North Vs South Dbq Essay

Throughout the war, the North and the South’s viewpoints had been continuously changing. Their opinions were both similar and different throughout the war. Both sides initially believed they would win the war, swiftly and easily. Both also realized that their thought was wrong. The North carried the idea that they were morally just and correct. Some Southerners believed themselves to be right, while others had to go through major moral conflicts with themselves. All in all, both sides had their fair share of similarities and differences.

In the beginning, both the North and the South shared the idea that the war would end swiftly. The South believed that they should stay on the defensive end. They thought that if they kept defending themselves,

The North (Lincoln especially) wanted to stick to the ideals of the founding fathers and stop the expansion of slavery. They knew if they could start small, that it would eventually lead to the overall extinction of slavery (Document 1). Most people in the North saw the South as weak and morally wrong. In Document 3, it displays a political cartoon from the Harper’s Weekly, on June 8th, 1861. The cartoon shows Columbia, the representation of America, holding a scrawny man in a chokehold. Columbia, in this instance, represents the North as strong and morally correct. The scrawny man is a representation of the South, and he's trying to rip the constitution with weapons falling out of his pockets. His legs have the words, “treason” and “secession,” meaning that the legs that hold him are weak and morally wrong. The North views themselves as morally correct, powerful, and supported by the founding fathers, whilst the south is weak, morally incorrect, and tearing the constitution

For instance, document 2 displays an unreliable newspaper section from the New Orleans Daily Crescent, November 13, 1860. The newspaper is written in perspective of a Southerner (obviously), and never explicitly states what their property that’s been taken away is. The newspaper explains how the south only asked to be left alone, and how they never bothered the north, yet their “property” had been stolen, citizens murdered, they’ve been excluded from the territories, and their political, industrial, and social institutions have been ruined. The irony and back-handedness is that they’ve been, “robbed of their property,” yet their property is slaves who have been robbed of their freedoms. They newspaper proves that some people in the South genuinely believed that what they were doing was right and would cover up what their property truly was to seem less unjust. However, document 4 shows a different view lot of Southerner held. Robert E. Lee’s letter to his sister, written in April 1861, displays confliction, strong will, and loyalty to those close to him. Robert had originally fought for the Union and was even given the opportunity to be general for a union army. However, Robert couldn’t abandon and fight his home during the war. His family was in the South, and fighting for the confederacy would mean fighting his children, wife, and siblings. He choose to be with and fight for his family. He gave up his job and