Can someone tell me how civil war started?

Question

why, how, and what happened after wards?

thank u

Answer 1

Lincoln got elected, a few southern states 'withdrew' from the Union to form the 'Confederate States of America'.

The war could not start until the CSA attacked a federal facility, ideally a fort.

Here was the central issue: Constitutional experts going all the way back at least to the Andrew Jackson Adminstration, concluded that no state could legally leave the Union(S.C. had threatened to leave the Union). Yet, at the same time legally the USA could not stop it.

If the CSA would have just left the Union and ignored the federal troops remaining on 'its' soil, then no war would have happened, but if they attacked a federal fort, then the president could declare the region in a state of rebellion and then legally the president could declare marshall law, and send in troops to crush the rebellion.

Politically Lincoln could not send in troops without the South attacking first, as the border states would likely have greatly opposed a unilateral attack by Federal troops, if not joined the CSA. With the attack on Fort Sumpter, the patriotism to the Union outweighed sympathy for the CSA in the border states.

An interesting fact regarding the Civil War is that federal income taxes came into being during the Lincoln adminstration. Some say that the Civil War settled the question of whether or not a state could withdrawl from the Union. But, my viewpoint is that it was Federal Income taxes. That way individuals in the states that refused to pay federal taxes could be jailed, that could make a rebellion fizzel.

The book listed in the source below quotes Lincoln something about it was the actions of the CSA that made possible the civil war otherwise he could have legally not send in troops. Sorry I do not remember the exact quote.

Answer 2

The southern states wanted to have seperate laws for each state and later decided to seperate from the northern states and become the Confederate States of America. As you can imagine, this didn't go over too well with the northern states. That's what most people don't realize. Slavery wasn't the cause of this war, or a major issue, until later. Lincoln and the northern states fought to keep ALL the states together as one country. The first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter by the south I believe.

Answer 3

Which country?  There have been a lot of Civil Wars

I suppose we can - it seems as if only Americans assume that there has been one Civil War.

The American Civil War began for many reasons;  

The right of States to secede from the Union; taxation; slavery and unequal economic development.

See:

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/

Answer 4

1.  Some states wanted to remove themselves from the union as was guaranteed by verbal agreement before the Constitution was ratified (Virginia with George Washington as its delegate, Massachusetts and one other state were the holdouts that wouldn't sign until everyone agreed that any state that wanted to secede could do so.)

2. The Northern States didn't want freedom for those states that wanted to secede.

3. The Northern States illegally invaded the South.

4. The South fought back and lost.

After the war, White southerners lost their citizenship and many of their freedoms for many years.  No charges of treason were ever leveled IN COURT, because the actions of the South were well within the law.

EDIT:  For the two "thumbs down":  You can dislike historic facts, but giving someone the "thumbs down" simply for telling the truth makes you liars.  If this was an answer that relied on opinion, then you could agree or disagree with "thumbs down".  When it is stating Historic Facts which are on record, then, you lie.

Answer 5

Can we assume the American Civil War?

OK.  Fort Sumter lay in Charleston, SC harbor.  It was FEDERAL property.  The newly created Confederate States of America, to which South Carolina belonged, wanted to 'annex' this fort.  Lincoln said no.

Lincoln tries to send in supplies, the Confederate government bombards the fort, Fort Sumter surrenders, and Lincoln declares that the bombing of the fort constitutes an act of war by the CONFEDERATE government on the FEDERAL government.

So - the FEDERAL government (the Union of the northern states) goes to war with the CONFEDERATE government (the Confederacy of the southern states)

Answer 6

~Yes, undoubtedly so.  Millions of words have been written on the subject, regardless of the Civil War to which you refer.  The trick is to find the actual words of the participants and to draw your own conclusions rather than to read the interpretations by the 'historians' who came along later and wrote the myths.  For example, there is the myth that the  American Civil War (which by legal and logical definition was NOT a civil war, at least from the standpoint of  the CSA and in the context of the US Constitution) was started over slavery.  Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the era and the events leading up to it must understand how foolish and illogical that premise is, yet the myth persists.

As JFK said,  "The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."   Take a cue from Kennedy and hit the books, preferably several from different, conflicting perspectives, then fit the puzzle together from original sources and see how the pieces fit  with what you've read.  Generalize, conceptualize and postulate your own conclusions.  That process is called "education" or "learning".

The Constitution does not include provisions regarding secession.  That was not oversight.  At the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention, the issue was discussed and debated but no consensus was reached, so, in order to establish a constitution, the issue was intentionally left out.  Remember, after independence was granted to the colonies by the British via the Treaty of Paris in 1783, thirteen new and independent nations were created.  They believed that they were retaining the hard-fought right of independence when they agreed to unite under the Constitution.  They had reserved that independence expressly under the Articles of Confederation.  The framers believed the right of secession was guaranteed in Article  IV and further protected in Amendments IX and X.

