There were six hundred and twenty thousand deaths over the fight of slavery. There are a total of 1.2 million deaths from all wars combined. The Civil War was the most deadly war the United States has ever been in. Believe it or not, there is a benefit that had come from all of the deaths from the war. Lives were taken, yet they provided proof that patriotism is real. The war had labeled the country as united as one and not as many. A national consciousness rose post-war and our national identity was more defined than ever before. But the one thing that stands out to me and scares me is that the level of change in some patriotic practices. Pre-civil war, national history was unimportant and only 6 states required teaching of national history in public schools. It’s scary because that allows room for loss of knowledge, which may make all of the information that we know about the nations history before 1860s inaccurate.
Without the Civil War we may not know as much as we do now from our history. The beauty of it is not the hundreds of thousands of deaths, but the patriotism that was ignited and the love and the studying for our country. Those people took their lives and fought for our country for the benefit of a united nation.