The Civil War Part 3 - The battle of the Ironclads

The ironclads that fought in the Hampton roads were the first iron battleships. The Virginia or the Merrimack was built to break the blockade which by the way is unconstitutional because in the constitution it says that no blockade can be issued unless at war with a foreign power. But since the south was part of the U.S. and not a foreign power it was not constitutional to issue the blockade.
On March 8th The Virginia came into Hampton roads and sank the Cumberland which was a 22 gun sloop. Then the Virginia turned the Congress a 44 gun ship into an inferno. The captain of the Virginia decided he would leave because one it was getting dark two the steam frigate Minnesota had come to join the fight but had run aground so they thought they could come back tomorrow and finish off the Minnesota the next day. But when they Virginia sailed in the next morning they found that a small iron raft with a turret with two large guns sticking out of it standing between them and the Minnesota. It had been built when the Union found out that the Confederacy was building an iron ship. It had been clear that the Union Navy would need and iron ship to do battle with the one the Confederates were building. The design that President Lincoln choose was for the Monitor. It had been designed by a Swedish inventor named John Ericsson. He had designed it several years earlier, but people had laughed and said it would sink.
John Ericsson had to hurry to get the job done. He had to invent most of the pieces himself. In fact the elevator that was used to hoist the shot up into the turret was the beginning of the modern elevator. So the Virginia opened up on the Monitor but the cannonballs just bounced off the turret in a flurry of sparks. Then the Monitor's turret turned and fired heavy shot at point blank range but it did'nt go through it only slightly damaged the iron plates.
For several hours the two ships cricled each other firing shot after shot into each other. The Virginia tried to ram but they had lost most of it when ramming another ship so it did little dammage. But near the end of the battle one of the gunners aimed at the small box in the front that served as a pilot house. And that was also were the captain was standing. He fired a shell their and blinded the captain of the Monitor. But so much dammage had been taken on both sides that they both retreated. But by the end of that year both ships had sunk. The Virginia had gone back to Norfolk but Major General Benjerman Huger abandoned the city on May 9th without consulting the Navy so now the Virginia was trapped so the captain decided to blow her up, and that is what he did.
Now the Monitor sank in a storm out in the Atlantic while being transported to a new location.
But this had been the first battle between iron ships. Soon other countries began to build their own iron ships and soon the wooden ships would be outdated and old. This was one of the greatest battle in the world. It changed naval warfare forever.

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The Civil War part 2 - First Blood

The first battle of the Civil War was the first battle of Manassas, on July 21rst 1861. The Union General was Gen. Irvin McDowell. The General's for the Confederate side was: Joseph E. Johnston and Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. This was the first major battle of the war. Nearly 70,000 troops were involved in this battle(US 28,450; CS 32,230). It On July 16, 1861, the untested Union army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run.
On the 21st, McDowell crossed at Sudley Ford and attacked the Confederate left flank on Matthews Hill. Fighting raged throughout the day as Confederate forces were driven back to Henry Hill. Late in the afternoon, Confederate reinforcements (one brigade arriving by train from the Shenandoah Valley) extended and broke the Union right flank. The Federal retreat rapidly became into a rout. Although victorious, Confederate forces were too disorganized to pursue. . Thomas J. Jackson earned the name: “Stonewall.” By July 22, the shattered Union army reached the safety of Washington. This battle convinced the Lincoln administration that the war would be a long and costly affair. McDowell was relieved of command of the Union army and replaced by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who set about reorganizing and training the troops.

A few other battles had occurred before this but this was the first field battle of the Civil War.

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The Civil War part 1 - Secession

The civil war cost 620,000 war deaths, these do not include the many more thousands of civilians that were killed in the war. This was the bloodiest war up until that point in history. Many say that it was fought over slavery while others the taxation of the south, or even to save the "Union".
In this post I will talk about these three reasons and I will talk about the myth that secession is "Treason".

First I will talk about how that slavery was not the main cause of the civil war. First if Lincoln wanted to free the slaves why not do it peacefully as most of the countries did. England for example freed their slaves by paying the owners forty percent of what each slave was worth. If Lincoln had taken the amount of money that the Union spent on the war they could have freed each slave (using England's technique) and given him forty acres and a mule!
"Well what about the emancipation proclamation?" some might ask.
The emancipation proclamation was Lincolns last card as one Englishman put it. The union had lost many a battle by 1863 and Lincolns administration was gambling that their would be a massive slave insurrection, but it did have its whiplash back. As many Northerners were horrified, mobs took to the streets, 200,000 Federal soldiers deserted, another 120,000 evaded conscription, and another 90,000 men fled to Canada. Lincolns real agenda was to "Save the Union" or to centralize the power to the government and to make them sovereign and he said so in a letter to the New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he said:

My Paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it: and if it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the union.

This letter is interesting because like a true politician Lincoln said one thing in his inaugural speech then another now that he is in power. In fact he said that he had no power to free slaves in his inaugural speech now he talks as if he could even if he thought about it.

The taxation of the south was probably the main reason for the civil war. Huge tariff's were being levied against the south. Because the south was so trade dependant, the northern businesses profited greatly from it. Many southern representatives railed against it. Calling for them to bring it down as most of the other foreign countries were.
On the eve of the firing on fort Sumter a new Tariff was about to be levied it would plunder the South without completely destroying it.

The third reason people give for the reason of the civil war is that we needed to save the "Union" so that the U.S. would not break up into smaller countries and therefore we would not be the great nation that we are to day. My answer is this. To the founding fathers secession was a fundamental principle of political philosophy. In fact the Declaration of Independence was a secession document.
Thomas Jefferson the main author of the Declaration of Independence said in his first inaugural address in 1801 said this: "If there be any among us who would wish to to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of safety with which error of opinion mat be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." And when his words where put to the test when a group of New England Federalists states attempted to secede from the union, Jefferson maintained it saying "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in Union...I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate'."
Lincolns declaration that secession would destroy the union of states and lead to "anarchy" was a lie. If they had been allowed to go in peace it would have the effect the founding fathers wanted it to have. The tariff's would go down and it would have stopped the slide to a centralized state and in the end the south would have probably favored a union with the north and 620,000 young men would have not lost their lives. As James Madison said in 1787 that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical... a medicine necessary for the sound heath of government."
Based on this evidence and much more I think that the south was in the right when they seceded. A bloody war may have been averted if Lincoln had not been a great centralizer of power and a dictator upon which I will talk about in further posts.

Remember if you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer it.

The end of the war

The end of the war came 1945 it had taken opn the pacific side over 3 million Japanese civilians lives and 2 atomic bombs had to go off before it ended it ended on the European side with the taking of Berlin.

With peace came many change Germany was split up. Europe was changed forever by this war, it was one of the most costly wars ever fought.


And Thus World War 2 came to an end.