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The American Civil War

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The American Civil War (1861-1865) took more American lives than any other war in its short history. It was fought between the United States government (the Union) and eleven Southern states that had declared their secession from the union, also called the Confederacy. The civil war divided the United States of America into Northern and Southern States and killed 630,000 thousands people, a proportion of the population equivalent to 5 million people in the US today. The conflict went on for  four years but its consequences have endured time.

Historians have long debated the cause of this conflict. Though many maintain that slavery is the root cause, most of them come to agree that the Civil war had a number of causes, such as the sectional differences between the two areas in economy and culture or the tension between the federal government and the states over the extent of the first's power or again the disorder in American political party system in 1850s. However, slavery always emerges as the most serious single cause.

The US economy was booming in 19850s, settlers pushed into the West, railroads spread at relentless rate, and immigrants streamed into American farms and factories. Yet the North's economy depended heavily upon industry while the South based on agricultural economy and thus on the labor of  African American slaves. Southerners feared of losing control of the government to antislavery forces  and then it would try to limit or worse, end slavery. And the North worried that slavery forces already had the control.

The conflict was finally triggered by the election of Lincohn as president. Southerners believed that Lincohn would use the patronage of the federal government to install Republican officials throughout the South and possibly enchant non-slaveholders with their free labor doctrines. These officials could undermine slavery from within, eroding the authority of slaveholders. After all, Lincohn had, for years, talked of “a house” that had to be unified, of a nation that had to be all slave or all free. The Southern States wanted their independence respected by the national government as they believed the right to seceed was within the states' rights. But Lincohn declared the secession illegal and would acquire Southern possessions. And Fort Sumter, located in the heart of the South, would be one of those holds. Fire started on April 12, 1861 by the Southern States and so did the Civil war, which ended but 4 years later with the surrender of General Robert E Lee at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865.

Slavery was effecively ended by the surrender. Slaves in border states and Union controlled parts were emancipated by State Thirteen Admendment on December 1865.  The North lost 365,000 men to death and disease in the Civil War and the South 260,000. Another 277,000 northerners along with 195,000 southerners were wounded. Widows and orphans, black and white, Northern and Southern still faced decades of struggling without male breadwinner. Emotional lives of many were shattered by this war. The Southern economy was destroyed together with its major cities, railroads and fields while recovery was slow. The Civil war did not, however, create a sudden turn for the North's economy. But it did accelerate what was already well underway: nationalization of markets, accumulation of wealth, and dominance of larger manufacturing firms. 
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