“Do not go…. Listen”
“April 1861, Abraham Lincoln had implored his countrymen not to go to war, to listen to
the better angels of their nature.” The civil war began April 12, 1861, after Lee surrendered
at Appomattox Court House, Virginia because Southern states declared secession and thus
formed the Confederates or the “South”. They were against the states that remained, the
Union or “North”. The origin of all the issues were through slavery. After about 600,000
deaths and the bloodshed, four years, 3 weeks and 6 days later on May 10, 1865, the
Confederates disintegrated, slavery was abolished, and rebuilding process known as
Reconstruction began. There were a few people that were upset around the South.
The first and only president of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, a person whom
most southerners had an anger and bitterness towards. Davis had a career in politics for a
short while as Secretary of War, later serving as congressman and then as a Mississippi
senator. As a political leader he never could figure out how to defeat the North. Jefferson
Davis consumed a lesser power in the South than Lincoln had and what little power he did
have decreased rapidly as the Union took more parts of the Confederacy. Everything
involving Davis went downhill, his economic policies did not provide the South with a
currency that was stable or even enough capacity for the industries to prevail in the war.
With everything that went on there was definitely time to rebuild the nation after the war
