Causes of Conflict

Civil War CBA

Presentation By DeAnna Stenzel

What were the geographic, economic, civic, and historic causes that led to the Emancipation Proclamation?

January 1861:

The South Secedes

March 1861:

Lincoln’s Inauguration

April 1861:

Attack on Fort Sumter

June 1861:

West Virginia is born!

June 1861:

First Battle of the Bull Run

January 1862:

Lincoln issues war order against Confederacy

September 1862:

Antietam

January 1863:

Emancipation Proclamation

June-July 1863:

Gettysburg Campaign

April 1865:

End of Civil War

Union victory

April 14, 1865

Seven days after civil war ended

Lincoln was assassinated

Geographic Causes

The emancipation proclamation did not free every slave. It only freed slaves within certain boundaries of the Confederate States of America, and it did not free them until New Years Day of 1863 (January 1, 1863).

There were two separate orders in the document. The first, became public on September 22, 1862. It freed all slaves in states under Confederate control, if the states did not rejoin the Union by the given date. The second part, issued on the day slaves were freed from Confederate controlled states, was a list of states that the Proclamation applied to.

The list did not include the border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware), the state of Tennessee was exempted also because most of the state had returned to the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation applied to Virginia, but not the forty-eight states that had seceded from the Confederacy and were rejoining the Union as West Virginia. The Emancipation Proclamation included only ten states and of those ten states all slaves were freed and encouraged to join the Union.

Economic Causes

SouthIn the South, economic effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was extremely negative. Southerners relied on their slaves for everything: food, clean homes, the raising of their children, doctoring, money, and even sometimes the delivery and care of infants. Without the slaves many Southerners became very poor and helpless. They were unable to acquire jobs because they had no need to learn the skills of the jobs their slaves did for them. Because of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern economy was destroyed.

NorthThe Northern economy was definitely positively effected by the Emancipation Proclamation. Many slaves who ran away or were set free immediately went to the North. This improved factories and made work go faster and more efficiently! Also, the slaves that came to the North wanted to help the war efforts in favor of the Union.

Irish Community

The Union did not really like the Irish Community. When they arrived in the Union it was very hard for them to get jobs because they were so disliked. When the Emancipation Proclamation was put in effect the slaves came to the North looking for jobs. Of course, since the Irishman were not the most favored people the former slaves got the Irishman’s jobs. Guess what happened to the Irishman? They lost their jobs and were subjected to living in poverty. In other words, their economy was negatively effected by the emancipation proclamation because they lost their jobs to former slaves!

Civic Causes

NorthLincoln had different reasons of issuing the

Emancipation Proclamation in both the North and the South. In the North, he wanted to get more people involved in the war. By issuing the Emancipation Proclamation he believed that the Northern population would become

more supportive of the war efforts. He believed that by issuing the Proclamation he

was creating a point of reason for the war and an incentive to win the war!

South

The Southern civic causes for the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation were very coherent or meaningful. Lincoln believed that by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation he was giving a warning to the South. He was telling them that if they eventually loose the war than they would loose all their slaves unless they gave up by a given deadline.

Historic Causes

Truthfully, at the time of the Civil War our country looked like liars, hypocrites, and unmoral citizens. Why is this? Simply because we legalized slavery. The United States of America were one of the last countries to abolish slavery. The world around us had accepted the idea that slavery was wrong, therefore, we looked like a wrong people as well. We said we were the land of the free. Is that a lie? Maybe not now but calling ourselves the land of the free back in the time of the war was definitely not accurate. We owned people…how is that freedom. We dehumanized people by calling them property…the world had a right to look down upon is. We were immoral by robbing people of difference of their right to be…well, human. We also acted as hypocrites. “Be a untied country!” we told everyone. “We want to be free! Let us be free!” We told the British when they controlled us. We hated being controlled yet we controlled every last slave and whipped them like dogs being disobedient. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to prove that we weren't the bad people we looked like. To show the world that we were taking a step towards doing what others had done long ago!