The 1861-65 US war over union and slavery that killed more Americans than any other US war and remade the Constitution. The American Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, after eleven slaveholding states seceded following Abraham Lincoln's election. The Confederate States claimed independence; the United States fought to preserve the Union.
About 620,000-850,000 people died, scholarly range -- more US dead than in the two world wars combined for American forces. Industrial railroads, rifled muskets, and a Union naval blockade made it a modern war on a continental map. Gettysburg (1-3 July 1863) and Vicksburg (4 July 1863) were the twin hinges; Appomattox (9 April 1865) ended the main Confederate army.
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The 1861-65 US war over union and slavery that killed more Americans than any other US war and remade the Constitution. The American Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, after eleven slaveholding states seceded following Abraham Lincoln's election. The Confederate States claimed independence; the United States fought to preserve the Union.
About 620,000-850,000 people died, scholarly range -- more US dead than in the two world wars combined for American forces. Industrial railroads, rifled muskets, and a Union naval blockade made it a modern war on a continental map. Gettysburg (1-3 July 1863) and Vicksburg (4 July 1863) were the twin hinges; Appomattox (9 April 1865) ended the main Confederate army.
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments recast the Constitution. Reconstruction (1865-77) was a second political war that white supremacist "Redemption" later rolled back. English-speaking memory outside the US treats this as the great American epic; inside the US it remains a live argument about flags, statues and school books.
Lincoln's 1860 election, without southern electoral votes, triggered secession conventions. The Confederate constitution explicitly protected slavery. Sumter forced the upper South to choose; Virginia's departure put the war's capital pair -- Washington and Richmond -- a hundred miles apart.
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