The American Civil War

The American Civil War (1861-1865), which is also known by several other names, was a civil war between the United States of America (the "Union") and the Southern slave states of the newly formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Union included all of the free states and the five slaveholding border states and was led by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. Republicans opposed the expansion of slavery into territories owned by the United States, and their victory in the presidential election of 1860 resulted in seven Southern states declaring their secession from the Union even before Lincoln took office. The Union rejected secession, regarding it as rebellion.

Hostilities began on April 12 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a large volunteer army, then four more Southern states declared their secession. In the war's first year, the Union assumed control of the border states and established a naval blockade as both sides massed armies and resources. In 1862, battles such as Shiloh and Antietam caused massive casualties unprecedented in U.S. military history. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, which complicated the Confederacy's manpower shortages.

In the East, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won a series of victories over Union armies, but Lee's reverse at Gettysburg in early July, 1863 proved the turning point. The capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson by Ulysses S. Grant completed Union control of the Mississippi River. Grant fought bloody battles of attrition with Lee in 1864, forcing Lee to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Union general William Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, and began his famous March to the Sea, devastating a hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

The war, the deadliest in American history, caused 620,000 soldier deaths and an undetermined number of civilian casualties, ended slavery in the United States, restored the Union by settling the issues of nullification and secession and strengthened the role of the Federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war continue to shape contemporary American thought.

Source: Wapedia

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65 ) was the sixteenth President of the United States. He was a Republican and his presidency last from 1861until his assassination in 1861. He is regarded as one of the greatest presidents of the United States.

He was a determined opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, introducing laws, including Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and supporting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865), that ultimately led to the abolition of slavery.

In 1860, six states broke away from the Union (that is, from the United States) and they were then followed by another seven states. These 13 states set up their own Confederate States of American, with their own President (Jefferson Davis) and their own capital city (Richmond, Virginia).

As strongly as he was against slavery, however, Lincoln above all sought to "preserve the Union", using force if necessary. In his eyes, the break-away states were rebels against the United States' legally constituted government.

Lincoln undertook a very active leadership of the war effort, such as by selecting effective generals such as Ulysses S. Grant, and forcing the various factions of the Republican Party to co-operate

Lincoln was accused, on the one hand, by the opponents of the Civil War (the "Copperheads") for refusing to make a compromise with the South on slavery. On the other hand, he was accused by the abolitionist faction of the Republican Party for being too slow in abolishing slavery.

In fact, Lincoln, through his speeches such as the Gettysburg Address, successfully managed to encourage public opinion in favor of prosecuting the war and abolishing slavery.

At the end of the war, Lincoln encouraged the country to a moderate form of Reconstruction and a reunification of the country through through a large-hearted form of reconciliation between the North and South.

Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by the actor, Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's death created many difficulties for the Reconstruction that was just getting underway.

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Robert Edward Lee (1807-70 ) was the most famous general of the Confederate army during the American Civil War .

Lee had served as an officer in the U.S. Army for 32 years, including service in the Mexican-American War .

In 1861, when Virginia seceded from the United States, Lee threw his lot in with his state of Virginia and with the South (often referred to as the Confederacy or the Confederate States). He was appointed as senior military adviser to the Confederacy's President Jefferson Davis.

Lee won victories over the Union (the North) in the Seven Days Battles , the Second Battle of Bull Run , the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville. However, he was defeated in the Battle of Antietam in 1862, in 1863 in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania .

In the spring of 1864, Lee faced a new Union commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant , who began a series of campaigns to wear him down. Lee succeeded in inflicting heavy losses on Grant's Union forces during the Overland Campaign (1864) and the Siege of Petersburg (1864-1865), but he was unable to replace the losses to his own, Confederate force. He was finally forced to make a strategic retreat and then to make a surrender of the remaining Confederate field forces at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9 ,1865. In June 1865, the last of the remaining Confederate armies had surrendered.

Lee was renowned for being a clever and daring battlefield tactician, but some of his strategic decisions, but some of his strategies as trying to invade the North in 1862 and again in 1863 have attracted criticism.

Late in the Civil War, facing great manpower shortages in the Confederate forces, Lee proposed a plan to arm the slaves to fight for the South, but this plan was never adopted. In the wake of Appomattox, he also argued against a guerrilla campaign being waged against the North, and instead argued for a reconciliation between the North and South.

After the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee supported the program of Reconstruction and the reintegation of North and South. Lee came to be regarded as a great Southern hero (being more respected and remembered than the Confederacy's President Jefferson Davis) and one of America's greatest military leaders of all time.