Numerous a hopeful brief tale essayist or writer has longed for putting to paper a heartfelt story to match essentially approach the quintessential nationwide conflict novel Gone with the Breeze. The overt messages in Margaret Mitchell's best-seller were romance, treachery, occupation, and struggle. However, few comprehend the depth of research required to even construct a storyline comparable to Mitchell's. I've compiled my own knowledge and research on the American Civil War as a historian and fiction writer in the hope of pointing other writers who might not have a background in research in the right direction.
Whether we are academic historians, writers of short stories, or essayists, the level of research we are willing or able to conduct determines our fate. Our efforts will be firmly anchored in the appropriate historical time frame thanks to the depth we are able to achieve. Others may question our findings or subject matter, but they won't question our research unless we demonstrate our shallowness or rely on a questionable source or sources.
There are a variety of research sources, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.civil war pensions
sources from the source
Interviews with survivors, autobiographies, letters, diaries, records, and anything else that directly links the source to the participant or subject are all examples of this. Are these the best sources? No and yes. Yes, in the sense that you can hear what the horse is saying. Should an exploration paper on subjugation be completely founded on direct sources? No. The primary issue with first-hand sources is their bias. They are shaped by the individual's hopes and fears, often written or produced decades after the event, and time has shaped the source.
The feeling of the time can be perfectly captured by using first-hand sources. You will be able to deduce directly from the individual what they are thinking or feeling at any given time, so you won't have to guess. A microcosm of the society and its current events as seen through the source is also provided by first-hand accounts. First-hand accounts definitely belong on an historian's shelf, but when it comes to figuring out how they fit into the bigger picture of the events being written about, they should be carefully considered. As an illustration, a lot of the autobiographies and biographies written after World War II by German generals or from interviews with them after they were captured portray Hitler as a maniacal madman and themselves as innocent, sometimes frustrated, or ignorant participants. Since Hitler didn't endure the conflict, he was unable to be evaluated nor might he at any point protect himself. All of the material, whether autobiographical or based on interviews, portrays the subjects as victims and Hitler as the only one responsible for Germany's demise. It is impossible to deny that he played a significant role; he was, in fact, the supreme ruler, making him deserving of the accusation. However, the subjects' actions during the war are depicted in a different light in archival records than they were willing to admit.
Sources obtained secondhand In this case, secondhand sources come into play. With more data, they help even out the bias of first-hand accounts. Secondhand accounts may also be biased, but they tend to be biased in a different way, allowing the historian to fill in some details. They provide a second perspective on any event, but they are not reliable for determining the subject's intent or motivation. Since neither first-hand nor second-hand accounts provide a complete picture, criminals conduct interviews with participants and witnesses in the hope of developing one.
Reports, records, biographies, newspaper articles, and anything else produced by a non-participant after an event are examples of secondhand accounts.
Conflicting factors One must look back to the Revolutionary War and the documents that eventually established the United States of America in order to truly comprehend the factors that led to the periodic outbreaks of sectional conflict.
What of the beneath occasions caused the American Nationwide conflict?
All of the aforementioned Slavery The election of Lincoln in 1860 Anderson's refusal to surrender Fort If you chose anything other than Anderson's refusal to surrender Ft. Sumter in 1861 Missouri Compromise of 1820 You were wrong, Sumter. You would be like many others who have been taught from a young age that slavery was the cause of the Civil War if your first impulse was to choose slavery.
This is to emphasize the distinctions between a catalyst and a cause. Is it the spark or the wood that causes a fire to start? Wood is the fuel that gives the fire its life and plays a significant role in the fire. However, the spark's potential energy is merely the wood. Similarly, slavery had nothing to do with the spark that set off the first cannon to fire a shell at Sumter. However, the men on both sides of those cannon were motivated by the issue of slavery and their feelings. The issue of slavery was unquestionably at the center of the conflict between the sections, and indeed it was the factor that led to their division along philosophical lines. However, it goes far beyond that. Slavery was more than just the possession of human property. The belief that slavery needed to constantly move westward in order to maintain and feed itself, as arable land became depleted, was the source of power, control in Congress, the maintenance of the social order, and the differences between rural and urban society. In this sense, slavery was unquestionably a conflict-starting factor but not the root cause.
Abraham Lincoln has been scrutinized by present day and racial students of history for not pronouncing a reason for the conflict all along. Declaring that Lincoln gave the war a higher purpose with the Emancipation Proclamation serves a political and social agenda in an effort to elevate it. As a result, any historian's greatest foe is the filter they employ when conducting research. 100 percent objectivity can never be achieved, for we are what our identity is and that permits us to see and grasp our general surroundings.
It is real; By issuing the EP, Lincoln changed the war's purpose. This was a bold and calculated move. Either the end of the war on one side or the continuation of slavery on the other would have indicated this.
However, it is an act of post-event declaration, intended only to excuse or elevate one's standing in the present, and does not ascribe true motivation, to attribute such high-sounding qualities to one's actions.
Slavery is always at the heart of everything that happened during the war, so it's important to show it in its proper light when writing about it. Like a tear momentum in the sea, it is undetectable from the surface until one is trapped in it.
Following the firing at Fort The war was started as a struggle for the rights of an individual state to choose whether to leave the Union or if its association was binding once ratified, and Sumter and Lincoln called for ninety-day volunteers to put down the rebellion. As the war began, this remained the primary focus and culminated in the surrender of the last Confederate army at Bentonville, North Carolina. Appomattox was the first and most well-known surrender, but it was not the last. After the Federal victory at Antietam in 1863, the issues brought up only made the Federal resolve to end slavery once and for all a goal of victory. This made it a public declaration rather than just an assumed result.
Knowing this one thing will help you write a story or essay about the Civil War because it puts the pieces in the right place and lets you write from the point of view of a character caught in the middle of the conflict. It additionally tries not to credit inspirations to those characters that are not reasonable to the time.
