This is the story of two communities relatively close to one another, sharing considerable characteristics such as being relatively young and idealistic and feeling very strongly about their particular way of life and their freedoms. This description, of course, refers to the United States just before the Civil War. On April 12, 1861, a group of soldiers from the newly founded Confederate States of America opened fire on Fort Sumter, a United States Army outpost on the coast of South Carolina. This barrage marked the beginning of the bloodiest four years ever witnessed on American soil. By the end of the struggle, more than half a million men had given their lives for their particular cause, yet the question arose of how a nation so recently founded on the moral principles of liberty and justice could slip into a war with herself.
This war, being no different from most others, stemmed from disagreement, difference, and defiance. The issue at stake regarded the question of where regional autonomy stopped and federal power claimed superiority. The South felt that individual states, cities, and communities should be permitted to decide issues of policy; such as the hotly debated topic of slavery. In opposition, the North believed that one nation should have a universal set of rules for all states, cities, and communities to obey. The debate between the North and the South could not be answered and on that fateful spring day, bullets and cannonballs replaced words and laws in this argument. .
The soldiers that fought in this war had no real physical differences except, perhaps, place of birth and the color of their uniforms. However, they were divided into the Union and Confederate armies and forced to fight brother against brother and father against son. Looking deeper into the thoughts and beliefs of these soldiers one can observe that the amount of similarities are striking and numerous.
