The Civil War

Less than 80 years after gaining independence, the United States faced a civil war that nearly divided the nation permanently. From 1861 to 1865, the United States, often called the Union, fought against eleven Southern states that had left the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, or Confederacy.

The war grew out of disagreements that had developed over many years. The most important of these was slavery.

By the 1800s, slavery had become deeply connected to the economy and society of many Southern states. Millions of African Americans were enslaved and forced to work without freedom or pay.

Slavery also existed earlier in Northern states, but by the time of the Civil War, most Northern states had ended it. As the United States expanded westward, Americans repeatedly argued over whether slavery would be allowed in new states and territories.

Many people in the North opposed the spread of slavery. Some abolitionists wanted slavery ended everywhere. Many white Southerners, especially slaveholders and political leaders, wanted to protect slavery and allow it to expand.

Arguments about slavery also became connected to questions about the power of state governments and the federal government. Southern leaders often argued for states' rights, but one of the major rights they wanted states to protect was the right to maintain slavery.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery into new territories, although at that time he did not call for immediately ending slavery everywhere it already existed.

Southern leaders feared that Lincoln's election threatened the future of slavery. Beginning with South Carolina, eleven Southern states eventually left, or seceded from, the United States. They formed the Confederacy.

President Lincoln and the U.S. government rejected the idea that states could simply leave the Union.

The fighting began in April 1861 when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. military fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The Civil War had begun.

The Union included the states that remained in the United States. The Confederacy was made up of the eleven states that had seceded.

Both sides raised large armies, and fighting spread across much of the country. Battles such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg caused enormous numbers of deaths and injuries.

Civilians also suffered. Homes, farms, towns, railroads, and other property were damaged or destroyed. Families were separated, and many people were forced from their homes.

Enslaved African Americans were not simply waiting for others to decide their future. Thousands escaped from slavery and reached Union-controlled areas. Their actions placed growing pressure on the U.S. government to make freedom a larger goal of the war.

At first, Lincoln's main goal in the war was to preserve the Union. As the war continued, ending slavery became increasingly connected to the Union war effort.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared enslaved people free in areas of the Confederacy that were still rebelling against the United States.

The proclamation did not immediately free every enslaved person. It did not apply to enslaved people in loyal slave states, and the U.S. government could not immediately enforce it everywhere in Confederate territory.

Still, the Emancipation Proclamation was a major turning point. It made ending slavery an official goal connected to the Union war effort. It also allowed African American men to serve officially in the U.S. armed forces. By the end of the war, about 200,000 Black men had served in the U.S. Army and Navy.

After four years of fighting, Confederate armies were defeated. In April 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered a major Confederate army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Other Confederate forces surrendered soon afterward.

The Union survived, but the war came at an enormous human cost. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died, and many more were wounded.

Slavery was formally abolished throughout the United States later in 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.

The Civil War changed the United States in lasting ways.

Slavery was at the center of the conflict that led Southern states to secede. Their secession led to war between the Union and the Confederacy. As the war continued, emancipation became one of the Union's major goals. The Union victory preserved the United States and helped bring about the end of legal slavery.

The end of slavery, however, did not create immediate equality. After the war, the country faced difficult questions about citizenship, rights, rebuilding the South, and the place of formerly enslaved people in American society. Those struggles would continue during Reconstruction and long afterward.