American Civil War

or Civil War or War Between the States

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendering to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court …

(credit: The Granger Collection, New York)

(1861–65) Conflict between the U.S. federal government and 11 Southern states that fought to secede from the Union. It arose out of disputes over the issues of slavery, trade and tariffs, and the doctrine of states' rights. In the 1840s and '50s, Northern opposition to slavery in the Western territories caused the Southern states to fear that existing slaveholdings, which formed the economic base of the South, were also in danger. By the 1850s abolitionism was growing in the North, and when the antislavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the Southern states seceded to protect what they saw as their right to keep slaves. They were organized as the Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Northern states of the federal Union, under Lincoln, commanded more than twice the population of the Confederacy and held greater advantages in manufacturing and transportation capacity. The war began in Charleston, S.C., when Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Both sides quickly raised armies. In July 1861, 30,000 Union troops marched toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, Va., but were stopped by Confederate forces in the Battle of Bull Run and forced to retreat to Washington, D.C. The defeat shocked the Union, which called for 500,000 more recruits. The war's first major campaign began in February 1862, when Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant captured Confederate forts in western Tennessee. Union victories at the battles of Shiloh and New Orleans followed. In the East, Robert E. Lee won several Confederate victories in the Seven Days' Battles and, after defeat at the Battle of Antietam, in the Battle of Fredericksburg (December 1862). After the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee invaded the North and engaged Union forces under George Meade at the momentous Battle of Gettysburg. The war's turning point in the West occurred in July 1863 with Grant's success in the Vicksburg Campaign, which brought the entire Mississippi River under Union control. Grant's command was expanded after the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, and in March 1864 Lincoln gave him supreme command of the Union armies. He began a strategy of attrition and, despite heavy Union casualties at the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, began to surround Lee's troops in Petersburg, Va. (see Petersburg Campaign). Meanwhile William T. Sherman captured Atlanta in September (see Atlanta Campaign), set out on a destructive march through Georgia, and soon captured Savannah. Grant captured Richmond on April 3, 1865, and accepted Lee's surrender on April 9 at Appomattox Court House. On April 26 Sherman received the surrender of Joseph Johnston, thereby ending the war. The mortality rates of the war were staggering—there were about 620,000 deaths out of a total of 2.4 million soldiers. The South was devastated. But the Union was preserved, and slavery was abolished.