The Civil War is known as one of the greatest American crisis. Our country has split in two, and we were fighting for the future of our country. It was during the eight years that determined if the United States of America actually stayed united, or would the South secede and form their own country?

Many people believe that the Civil war was only fought for the freedom of African-Americans. (Or, as they were called in those days, Negroes.) There were many things that Northern Americans did not believe in but Southerners did. But it was the ignorance of Southerners that caused the main friction of the war. Southerners were not aware about Negroes. Think about an alien from Mars landing in your backyard. Would you be scared of it? Southerners knew nothing about Negroes, and they didn't t know what to expect, so they had to make sure that they knew who was in authority.

It was because of this ignorant intolerance that fueled an eight-year war. Could the Civil War have been avoided? That is the question that many Historians and researchers think about. 500,000 people were killed, more than any other war in US history, could those lives have lived just a little longer if this war had not occurred? Along with those deaths, 20 BILLION dollars was spent in total for this war. That is not the most money on a war spent, but this is the 1860¹s, and 20 billion dollars is a lot of money.

The end of the war did not mean the end of the battle that the South had to fight. The reconstruction of the war took its toll on the South. During the famous, ³Sherman¹s March² most of the South¹s farmland was destroyed. Due to this, their economy was not doing very well. The south was determined on agriculture, and without farmland, it was very hard to rebuild all the damage.

Once again, think in your mind, was the Civil War worth fighting? If both the North and the South had known about tolerance, could half a million lives be spared, billions of dollars saved, a whole country united? We don¹t know the answer, but we hope to teach tolerance and prevent another Civil War to occur again.