Building Up America

In 1864, the city of Atlanta was begging for mercy from General Sherman and the Union Army. Shermans army was tearing through the South, destroying the Confederacy, saying he will not revoke his orders because they were to “prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only at Atlanta, but in all America. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country.” For Sherman, winning the war wasn’t all about slavery, it was about creating a better country for futures generations.

Ever since the beginning of America, in one way or another we have been on a search for equality and in some ways we still are. We would not be the country we are today without the Civil war and all of the conflicts within it. Those conflicts really started Americas ongoing search for equality. Prior to the war, the United States was stuck, they had had a young government and states that had completely different opinions and ways of living. Many were questioning whether the government should be in charge or not. From the Civil War, our government grew stronger and our laws became more solid. The economy had to be built back up and it was changed from the way it was prior to the war. And the understood values of each state were, in some cases changed. Everyone’s values were now supposed to align, America was starting to stand as one.

From the war, Abraham Lincoln began to see the United States as a collective whole and not as that group of states that associated with each other. He wanted equality for all and for the South and the North to reunite. People in the South were bitter, and some still are today. Through the generations people have passed on their feelings about the war, blacks and the Confederacy and that is still affecting us 150 years later. The search for equality still continues today, even after a major turning point in the creation of modern America. One example is a woman in Kentucky who was fighting to keep one high schools mascot a confederate rebel, she smiled sweetly and said “Slavery was not all that bad…Blacks just need to get over slavery…You cant live in the past.” Ironically, she herself was living in the past, still discriminating against blacks and trying to keep the representation of the confederate flag in our modern day schools.

The symbols from the war are still a part of our culture, even though most people may not even realize it. The Yankees baseball team, or high schools in the South named after confederate generals, the Civil war is still an influence. The notorious Confederate flag still is a widely used symbol is the South, still hanging on the grounds of the capitol building in South Carolina. However, the meaning of the flag has changed, it isn’t only the symbol of fighting for slavery or racism. Nowadays, the flag is more of a Southern heritage symbol. One heritage group leader calls the Confederate flag "A symbol of defiance, courage, bravery” People misunderstand the meaning because of the way white supremacist groups have abused the Confederate flag to make it a symbol of hate.

A large part of the search for equality was found in the outcome of the Civil War. Black people got rights, and weren’t in slavery anymore. In modern America, everyone is equal, and has equal rights and opportunities. These ideas aren’t things that arose in the 1960s along with the movement. After the Civil War, there was a Civil Rights bill trying to be passed, but President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Modern America was being born right when the Civil War ended, it just took longer for the ideas to pass through and be the law today.

General Sherman had a point when he refused to retreat from Atlanta. He wasn’t trying to terrorize the people, he was trying to erase everything and give the South a fresh start to benefit the generations to come. This was a part of Americas search for equality and a lot was found here. This war was also the turning point in American history that began a new era. What we now call “our nation”, was splitting at the seams. But without this war, modern America would never have been created and we would not be where we are today.



SOURCES

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates In The Attic. Pantheon, 1998
Reply from General Sherman to the City Leaders of Atlanta, September 12, 1864
(Found in the book Primary Sources of The Civil War)
Davidson, James. Nation of Nations. Boston: Mc Graw Hill, 2005