The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [111]
The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ended the war in 1848 and ceded the southwest and California to the United States for a payment of 15 million dollars and the assumption of over 3 million in claims. The extensive territorial gain led to the controversy over extending slavery to the new territories, and then the US Civil War. At least a few commentators say if the Mexican-American War never occurred avoiding the Civil War would have been much easier. Some of the lower-ranking American officers who contributed to this campaign became well known later: Robert E. Lee, US Grant, Stonewall Jackson (not known as Stonewall then), and George Meade were just a few.
In 1853, the United States finished out its southwest boundaries with the Gadsden Purchase of the Gila River Valley from Mexico. Americans rejoiced over the victories of the war with Mexico, but the next American war would spill only American blood on American land.
The American Civil War 1861 to 1865
(The First Modern War)
This may be the saddest time in the history of the United States of America. The emotions stirred by the Civil War remain with America today. It was the bloodiest and hardest war the nation ever fought. All the dead were Americans, and every bit of land and property devastated was American.
Before Vietnam, many said America never lost a war. This is not true. The Confederate States of America (CSA) fielded an American army, and they fought for their view of freedom with a fury and determination seldom seen in the history of the world. Nevertheless, the South lost; therefore, the first war lost by Americans was the Confederate States of America in the Civil War.[124] Southerners always contended they were fighting another American Revolution, claiming they only wanted the powerful North to leave them alone. The North astutely claimed it was fighting a continuation of the American Revolution, saying they were fighting to set men free from slavery and oppression. Either way, the problems of the United States came down to a clash of arms. Legislation and compromise failed, only death and destruction would answer the issue.
Figure 36 American Civil War
Black—Union State (no slavery)
Light Grey—Deep South, Left Union Before 4/15/1861
Dark Grey—States that left Union soon after 4/15/1861
White—Union States Permitting Slavery
Causes
The causes of the Civil War are legion. Most try to boil it down to slavery, but that generalization avoids a lot of history and a lot of thinking. By 1860, there were deep cultural, economic, and political differences between the North and the South. Fundamentally, the North was a highly urbanized industrial manufacturing powerhouse, and the South was a rural patriarchal agricultural region. Trade, for example, became a considerable unresolved issue between the industrial North and the agricultural South. The North wanted tariffs to protect its industries, but the South wanted zero tariffs so it could sell its cash crops of cotton and tobacco to Europe without facing retaliatory foreign tariffs.[125] The South actually exported much more, in terms of monetary value, than the North; thus, any tariff would harm the South greatly even while it protected the North’s industries. Because the economic interests of the North and South were so divergent, continuing clashes were predestined over a wide range of economic and social