Slavery, Expansion and the Civil War + the impact of the civil war

Today we had to work in groups of four. We had to read three pages in our English book about the sivil war and slavery in America at the time. After reading theese pages we wrote a summery of the text, and here it is:

Slavery

There was another group of people that suffered a terrible fate theese years, the slave that was kidnapped from Africa and transported to North America. Slavery was part of the Amercian society, but slavery gradually died out in the Noth because of growing trade, industry and selv-sufficiency in agriculture. The slavery grew in the south because of the devolpment of huge cotton and tobacco plantations, and the south and north developed in different diractions. However, they were both expanding west-wards, and this led to an increasing conflict between them.

Expansion and Civil War

The basic issue between the North and the South was which part of the country would control the new lands opening up in the west. The result was compromises with limited slavery to territories in 1850. In 1854, it was decided by law that slavery was allowed to expand westward. To keep this from happening, a new political party was formed; the Republican Party. Republican Abraham Lincoln fought for the slaves rights, and he became President in 1861.

When Abraham Lincoln became American president, civil war broke out between North and South. Eleven Southern states left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The North was the strongest part with a population of twenty two million (to the South's five and a half million) and most of the industry and railroads. The South's, on the other hand, fought next to home and they had better generals.

The civil war lasted for four long years. It ended in 1865 with victory won by the North. 600 000 Americans had lost their lives in the war.

The Impact of the civil war:

The South were occupied by Northern troops for a time, and efforts were made to provide blacks with skills, give them their civil rights, and protect them from their former owners. But after a time, the North grew tired of "babysitting" the South, so they pulled their troops out, and Southern states regained self-government. The southerns gradually took away the civil rights of the blacks and separated the races. It would take almost a hundred years for blacks to regain their legal and political rights.

The war ruined the South economiclly, politically and culturally. Even though it regained some of its former strength, it remained poor in relation to the rest of the country for the next century. While the North and West experienced a rapid industrial development, the South turned inwards. It remained an agricultural economy