The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by Southern states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with a Union victory, dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.
Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States. The Confederate States seized United States forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederate States bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederate river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. Union general Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864.
Inflicting an ever-tightening naval Union blockade of Confederate ports, the Union army marshaled resources and the manpower to attack the Confederate States army from all directions. That led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day.
By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery (except as punishment for a crime) and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, reunite by bringing the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed black slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States, and it remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Interest continues in the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in U.S. history.
Origins
The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery. Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree, however, on the Union's reasons for refusing to allow the South to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, including the seceding states' own secession documents. After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially, the United States Congress had admitted new states into the Union in each pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters. By mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades. The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.
Background factors in the run-up to the Civil War were partisan politics, abolitionism, nullification versus secession, Southern and Northern nationalism, expansionism, economics, and modernization in the antebellum period. As a panel of historians said in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."
Lincoln's election
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction. His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.
Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded the South time to prepare for war. Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The US government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which the Confederacy claimed were now in their territory.
According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the American Revolution, the associated American Revolutionary War and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic. Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, with its government selected by vote of the people, in the face of internal attempts to destroy it or separate from it?
Outbreak of the war
Secession crisis
Lincoln's election had provoked South Carolina's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede. On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration. It argued in favor of states' rights for slave owners. However, it also complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
Among the ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union. At least four—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas—provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming the movement to abolish slavery and its influence in the North. Southern states believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause made slaveholding a constitutional right. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861.
They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing president James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4. Buchanan said the Dred Scott decision was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". A quarter of the US army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general, David E. Twiggs, who joined the Confederacy.
Referring to the seven Southern states that initially seceded, historian James M. McPherson wrote, "Slaves constituted 47 percent of the population of the Confederate states but only 24 percent in the upper South." He added, "In the four border states the proportion of slaves and slaveowners was less than half what it was in the eleven states that seceded." Eastern Tennessee and western Virginia also had less slavery and showed more support for the Union than the rest of the Confederacy. West Virginia became a new state in 1863, formed from 50 counties of Virginia, citing sectional differences and taxation, though half the counties were secessionist.
Even within Virginia and Tennessee, which had seceded, McPherson wrote, "The voters in 35 Virginia counties with a slave population of only 2.5 percent opposed secession by a margin of three to one, while voters in the remainder of the state, where slaves constituted 36 percent of the population, supported secession by more than ten to one. The thirty counties of east Tennessee that rejected secession by more than two to one contained a slave population of only 8 percent, while the rest of the state, with a slave population of 30 percent, voted for secession by a margin of seven to one."
As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges, a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad, the National Bank Act, authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862, the end of slavery in the District of Columbia, and a ban on slavery in the territories. The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced an income tax to help finance the war.
In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south. The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it. Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down the Union. A February peace conference in Washington proposed a solution similar to the Compromise, but it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the Corwin Amendment, an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient. The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4.
On March 4, Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his first inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was established to form a more perfect union than existed under the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a binding contract, and that secession was "legally void". He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized. "The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union." Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be US policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.
The Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such. Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize.
Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis was Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination. Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful. In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of government, the "prime minister" behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed. Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the seceded states: Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
Battle of Fort Sumter
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter, which is in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing president Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major Robert Anderson. Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to the stalwart island Fort Sumter. Anderson's actions made him a hero in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly incited a war, but an informal truce held. On March 5, Lincoln was informed that the fort was low on supplies.
Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration. Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out. But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally thereafter. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort. Richard N. Current wrote: