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Civil War: A Defining Moment in U.S.
History
By Gary W. Gallagher, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, adapted by Newsela staff on 12.01. Word Count 845
TOP: "The Battle of Antietam," by Kurz & Allison (1878), depicts the fighting at Burnside's Bridge. Courtesy of Wikipedia. BOTTOM: Scott's great snake. Cartoon map illustrating General Winfield Scott's plan to crush the Confederacy, economically. It is sometimes called the "Anaconda plan." J.B. Ellott, Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Longstanding tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when 11 slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. War broke out in April 1861, as Southern states insisted on their right to leave the Union and the Northern States refused to let them go. Four years of fighting claimed over 620,000 lives. The war affected countless civilians, and freed four million African-American slaves.
The battle over slavery set the stage for secession and war.
Arguments over slavery
The writers of the United States Constitution had compromised on the issue of slavery. They created a democratic republic that ensured its citizens' freedoms, while also reassuring the South that states could keep their slaves.
Decades later, however, arguments over slavery were creating trouble in national politics. A major milepost on the way to war was the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which said that slaves could not win their freedom simply by crossing into a free state. Around this time, many Northern voters came to view the Democratic Party as pro- Southern. The Republican Party, which began in the mid-1850s, strongly opposed extending slavery into the territories and had little support in the South.
The election of 1860 triggered the secession crisis. President Abraham Lincoln and the victorious Republicans had promised not to interfere with slavery in states where it already existed. Still, they were firmly against spreading slavery into new territories in the West. Between December 1860 and February 1861, seven Deep South states seceded, or left, the Union, forming the Confederacy. In April 1861, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, setting off the war.
Millions of soldiers
Both sides recruited more soldiers than ever before in American history. With an 1860 population of just more than 1 million military-age white males, the Confederacy had between 800,000 and 900,000 men in uniform. The United States had about 2.1 million soldiers, about half of its 1860 military-age population. More than 200,000 African- American men also fought for the North.
In 1861, the United States blocked southern sea ports so that ships could not land and the Confederacy could not receive goods. U.S. troops also seized control of the Mississippi River and attacked the interior of the Confederate states. For most of the war, the Confederacy tried to protect as much of its territory as possible, while occasionally launching attacks. The most important were the Battle of Antietam, which took place in Maryland in 1862, and the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place in Pennsylvania in 1863.
The war affected everyone
The Confederacy finally surrendered in the spring of 1865.
The war touched the lives of almost every American. Women worked as nurses (previously a male job), as well as government clerks, factory workers, and as members of groups that helped soldiers. Thousands of women also ran farms.
Both sides used the latest technology. Railroads moved hundreds of thousands of soldiers and vast quantities of supplies. Telegraphs allowed both governments to coordinate military movements. Both sides also used the latest military technology, such as the rifle musket and ironclad warships.
No group was more directly affected than the four million slaves, who emerged from the war with their freedom. Most white Northerners considered the war primarily a struggle to save the Union. As fighting dragged on and casualties grew, however, Lincoln presented emancipation as a tool that would end the war sooner. Most whites in the North eventually
