Civil War Scrapbook

The American Civil War was a domestic conflict that took place between 1861 and 1865. After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, tensions between Northern and Southern states regarding slavery and westward expansion came to a head when seven southern states seceded to form the Confederate States of America. It was the deadliest war in history to take place on American soil, with estimates of 620,000 soldiers killed.

For decades, there had been a dramatic difference between the economies of the North and the South. While northern states had established manufacturing and industry, the southern states’ economy was agriculturally based, relying on the labor of enslaved Africans. As abolitionist sentiment grew in the North, motivated by both moral and free labor reasons, the South felt that their economy and way of life was being threatened. These states also clashed when it came to new states being added in the West: pro and anti-slavery groups clashed in whether slavery should be allowed in these new territories. When Lincoln took office in March of 1861, Confederate rebels threatened Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, ultimately firing the first shots of the Civil War.

The war was initially thought of as a conflict that would be put to an end quickly, with the Union’s advantages in population and manufacturing; however, the strength of the Confederate forces were displayed in the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, showing that the war would likely extend far beyond original estimates. Confederate General Robert E. Lee led the Confederate army in several victories over mismanaged Union Troops, and invaded Maryland in September 1862. After tremendous losses in the Battle of Antietam, Lee invaded Pennsylvania, but the Battle of Gettysburg forced him to retreat to Virginia, after which he never again invaded the North.

After the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln felt that the Union forces were strong enough for him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he signed on January 1st, 1863, ending slavery in all Confederate states. This had the effect of shifting the public opinion of the war in favor of the union, as it redefined the focus of the war to the moral outrage against slavery. In 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant started the Overland Campaign, in which he tried to destroy Lee’s army with a strategy of attrition. When this failed, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led his famous “March to the Sea” in which he marched from Atlanta to Savannah, burning and ravaging the Georgia countryside along the way, and exhausting the South.

The war is thought to have ended on April 9th, 1865, when Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. This was followed by the surrender of several Confederate generals throughout the South. This resulted in four million enslaved people being freed, and the collapse of the Confederacy, which faced economic and psychological devastation from the war. The Reconstruction Era followed the war, in which the United States attempted to establish national unity again, and civil and political rights were guaranteed to formerly enslaved persons via three new constitutional amendments.