The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war in the United States of America. It was fought when 11 Southern states left the United States and formed the Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy). The US government and the states that remained loyal to it were called the Union.
The main cause of the war was slavery, which was allowed in the South, including all 11 Confederate States. Slavery was illegal in most of the North. The Confederate States tried to leave the Union after Abraham Lincoln, who disliked slavery, was elected US president. The Union believed that it was illegal for the states to break away. There were five states that allowed slavery which stayed in the Union.
The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a fort in South Carolina that was held by Union soldiers. The war lasted four years and caused much damage in the South. Most battles were in northern states until 1862 and in southern states after 1862.
After four years of fighting, the Union won the war, and soon, slavery was made illegal everywhere in the United States of America.
Background
When the United States of America was founded in 1776, most states allowed slavery. However, over the next 84 years, the Northern states decided that slavery was a bad thing and banned it. The Southern states kept slavery legal. Slaves from Africa grew tobacco, cotton and other cash crops in those states. It was very different in the North, where the Industrial Revolution led to more people working in factories instead of on farms.
The United States became divided into slave and free states. By 1860, those groups were angry at each other. Few people wanted to end slavery in the South and so Americans argued on whether slavery should be allowed to spread to the territories and new states in the west. In the late 1850s, there was fighting in Kansas over whether the territory should allow slavery.
Abraham Lincoln from the Republican Party won the 1860 United States presidential election. He then did not want to ban slavery in the states. Like nearly everyone else, he believed that the US Constitution did not allow the federal government to ban slavery (the amendment to ban slavery was passed later, in 1865). He also thought that banning it suddenly would anger the South.
Instead, Lincoln and his Republican Party thought that slavery should be banned in US territories. They thought that slavery would die out if it could not go to new places.
Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861. In the four months between the election and the day that Lincoln became president, seven Southern states declared their independence from the Union. The outgoing US president, James Buchanan, said that was against the law but he could do nothing to stop them.
The Republican Party treated secession as a rebellion. No country in the world ever recognized the Confederacy as a separate nation. That was because of diplomacy on the part of the Union, anti-slavery feelings in Europe and the northern blockade of southern ports, and of war against the United States.
The first seven states to join the Confederacy were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Four others joined after the fighting began: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The Confederacy claimed Kentucky and Missouri belonged to them, but they never joined the Confederacy. Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland were slave states that tried to avoid taking sides. Delaware supported the Union although it was a slave state. Also, the western counties of Virginia chose to remain in the Union and created a new state, West Virginia.
Fighting begins
Fighting started when the Confederates shot and threw bombs at Fort Sumter, a Union Army fort in South Carolina. Lincoln then asked the Union states to bring soldiers to fight the Confederates.
The Confederates said that all forts and other federal buildings in the South belonged to them. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked the fort and forced the Union soldiers in it to surrender. Lincoln then asked every Union state for volunteers to join the Union Army. Four more southern slave states joined the Confederates, rather than supply forces to fight against them.
The US Navy stopped other ships from going in or out of southern ports. That stopped the Confederacy from selling its cotton and other goods and also made it harder for the South to buy weapons and military supplies.