That the states believed they had the right to secede was made clear in 1803 and again in 1812/14 when the New England states threatened to do it.  No one questioned the right.  Southern statesmen who convinced New England to stay in the Union argued that New England's  interests  were best served by remaining in the Union but they never questioned the right to secede.  During those crises, many of the draftsmen of the Constitution were still alive and speaking.   South Carolina threatened to secede in 1837.  Andy Jackson threated to send in federal troops and South Carolina backed down.  Compromise was reached,  tariffs laws were revised and S C repealed the Nullification Act;   the secession question was not resolved.  (Bear in mind Jackson's tendency to ignore the constitution and higher authority, both during his military career and in the White House, when they got in his way.  Sending troops into South Carolina was something he claimed he could do but for which he had no constitutional authority.)  The issues in 1837 were the same as they were in 1860, but not yet as extreme as they would become over the next two decades.  Those issues included things like State's Rights; draconian and ruinous (from a Southern perspective) tariff laws which threatened to destroy the social fabric and economy of the agrarian South only to fill the pocketbooks of Northern industrialists, merchants and shippers; the sovereign autonomy of the several states, the ever-expanding growth and control of the federal government in spite of express and deliberate limitations placed on it by the Constitution by the framers and founders to prevent just that happenstance.  They did not include slavery.

The Southern States seceded, reclaiming the independence and sovereignty that they held in 1789 and which they had partially and voluntarily subsumed into the federal government by ratifying the constitution but which they always knew they had the right to reclaim when the federal union no longer served and protected their needs.   They then formed a new confederation, eventually including 11 independent nations who, by their constitution, retained independence while creating a central government which was established to oversee those issues common to the group (much as the

original thirteen had done three score and twelve years earlier).  

The CSA was an independent nation (or confederation of 11 independent nations) as a matter of US Constitutional law.  US troops on CSA soil were, therefore, foreign troops and were ordered to withdraw.  Lincoln and Congress refused.  Fort Sumter, now a South Carolina property illegally occupied by a foreign power, was taken by (very little) force.  The USA retaliated and invaded.  The CSA had no intention of invading the USA or overthrowing the USA government.  They were content with the government they had lawfully created and with the territory over which they governed as a matter of constitutional and international law.  The last thing they wanted was war with the USA.  They knew they couldn't win and hoped that the USA would acknowledge the legality of their actions and recognize the legitimacy of their new nation(s).  Wishful thinking, to be sure, but they had reason to hope.  The war was not all that popular in the north and west.

The US Constitution guaranteed the right to own slaves (Article I, section 2 and Article IV, section 2).  The Bill of Rights (Amendments IV, V,  IX, and X) further protected the right.  Abolition could come only by state law or by constitutional amendment.  Secession was not necessary to get or protect a right  already guaranteed to the CSA states.  No such amendment was even proposed during the antebellum years because it could not have been ratified in the North, forget the South.  It is unlikely that sufficient support for ratification would have come for at least a generation or two.  By then, slavery would have died a natural death - it would not have been feasible economically, particularly after the advent of mechanized farming.  By 1860, only a small minority of Southerners owned slaves and only a minute minority owned more than 100.  The same is true of the four slave states  who did not secede.  Washington DC retained slavery in 1860 as well, but DC had no right to secede since it was not a state and DC citizens would not have the right to vote for another century.  Many slave owners had to rent out their slaves in order to afford them.  

Emancipation was feared as much in the North as it was in the South because of the devastating effect that instant emancipation would have.  Imagine the impact on society and the economy that would result from the sudden insertion several million uneducated, impoverished, unemployed,

homeless people with no job skills.  Better still, read what the authors said when they passed the First and Second Confiscation Acts and "freed" the southern slaves.  Those Acts, like the Emancipation Proclamation which would follow a few months later, were weapons of war designed to

wreck the southern economy and  were not spawned from humanitarian ideals.  The Acts, and  Proclamation were illegal unconstitutional exercises of federal and executive power, implemented as weapons of war, not as attained war objectives. Amendment XIII and abolition came  in 1865 (and the means by which ratification was coerced calls the "due process" into question) not as an obtained war goal  but as a collateral consequence to it - and even then, for military purposes as much as for humanitarian ones.  What better way to insure the south could not rise again than by destroying the southern economy, erasing the southern way of life, bankrupting the southern aristocracy and turning the southern social structure upside down?  Read what the proponents of the Amendment said about it at the time

if you have any doubts of their motives.

As John Locke's borrowed words in the Declaration of Independence said, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government."  That time had come for the CSA in 1860.  Ordinances of Secession were passed by the democratically elected representatives of the people and  ratified by the people at the polls. Thus, the CSA was a government of the people, by the people, for the people.  The USA invaded that nation(s) to suppress the will of those people and to subjugate them to the will of Northern federal majority.  Lincoln and Congress were very careful not to recognize the validity of the Ordinances of Secession or to 'declare war' on the CSA or to say or do anything that could be construed to acknowledge the independence of CSA or any of them. That reluctance did not change the Constitution, the law or the facts.  As predicted by the Southern leaders throughout the antebellum years,  Northern industrial might, numbers and  money carried the day;  Southern and state independence was quashed and the nation conceived by  Jefferson, Adams,

Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton,  Gouverneur Morris, James Mason and company , and as apparently envisioned by Lincoln in 1847 when he said in Congress, "Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world." ceased to exist. That particular government of the people, by the people, for the people had perished from the earth.

I disagree with most of what  Kennedy stood for (not the martyred legend but the real JFK), but on one thing he was absolutely correct.  When mythology substitutes for truth, we are in serious trouble.  Get past the myth and look for the truth.

Answer 7

The rebels started it when they fired on Fort Sumpter, so dont let anyone call it "the war of northern agression"

Answer 8

one half of spain wanted to be with the n***s, the other halves are nationalist, so they fought....