Lincoln: Impact of the Civil War

As a result of the South's insistence that it be able to enslave people, over 1 Million people lost their lives. This is greater than the casualty numbers in the Revolutionary War, World War 1 and II combined.

That loss of life is amazing, especially when you factor in that it includes primarily military age men and the entire free population of the country included only around 27 Million people. That's 1 in 27 people that died! Also- Then, as now, the people that enter the most dangerous ranks of the military and fight on the front line are for the most part from the less affluent, rural parts of the country.

It's easy to imagine that there must have been entire communities where the majority of the children were orphans and young men were mostly absent. This is staggering and is a testament to how badly the South wanted to hang on to its aristocratic, agricultural way of life as the world moved on.

For many southerners after the war, they never would admit that they actually lost the war and thanks to President Johnson's southern sympathies in the post war era, many confederate generals and senators returned to politics as though nothing happened. This allowed slavery to continue under the guise of sharecropping and the race codes that were put in effect after the war.

So did the Civil War ever truly end? The shots may have stopped, but the culture and race wars went on for over 100 years more and some would argue that they continue to this day.