Primary source analysis of a document from the American Civil War. The diary of Carrie Berry captures the feelings of Americans from a confederate point of view.
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: CARRIE BERRY’S EXPERIENCES
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Course Unit: Course Name
December 4, 2022
, 2
Confederate soldiers attacking Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861 set in motion
the American Civil War. The United States of America government reacted to this incident by
fighting the Affiliated States of America in the four-year war. The most important cause of conflict
between the warring factions was the long-standing differences in opinion over the institution of
slavery. Prior to the war, there had been a prolonged period of tension between members of the
public and politicians from the Northern and Souther states of America over factors that had a direct
relationship with this institution. Specifically, there was discourse over the cultural values
surrounding it, financial interests justifying its existence, and questions over the extent of the
federal government’s power to control the individual states. Failure to resolve these questions
heightened the tensions between factions on either sides of the discourse, which eventually
escalated into the Civil War. The Civil War had severe ramifications on the human condition of
Americans, causing immense suffering to individuals, infrastructure, and cohesion in America.
The human cost of the American Civil War is of great historical significance, teaching a
painful lesson on the heinous nature of war. More than 650, 000 soldiers died in this war, with both
sides incurring severe casualties1. The armies destroyed infrastructure that had taken decades to
establish, such as bridges and whole cities. Tensions escalated as Americans became suspicious of
each other. Thus, for four years, the war turned American industriousness and ingenuity into a force
of destruction instead of the construction that had characterized America’s heydays. Like most wars,
the American civil war dragged on for longer than either side had anticipated. Consequently, the
losses that Americans incurred in terms of lost lives, property, and time were of a greater magnitude
than anyone had expected.
Despite these losses and destructions, the American Civil War created an environment which
fostered the creation of a vast collection of literature. Perhaps the pain, desolation,shock and hope
that the war generated provided material for this literature. More than sixty thousand books were
1 J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4 (2011): 307–48,
https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.2011.0061, 312.
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