American Civil War: Causes, Issues, and Consequences

Overview of the Civil War

• The Civil War is the central event in America's history.
• The Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States.
• The Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would become.

Key Issues Resolved

• It resolved whether the United States would be a dissolvable confederation or a unified nation with a strong national government.
• It addressed whether a nation founded on the principle of equal liberty could continue as the world's largest slaveholding country.

Consequences of the War

• The Union victory preserved the United States and ended slavery.
• Approximately 625,000 lives were lost, which is nearly equal to the total American military deaths in all other wars combined.
• The American Civil War was the most destructive conflict in the Western world between the Napoleonic Wars (ended 1815) and World War I (1914).

Causes of the War

• The Civil War began due to disagreements between free and slave states regarding the federal government's power to regulate slavery in new territories.
• Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, won the 1860 election on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery.
• Seven states in the Deep South seceded and formed the Confederate States of America.
• The Lincoln administration and most Northerners rejected the legitimacy of secession fearing it would undermine democracy.

Key Events of the War

• The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay.
• Lincoln called for a militia to suppress the insurrection, leading four more slave states to join the Confederacy.
• By the end of 1861, about a million armed men faced each other along a 1200-mile line from Virginia to Missouri.
• Early battles occurred near Manassas Junction, Wilson's Creek, Cape Hatteras, and Port Royal.
• Union victories in western Virginia led to the creation of West Virginia.
• The Union navy established a blockade at Port Royal to cut off Confederate access to the outside world.

Major Battles and Turning Points

• Significant battles in 1862 included Shiloh, Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Antietam.
• Later campaigns and battles included Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Atlanta.
• By 1864, the Union shifted to a "total war" strategy to destroy the Old South and its institution of slavery.
• President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address dedicated a cemetery for Union soldiers and spoke of a "new birth of freedom."

Union Victory

• From 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia resisted the Union Army of the Potomac.
• Ulysses S. Grant became general in chief of all Union armies in 1864 and eventually brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in April 1865.
• Union forces won victories in the western theater, led by generals like William Tecumseh Sherman and George Thomas.
• Sherman's march devastated the economic infrastructure of Georgia and South Carolina.
• Thomas destroyed the Confederacy's Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville.

End of the War

• By the spring of 1865, all major Confederate armies surrendered.
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on May 10, 1865, marking the end of the war.
• The nation began the process of rebuilding, aimed at creating a united and slavery-free country.