The Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment Essay
Nobody wants a meaningless death. Nobody wants a wasted life that could have meant more. The large scale that war presents terrible loss inevitably gives rise to the comparison of the outcome to the sacrifices made to achieve it. Out of the Civil War, the 13th Amendment freed the slaves, but also honored the fallen soldiers of the war by ensuring that their deaths were given for the worthy cause of abolishing the immoral practice of slavery, which then allowed economic opportunity to flourish westwards through the free economy.
As in any war, the deaths of soldiers was something to be expected, but as the Union death toll rose above 360,000, it became clear that this ultimate measure …show more content…
Slavery meant the complete degradation and subjugation of human beings, and to free those oppressed by it was a worthwhile cause. Stripped of their cultural identity, flogged or starved as punishment, sexually abused and bred, and denied any proper education, slaves were under the complete control of their owners. This unethical, inhumane, shameful practice needed to be brought to heel. When this happened under the 13th Amendment, it undoubtedly honored the soldiers by proving that their deaths had meaning, meaning found in the noble cause of ending the atrocities that slaves faced. This was the intention that President Lincoln had in mind to honor the soldiers in the first place, as he said, “that these dead shall not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” It is known by his later actions with the Emancipation Proclamation that he meant ending slavery as the new birth of freedom, along with the fact that earlier, he mentioned all men being created equal in a reference to the Declaration of Independence. The soldiers’ sacrifice led to the liberation of nearly four million people living under the cruel conditions that once forced them to work from dawn to dusk, restricted their travel, and left …show more content…
An example of such opportunity for growth was the Homestead Act, which distributed public lands to qualified people willing to live and work on them. Because the men in government who opposed leaving the new land free of slavery left to join the Confederacy, the decision to populate the west with those trying to work and get ahead in America, instead of turning it into more land for slaves to be forced to work, was made and provided the applicants with a plot of 160 acres, allowing them to rise to the property-owning independence of profiting off of their own work. Benjamin Arrington, a contributor to the National Park Service’s The Civil War Remembered essay collection, wrote that, “The war actually provided the North with an opportunity to establish and dominate America's industrial and economic future.” The Homestead Act was part of the North’s plan to do just that, and of course, it was the soldiers who fought that war, who gave their last full measures of devotion to that war. The opportunities presented by an economy uncentered around an enslaved workforce could never have been offered to the tired, poor, and huddled masses coming to make their way in the United States if, as it was in the South, all the wealth was concentrated by the slave owners. Because of the
Nobody wants a meaningless death. Nobody wants a wasted life that could have meant more. The large scale that war presents terrible loss inevitably gives rise to the comparison of the outcome to the sacrifices made to achieve it. Out of the Civil War, the 13th Amendment freed the slaves, but also honored the fallen soldiers of the war by ensuring that their deaths were given for the worthy cause of abolishing the immoral practice of slavery, which then allowed economic opportunity to flourish westwards through the free economy.
As in any war, the deaths of soldiers was something to be expected, but as the Union death toll rose above 360,000, it became clear that this ultimate measure …show more content…
Slavery meant the complete degradation and subjugation of human beings, and to free those oppressed by it was a worthwhile cause. Stripped of their cultural identity, flogged or starved as punishment, sexually abused and bred, and denied any proper education, slaves were under the complete control of their owners. This unethical, inhumane, shameful practice needed to be brought to heel. When this happened under the 13th Amendment, it undoubtedly honored the soldiers by proving that their deaths had meaning, meaning found in the noble cause of ending the atrocities that slaves faced. This was the intention that President Lincoln had in mind to honor the soldiers in the first place, as he said, “that these dead shall not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” It is known by his later actions with the Emancipation Proclamation that he meant ending slavery as the new birth of freedom, along with the fact that earlier, he mentioned all men being created equal in a reference to the Declaration of Independence. The soldiers’ sacrifice led to the liberation of nearly four million people living under the cruel conditions that once forced them to work from dawn to dusk, restricted their travel, and left …show more content…
An example of such opportunity for growth was the Homestead Act, which distributed public lands to qualified people willing to live and work on them. Because the men in government who opposed leaving the new land free of slavery left to join the Confederacy, the decision to populate the west with those trying to work and get ahead in America, instead of turning it into more land for slaves to be forced to work, was made and provided the applicants with a plot of 160 acres, allowing them to rise to the property-owning independence of profiting off of their own work. Benjamin Arrington, a contributor to the National Park Service’s The Civil War Remembered essay collection, wrote that, “The war actually provided the North with an opportunity to establish and dominate America's industrial and economic future.” The Homestead Act was part of the North’s plan to do just that, and of course, it was the soldiers who fought that war, who gave their last full measures of devotion to that war. The opportunities presented by an economy uncentered around an enslaved workforce could never have been offered to the tired, poor, and huddled masses coming to make their way in the United States if, as it was in the South, all the wealth was concentrated by the slave owners. Because of the