American Civil War
Fought from 1861 to 1865 between the United States and eleven Southern slave states that seceded to form the Confederacy, the American Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in the nation's history, costing some 620,000 to 750,000 lives. Its root was slavery — above all whether the institution would expand into the western territories — and beneath it the question of whether a state could lawfully leave the Union. After Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election the Deep South seceded, and war opened at Fort Sumter in April 1861. The North's advantages were structural: far greater population, industry and railroads, and a naval blockade that slowly strangled Southern trade. After bloody stalemate in the East, the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 turned the tide, and the 'hard war' strategy of Grant and Sherman broke the Confederacy's capacity and will by April 1865. The war destroyed slavery, settled the indivisibility of the Union, and hugely strengthened the federal government — forging the continental industrial power that would dominate the twentieth century, while leaving the unfinished struggle over the meaning of Black freedom to Reconstruction and the century beyond.
- Year: 1861 CE
- Category: Military
