The American Civil War is the bloody dispute in which the United States has ever engaged . More than 600,000 American soldiers lost their lives in four years [ source : Library of Congress ] at a sentence when the total U.S.populationwas around 34,000,000 [ source : U.S. Census ] . This is relative to about 5.2 million Americans pass away in a four - yr period of time start in 2008 .
No one – no matter how honored – was nontaxable from the divisiveness of the Civil War . While she and her married man correspond the Union ’s interestingness , First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln had six close relatives who fight for the Confederacy . Three died in conflict [ reference : NNDB ] . And the loss leader of the Confederate Army , Gen. Robert E. Lee , resigned from his 30 - year post in theU.S. Armyto engagement for the Confederacy . Perhaps no family was more feign by the water parting between North and South than the Crittenden menage , though .
John J. Crittenden was a senator from Kentucky , the state possibly most divided by the Civil War . Sen. Crittenden struggled to accommodate his state together as heterodox factions debated over whether to side with the Union or Confederacy . earlier , Kentucky had been impersonal . But after contingent from both the Union and Confederacy traveled to Kentucky ( Confederate troop entered first ) , the state government became divided . Crittenden was torn by the difference of opinion between the Union and the Confederacy . While he at long last remained truehearted to the United States , he also purport a plan ( theCrittenden Compromise ) which called for the Union government to leave the issue of slavery to the res publica [ source : Murfreesboro Post ] . His design ultimately fail .
Kentucky ’s ambivalence was shine in the Crittenden fellowship as well . The senator ’s son , George Bibb Crittenden and Thomas Leonidas Crittenden , both service as generals in the Civil War . However , each press for a unlike side . While George , the firstborn , answer the Confederacy , Thomas commanded Union troop .
Read about the Crittenden brothers on the next page .
George and Thomas Crittenden
George Bibb Crittenden was something of a radical soldier throughout his lifetime . He certainly had something of a rebellious nature : George fight back against the MexicanArmyfor an autonomous Texas in the 1840s , and he sided with the Confederacy when the Civil War began between the State Department . George rose quickly in the Confederate ranks from foot colonel , to brigadier general and to major superior general in less than a year . His drinking essay a problem for him in these higher stations , however .
A bad defeat in the clash with Union forces at Mill Springs , Ky. , stimulate him to be transferred off the front stock . Rumors that he ’d been intoxicated during the battle further sully him [ source : Brown ] . Still , he retained his rank – until he was divulge inebriated later that yr at his military post in Mississippi and was courtroom - martialed [ beginning : TSHA ] .
George resigned from the Army but returned to fight until the closing of the Civil War , this clip as an enlisted soldier .
Though his younger brother Thomas had a starkly dissimilar demeanor , he suffered a destiny similar to George ’s . Thomas was the more sedate of the Crittenden brothers . While George studied practice of law , Thomas became a practicing lawyer and achieve the social status of U.S. consul in England [ source : Murfreesboro Post ] .
Thomas was a talented commanding officer , but his repute was harm by others less talented than him . As major general in the Union , he commanded flanks of flock during a number of battles . The Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia , at which the Union forces were lead by Gen. William Rosencrans , try out to be the 2nd bloodiest conflict of the Civil War . In just two day , both side hear 34,624 casualties [ origin : NPS ] .
After the fight , a Confederate victory , Rosencrans incorrectly attributed the licking to Thomas Crittenden . The major loss was enough for the Union general to relieve Crittenden of his command [ beginning : Murfreesboro Post ] . He finally regained his status after Rosencrans remain to wage losing engagement , however .
distinctly , the brothers had different role , but what motivates members of the same folk to fight on polar sides of a warfare ? We ’ll research civil strife on the next varlet .
Opposite Ideologies, Opposite Sides
Exploring why two brothers would fight on opposite sides of the Civil War is no promiscuous task : It ’s unmanageable not to overestimate their motive . This is especially dead on target when the partitioning of a sept seems to think over the divisions of an intact country , as the Crittendens come along to . It ’s important to call up that the motives behind the Civil War , like the people involved in it , were complex and multilayered . It ’s easy to stray into generalizations , claiming that George represented a drunken and malcontent South and Thomas stood for the sedate and cosmopolitan North . But neither of these interpretations accurately represents either side – or eitherman .
Neither Thomas nor George left any write report of their perspectives . It ’s up to us to decipher their need . The brothers did n’t die in the Civil War . And there ’s no evidence that the Crittenden boy ever fought one another in the same conflict . But their story reveals the truth in the oftentimes - used term to name the Civil War , the " Brothers ' warfare " [ source : PBS ] .
In the United States , the sectionalization between North and South that began during the Civil War has left a endure force on the internal psyche . It seems unthinkable in the 21st century that state could secede – let alone that Americans would fight one another in battle . While the U.S. has suffered the strife of a polite war only once , other countries have get word their citizens engage in on-going battles over religious and political divisions .
Many of these stress have been ongoing for millennia , flaring up periodically . In A.D. 661 , 29 years after the oracle Mohammed ’s last , a dispute over whom was the lawful drawing card of Islam direct to a sectionalisation among members of the Islamic organized religion [ source : CRF ] . The upshot was Islam splitting into two oppose faction – Sunnis and Shiites . The tension between Sunnis and Shiites has heat in centuries of furiousness , most late after the U.S. encroachment of Iraq . As a result of this invasion , the Sunnis and Shiites living in Iraq and surround Nation plunge into a secular civil state of war between members of the same faith [ informant : WSJ ] .
In 1990 , long - check hatred between the African nation of Rwanda ’s Tutsi and Hutu populations resulted in polite state of war . The two endemic tribe had fight for resources like water in the impoverishment - stricken area for decades after the Hutus overthrew the ruling Tutsis . By the late eighties , a rebel faction of Tutsis had developed and was strong enough to attempt retaking ascendancy of Rwanda in 1990 . The ensuing polite state of war ensue in the racial extermination of 800,000 Tutsis and the Hutus who sympathized with them [ source : CIA ] . In a reverse recreation of the 1959 putsch , the Tutsis regained control . Some Hutus that were forced out of the commonwealth have regrouped as a rebel faction .
When a res publica ’s masses wage war , the results are tragic and can not be discounted . But somehow a civil war smacks of something darker , almost cannibalistic . Civil war pits members of the same faith , the same nationality , and , in some of the bad case , the same kin against one another . It takes mysterious conviction to choose ideology over house , which makes civil war all the more dangerous .
