The Civil War: The War That Divided The United States

by Lance T. Stewart

to re-capture one of his runaway slaves, accidentally struck her in the head with a heavy weight that was meant for the other man. She experienced severe symptoms as a result,

periods of time and couldn’t be awakened, and she began to experience

received from her mistress, she had tried to run away once as a child,

fear that she would be sold and her family broken up after her master’s death. In 1849, she set out on another escape attempt

two of her brothers, but owing to the difficulty of escaped slaves finding passage to the north, her brothers decided it would be safest to return, and forced Tubman to come with them. Her final, successful escape attempt, which she made

provided the route for Tubman’s escape. The Railroad was the code name for a series of safe hous...

contact details that permitted them to reach the next house further north. The terminology of railways was used to identify

the escapees, who stopped at “depots” along the way where they

station to the next. Those who provided financial support to the

the

permanent safe haven even in the north, the final point on the Underground Railroad w...

the geographical boundary between the slave and free states, was code named the “River Jordan”. Travel conditions were harsh, and most ...

than their male counterparts, comparatively few of them made escape attempts; Harriet Tubman was one of only a few women who were able to make use of the Underground Railroad to re...

Railroad began after her escape to Philadelphia, when she learned that her niece and niece’s children were about to be sold at auction in Baltimore. After helping them escape to a nearby safe house, Tubman facilitated the escape of more of her family members. With each trip, Tubman became more confident in her knowledge of routes and safe houses. In 1851, Tubman attempted to help her husband escape, but he confessed himself contented with his lot in life and refused to come with her. Angered, and unwilling to waste the trip and the resources she had gathered on his behalf, Tubman invited other slaves to accompany her on the journey north. This began her career as the liberator, not just of her family, but of over seventy slaves during at least thirteen trips south. Tubman’s enormous success as a conductor on the Underground Railroad was owing to her extraordinary ingenuity, her confidence that God had appointed her to her task and would keep her safe, and her misleading personal appearance. She was middle aged and only five feet tall, and her knowledge of slave life on the plantations enabled her to easily pass as a slave in disguise right under the noses of her own former mas...

disappearing mysteriously, but Tubman herself was never suspected; the slave owners believed that a white male abolitionist from the north must be responsible. The most dramatic incident in Tubman’s career was the Combahee River Raid in 1863. Due to her unique knowledge of navigating marshland terrain, she had for some time been a spy for the Union army, passing information to General James Montgomery, mapping regions of the South, and preparing slaves to stand ready for a signal to revolt. Tubman navigated three

these plantations to the ground. In the confusion, some 750 slaves, having been instructed by Tubman to wait for her signal, rushed from their cabins and houses towards the refuge of the Union boats. Tubman’s role in guiding the Union steamboats to their destination made her the first woman to lead an armed assault in American military

contributing factors and complications that are often left out of the traditional narrative when discussing the Civil War. This book, while by no means an exhaustive or scholarly accounting of all the social, political, and economic factors involved, attempts to present the casual student of

course of American history. For this reason, it begins with the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution, and outlines the dominant political issues of the early to mid nineteenth century, before giving an overview of the war itself. In your previous reading on the subject, you may not have learned that the southern states, particularly South Carolina, had been building up a justifying rhetoric for leaving the Union for many years

believed that the rift between north and was so deep that it would be better to let the South form an independent government if it wished to. Other books on the Civil War provide in-depth accounts of all the military actions and battles fought between the Union and the Confederacy, but this book will only present the major battles in outline.

Roots of the Civil War The Early Republic Most people think of the Civil War as a brief, contained conflict that began when the southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, and that ended when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. However, the roots of the conflict were established

Constitution. A certain division between north and south existed in the United States from its earliest days: the southern colonies and the northern colonies were markedly different societies, their economies founded on different strengths,

their northern counterparts, such as Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. Most of America’s founding fathers knew that the institution of slavery was unsustainable in the long run. The moral reprehensibility of slavery was felt by many of them, but even those who were less concerned about the damage inflicted on the millions

clearly that they had an opportunity to settle the question of slavery—that is, to end it—before it could impact future generations. The fact that they did not do so is partially owing to the dangerously fragile condition that the new American nation was in at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Second Continental Congress America had won its independence from Britain, but the nation did not yet have a true government of its own. The Second Continental Congress, which had raised a massive army of untrained volunteers and

body. Under the Articles of Confederation, each colony considered itself a more or less independent political body, banding

purpose of driving the British out. As strange as it might sound, the Revolution was very nearly lost because the Continental Congress did not have the authority to levy and collect taxes from the individual colonies—it had no funds other than what the colonies could be persuaded to contribute voluntarily. It is, therefore, perhaps not terribly surprising that the money the colonies promised to contribute fell massively short of the money they actually gave. As a result of Congress’s inability to collect the needed funds from the colonies, George Washingto...