From 1861 to 1865, the United States of America was engaged in a heated Civil War costing more than 620,000 lives. Our country was split in half, with the North strongly believed in the abolition of slavery, while the South believed in the right to continue to own slaves as property. The North and South, even as they were once united, have contrasting economic structures: the North being primarily focused on manufacturing, industry, and trade, while the South was primarily focused on agriculture and the booming cotton production, and so the Southerners viewed the North as thieves of their property, while Northerners believed that the economic benefit did not outweigh the detriment of human suffering. The South had politically underestimated…show more content… In the document from the New Orleans Daily Crescent in 1860, it stated, “We [the South] have never aggressed upon the North, nor sought to aggress upon the North...They have robbed us of our property…”. This being before the battle of Fort Sumter, it shows how rapidly the viewpoints of the Confederacy changed between this excerpt and the first battle of the Civil War. This quote displays the hypocrisy of the South, since a year later, the South had undoubtedly aggressed upon the North by attempting to take over federal land. In the Constitution, African Americans are not specifically included within the stated rights, and so based on the different interpretations of the rights of a man, the South had claimed that the North had robbed them of their property, yet the North argued that an African American should count as a man and not…show more content… In the letter written by Confederate General Mansfield Lovell on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, he predicted that “Lincoln’s proclamation will produce dissensions and trouble at the North, and will thus indirectly benefit our Cause[Secession]. The Democratic party there is not willing to go headlong into any abolition war.” In this quote, the Confederates predict the North’s failure and unwillingness to be united by the abolitionist cause. The South is arrogant and foolhardy in their illusions of Northern weakness. Opposingly, in the document from Harper’s Weekly in 1862, titled “Lincoln’s Last Warning,” it shows Abraham Lincoln with an axe about to cut the “tree of slavery,” where a villainously depicted Southerner grabs at the branches. This shows how the foundation of the Southern lifestyle is based on slavery, and how the Southerner did not expect Lincoln to be so intent on resolving the slavery issue and uniting the nation once again. As Union Sergeant Phineas Hager wrote in 1864, “...abolishing slavery will dignify labor…”. Here, the Union sergeant describes how after the Civil War, the country will undergo a change for the better, and the dignified labor from the Southerners would rectify the sins of the