Journal #8: The Civil War

The two texts that I found similarities in, were strangely the inagural adresses of the both the Union and the Confederacy. The Union's vision of the "American Dream" differed only in the aspect that they felt that slavery was a travesty that caused the Civil War shown in Lincoln's Second Inagural adress stating, "All knew that this interest (slavery) was, somehow, the cause of the war." The Union's view of the "American Dream" still valued prosperity for it's people and dreaded the war, as did the Confederate States. However, the Confederate states felt that their method of obtaining happiness, exporting cotton, was being interferred with by the Union, which caused the succession in the first place. Jefferson Davis put emphasis on their cotton industry during his inagural adress stating, "...their chief interest is in exporting a commodity required in every manufacturing country." Jefferson Davis' inagural adress was more pursuasive, because it evoked a feeling of national pride in the suceeded states. The Northerners of the time period would have viewed his speech as a force to be reckoned with, and they would have noticed that the south was serious in this succession.