Title: The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom | Ultius
Headings: The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom
The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom
The Civil War and path to freedom
Death toll of the Civil War
Freedom as an idea during the Civil War
Looking back at post-Civil War freedoms and success gained
Conclusion
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Content: For southerners who often relied on slave labor to make their livings, or in some cases their fortunes, slavery was an essential part of the business that they couldn’t afford to have regulated by the industrialist up north. The Civil War forced both those loyal to the Union and the Confederacy to reexamine what freedom meant and what price they were willing to pay for it. Death toll of the Civil War
The Civil War was the bloodiest in America’s history. More men and boys died during this 4-year period than in both World Wars combined. The evolution of the idea of freedom is described by Eric Foner in his text Give Me Liberty!: “ In the years following the Civil War, former slaves and their white allies, North and South, would seek to redefine the meaning and boundaries of American freedom" (586). In many ways, the war was based on what was previously an elusive definition of freedom in which the war was waged to figure out a precise definition. Both Union and Confederate generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee can be used as microcosms to understand the greater sentiment among these opposing men and their armies. For General Grant, maintaining the Union was the ultimate goal of the war. This meant that for Grant, the freedom gained independence from Great Britain was to be upheld by adhering to the original vision of the founding fathers.