Blog 20: Fed Vs AntiFed Interview

The Civil War, or the War Between the States, was mainly about slavery. The war was between 11 southern slave states, and the rest of the United States. The southern states declared their secession and called themselves the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861 Confederates attacked a military base in South Carolina. President Lincoln called for the other states to make volunteer armies and take back the federal property. In September of 1862, Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery.


The southern states were anti-federalists because they did not want the government interfering and ending slavery. The federalists were fighting to end it because it was wrong. The confederate commander Robert E. Lee eventually surrendered, ending the war. This meant the end of slavery, and it strengthened the federal government.

I interviewed my brother Gabriel Alsheikh, and asked him if he thought it was okay for the southern states to have slavery and he replied saying, "No, of course not!" I asked him what his thoughts were on the war and he said that it was good that the Union was helping to save the slaves. Later in our discussion we were talking about after the war and he said, "Even following the war, when the African Americans were 'free', many of them still lived on the plantation where they worked to earn the bare minimum to live." Which is true, because although the federalists thought they had won, they still had not. There were wage slaves and African Americans were not given the same rights as white people.