Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of , lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined.
The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in and the onset of World War I in The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America.
The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries. Claiming this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day opened fire on the federal garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender.
Lincoln called out the militia to suppress this "insurrection. By the end of nearly a million armed men confronted each other along a line stretching miles from Virginia to Missouri. Several battles had already taken place--near Manassas Junction in Virginia, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation of the new state of West Virginia, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base for a blockade to shut off the Confederacy's access to the outside world.
Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin in Kentucky. He worked as a shopkeeper and a lawyer before entering politics in the s. Alarmed by his anti-slavery stance, seven southern states seceded soon after he was elected president in —with four more states to soon follow. Lincoln declared that he would do everything necessary to keep the United States united as one country.
He refused to recognize the southern states as an independent nation and the Civil War erupted in the spring of On January 1, , Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation , which freed the slaves in the areas of the country that "shall then be in rebellion against the United States. Lincoln won re-election in against opponents who wanted to sign a peace treaty with the southern states.
Abraham Lincoln died at am the next morning. Slavery was concentrated mainly in the southern states by the midth century, where slaves were used as farm laborers, artisans, and house servants. Chattel slavery formed the backbone of the largely agrarian southern economy. In the northern states, industry largely drove the economy. Many people in the north and the south believed that slavery was immoral and wrong, yet the institution remained, which created a large chasm on the political and social landscape.
While some northerners felt that southern politicians wielded too much power in the House and the Senate and that they would never be appeased. Still, from the earliest days of the United States through the antebellum years, politicians on both sides of the major issues attempted to find a compromise that would avoid the splitting of the country, and ultimately avert a war.
The Missouri Compromise , the Compromise of , the Kansas-Nebraska Act , and many others, all failed to steer the country away from secession and war. In the end, politicians on both sides of the aisle dug in their heels. When the southern states seceded from the Union, war was still not a certainty. Federal forts, barracks, and naval shipyards dotted the southern landscape. Many Regular Army officers clung tenaciously to their posts, rather than surrender their facilities to the growing southern military presence.
President Lincoln attempted to resupply these garrisons with food and provisions by sea. When the U. After a hour battle, the soldiers inside the fort surrendered to the Confederates. Legions of men from north and south rushed to their respective flags in the ensuing patriotic fervor. At the beginning of the Civil War, 22 million people lived in the North and 9 million people nearly 4 million of whom were slaves lived in the South.
The North also had more money, more factories, more horses, more railroads, and more farmland. On paper, these advantages made the United States much more powerful than the Confederate States. However, the Confederates were fighting defensively on territory that they knew well.
They also had the advantage of the sheer size of the Southern Confederacy. In the North and in the South, the war forced women into public life in ways they could scarcely have imagined a Notable outcomes of the wars included the When Southern rebels bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April , it was the start of a war between the Union and the secessionist Confederate States of America that would stretch on for four bloody years.
The war took a brutal toll. According to statistics compiled by Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Union Military Leaders. Fort Sumter. Confederate Leaders. Battles of Bull Run. Battle of Antietam. Civil War Artifacts. Civil War Sketchbook. Civil War Technology. American Civil War History.
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