Civil War Paper and Presentation

Over 600,000 Americans lost their lives in" rel="nofollow">in the Civil War, with the Northern troops sufferin" rel="nofollow">ing higher losses. The North believed the sacrifice was worth it: The slaves were freed and the Union was preserved. The people of the South, on the other hand, began almost immediately to glorify the "lost cause." Their generals became mythic heroes, and they looked wistfully back at the antebellum period. They almost regretted surrenderin" rel="nofollow">ing. Historian Shelby Foote said,"Any understandin" rel="nofollow">ing of this nation has to be based ... on an understandin" rel="nofollow">ing of the Civil War.... The Civil War defin" rel="nofollow">ined us as what we are, and it opened us to bein" rel="nofollow">ing what we became, good and bad thin" rel="nofollow">ings. It is very necessary if you're goin" rel="nofollow">ing to understand the American character in" rel="nofollow">in the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-19th century. It was the crossroads of our bein" rel="nofollow">ing." Bums, K. & Bums, R. (Writers). (1990). Episode 1: The cause (1861). In K. Burns (Producer), The Civil War. Arlin" rel="nofollow">ington, VA: Public Broadcastin" rel="nofollow">ing Service. Write a 700- to 1,050-word paper in" rel="nofollow">in which you answer the followin" rel="nofollow">ing questions: What do you thin" rel="nofollow">ink Foote meant in" rel="nofollow">in the passage quoted above? How does the Civil War defin" rel="nofollow">ine the United States? If the Southern generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were so brilliant, and if the South lost fewer men than the North, why did the North win" rel="nofollow">in?