The American Civil War, commonly known as the War Between the States, was a four-year conflict (1861–1655) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America.
Prelude to war
The secession of the Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, in chronological order) in 1860–61 and the subsequent outbreak of These conflicts were the culmination of decades of rising sectional hostility over slavery. Between 1815 and 1861, the Northern States’ economies were quickly modernising and diversifying. Although agriculture remained the dominant sector in the North (mainly small farms that relied on free labour), industrialization had taken hold. Furthermore, Northerners had made significant investments in an extensive and diverse transportation system comprised of canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network comprised of inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as the telegraph.
The Southern economy, on the other hand, was based mostly on huge farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and relied heavily on slave labour. Rather than investing in factories or railroads, as Northerners had done, Southerners invested in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, the free (nonslaveholding) states had received 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing. Even as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sensible financial decision for Southerners. Cotton, the South’s defining crop, had surged in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—had risen in lockstep. By 1860, Southern whites had twice the per capita income of Northerners, and three-fifths of the country’s wealthiest individuals were Southerners.
Slavery’s expansion into new territories and states has been a source of contention since the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When Missouri, a slave colony, sought statehood in 1818, Congress argued for two years before reaching the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first in a series of political agreements resulting from disagreements between pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties over the spread of the “unusual institution” into the West. The conclusion of the Mexican-American Civil War in 1848 and the nearly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometres) of extra territory gained as a result lent a fresh sense of urgency to the conflict. In the 1850s, an increasing number of Northerners, motivated by a sense of morality or a desire to defend free work, came to believe that bondage should be abolished. White Southerners felt that limiting the expansion of slavery would doom the institution.
Over the decade, the sides got more polarised, and politicians were less willing to compromise. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860, seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) followed through on their threat and seceded, forming the Confederate States of America.
Rebels fired on Fort Sumter near Charleston’s port early on April 12, 1861. The first battle of the bloodiest US conflict killed no one. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his 85 soldiers to P.G.T. Beauregard’s Confederates. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded within weeks. With the country at civil war, President Lincoln summoned 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He declared a naval blockade on the Confederate states, despite the fact that he argued they were not legally sovereign countries but rather states in revolt. He also asked the secretary of the Treasury to advance $2 million to help with army mobilisation, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, first along the East Coast and then throughout the country. The Confederate administration had already authorised a call for 100,000 soldiers to serve for at least six months, which was quickly increased to 400,000.
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