I don't have a specific topic, you can choose it Research Paper - 1

I don't have a specific topic, you can choose it - Research Paper Example Much was changing in America. America was at a crossroads in the middle of the 19th century. The country had been founded with a cry of liberty and freedom for all. In fact the country was remarkably free and democratic. And yet, the Constitution still permitted American citizens to hold other human beings in bondage as slave. This was a truly strange state of affairs, as Harper’s, a liberal newspaper of the time was at pains to point out. There were some who saw this war as a catastrophe that would destroy the country. It is indisputable that millions died for their various causes. But as John Quincy Adams once famously said in 1820, forty years before the war began: If slavery be the destined sword of the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself. A dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding States, combined with a war between the two severed portions of the Union. It seems to me that its result might be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that, as God shall judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired (Haysville). Throughout this issue of Harper’s we can see that the Civil War is coming to an end. The Union is becoming triumphant and is at the gates of Petersburg, one of the last redoubts of the Confederate Army. General William Tecumsah Sherman is laying waste to Georgia in an effort to prevent the Confederate Army, which was led by Robert E. Lee from surviving off the land. The Union wanted to have the Confederate’s surrender and end the war. They did not want Confederate soldiers continuing to mount a guerilla war from the margins. What is fascinating about seeing this snapshot in time is not only what has