foreshadowing of the Civil War that was several decades away since it quite literally divided the country in half along the 36'30 north latitude line. This doctrine failed to settle the disputes that were now taking the place of many other issues at the political forefront. There were often debates with one side waving the northern flag of supposed morality against the southern flag of supposed realism. Both sides saw the opposition as violating the standards the United States was founded upon regarding the limitation of freedoms. Both sides also blamed the other for the pockets of violence that began to appear in the country regarding slavery. The common man who sat and watch these debates would pick his side and fight for it vehemently, but it can be surmised that many saw the striking similarities between both sides. As time passed, it became more and more apparent that there would be no peaceful way to settle the debates that affected every citizen of the United States. Many revolts and acts of violence were taking place in both the North and the South. The government knows that there is no sweeping law that could stem the national unrest, so the government passes a sweeping law known as the Kansa-Nebraska Act that, in essence, repeals the Missouri Act and puts the idea of popular sovereignty. This act has barely has, if not less, success than the Missouri Act did in terms of quelling the rage simmering throughout the nation. The failure of this act, coupled with several other happenings such as the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Dredd Scott, the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and also the publication of Frederick Douglas's autobiography pushed the barrier between the North and South to irreparable bounds and in 1860 the succession and thus war, began.

The Civil War was a completely new sort of warfare for the armies of the North and South. It was an odd mix of honorable and guerilla warfare coupled with the somber overtone of fighting against former comrades. Quite literally brothers had to fight brothers. This sort of warfare shook every solider, commander, and political leader down to their core as they gave the orders to, or actively engaged in combat. The average man who passionately watched the slave debates was now thrust into the combat, whether as a solider or a civilian in the crossfire. There is almost no other topic in the history of the United States that seeped down to every individual man's lifestyle and became a focus mentally and in the warfare in the way slavery did. The average man's point of view on slavery is shown in Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels through soldiers who fought and died over this very ideal. This book's perspective on the common viewpoint on slavery gives a deep insight on the people who didn't belong to the political extremes, which is a topic left out in history a decent amount of the time due to a possible lack of relevance seen by instructors or authors. Through this book it becomes visible how every man has is own just cause for fighting in the war, as shown in Chamberlain's speech that he gives to the soldiers that refused to fight wherein he states: "Some of [them] volunteered to fight for the Union. Some came in mainly because [they] were bored at home and this looked like it might