Civil war

Lincoln lost the senatorial race, but in 1860 he and Douglas faced each other again—as the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. By now the tension between North and South was extreme. In 1859. John Brown, an abolitionist zealot, had tried to begin a slave rebellion in Virginia by attacking an army munitions depot. Brown was quickly captured, tried and hanged, whereupon many Northerners hailed him as a martyr. Southern whites, however, now believed that the North was preparing to end slavery by bloody warfare. Douglas urged Southern Democrats to remain in the Union, but they nominated their own separate presidential candidate and threatened to secede if the Republicans were victorious.

The majority in every Southern and border state voted against Lincoln, but the North supported him and he won the election. A few weeks later, South Carolina voted to leave the Union. It was soon joined by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. These 11 states proclaimed themselves an independent nation—the Confederate States of America—and the American Civil War began.

Southerners proclaimed that they were fighting not just for slavery; after all, most Confederate soldiers were too poor to own slaves. The South was waging a war for independence—a second American Revolution. The Confederates usually had the advantage of fighting on their home territory, and their morale was excellent. They had superb soldiers, cavalrymen and generals, but they were greatly outnumbered by Union (Northern) forces. The Southern railroad network and industrial base could not support a modern war effort. The Union navy quickly imposed a blockade, which created serious shortages of war materiel and consumer goods in the Confederacy. To fight the war, both sides suspended some civil liberties, printed mountains of paper money and resorted to conscription.

Lincoln's two priorities were to keep the United States one country and to rid the nation of slavery. Indeed, he realized that by making the war a battle against slavery he could win support for the Union at home and abroad. Accordingly, on January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted freedom to all slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy.

The Southern army (Confederates) won some victories in the early part of the war, but in the summer of 1863 their commander, General Robert E. Lee, marched north into Pennsylvania. He met a Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle ever fought on American soil ensued. After three days of desperate fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the important city of Vicksburg. Union forces now controlled the entire Mississippi Valley, splitting the Confederacy in two.

In 1864, a Union army under General William T. Sherman marched across Georgia, destroying the countryside. Meanwhile, General Grant relentlessly battled Lee's forces in Virginia. On April 2, 1865, Lee was forced to abandon Richmond, the Confederate capital. A week later he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, and all other Confederate forces soon surrendered. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth.

The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in American history. The war resolved two fundamental questions that have divided the United States since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided, once and for all, that America was not a collection of semi-independent states, but a single indivisible nation.