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The American Civil War was fought between the United States (the Union) and eleven Southern slaveholding states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America. Its root cause was slavery, and especially the bitter dispute over whether slavery could expand into the western territories, which came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed that expansion, was elected president in 1860. The Union's larger population, industry and navy eventually wore down the Confederacy, and the war turned from a fight to save the Union into a war that ended slavery. Between about 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers died, more than in any other American war.
Trace the crises of the 1850s on a timeline, from the Compromise of 1850 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision and John Brown's raid, and ask why compromise failed. Read the secession declarations of states such as Mississippi or South Carolina to see what their authors said the cause was. Compare the resources of each side in a table, and study the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure that changed the war's purpose.
The Constitution had protected slavery through compromises, as you saw when you studied its creation. In the 1800s the country grew west, and each new territory raised the same question: would it allow slavery? The Missouri Compromise of 1820 drew a line. The Compromise of 1850 added a harsh Fugitive Slave Act. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers vote on slavery, which led to violence in Kansas. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories. Abolitionists, whose movement you have studied, pressed their case, and in 1859 John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry hoping to start a slave revolt.
The new Republican Party opposed the spread of slavery. When its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidency in 1860 without carrying a single Southern state, South Carolina seceded. Six more states followed and formed the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as president. In April 1861 Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, and four more states joined the Confederacy.
The Union had about 22 million people, most of the nation's factories and railroads, and a navy that blockaded Southern ports. The Confederacy had about 9 million people, roughly 3.5 million of them enslaved, and skilled generals such as Robert E. Lee. Early Confederate victories made a quick Union win impossible.
After the battle of Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. From January 1, 1863, it declared enslaved people in rebel areas free and opened the army to Black soldiers. The war now aimed to end slavery. In July 1863 the Union won at Gettysburg and took Vicksburg, gaining the Mississippi River. In 1864 Ulysses S. Grant pressed Lee in Virginia while William T. Sherman took Atlanta and marched to the sea, destroying railways, crops and supplies.
Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Days later, Lincoln was assassinated. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery. The country now faced the task of rebuilding the South and deciding what freedom would mean.
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