The War Between the States

The immediate cause of the War Between the States was the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States in 1860. The deeper cause, however, was the issue of states' rights. The question of states' rights was based on the belief that the United States was a union of independent commonwealths, and that the general government was merely their agent. Thus, when matters could not be resolved, the South felt free to assert their independence and form a new government. The North, however, assumed that Federal Government to be supreme, believed the Union to be one and inseparable, and secession to be a violation of the national compact.

In 1861 Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, igniting a war between the states. Heavy casualties in the early battles of the war shattered both sides' illusions that the war would end swiftly. Lincoln ennobled the war in 1863 when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation did not free any slaves immediately, but it gave the war a high moral purpose.

The two most decisive actions of the war occurred in July 1863. The battle of Gettysburg began on July 1 when Confederate forces encountered Union cavalry near the sleepy Pennsylvania town. The three-day battle produced staggering losses: 23,000 Union men and 28,000 Confederates were killed or wounded. After the battle, the Confederates gave up any hopes of invading the North and turned back to Virginia. While the Army of the Potomac was destroying Confederate hopes at Gettysburg, Union forces fought to gain control of the Mississippi River by laying siege to the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Confederacy would never recover from the loss at Gettysburg or the surrender of Vicksburg.

After four years of bloody warfare, the recognized end of the war came with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April 1865. ,