The Civil War reshaped America, uprooted institutions that were centuries old, and changed the political life of half the nation. It was a struggle that took place in 10,000 places, on farms and in townships and counties with names like Valverde, New Mexico, and Tullahoma, Tennessee, on roads and by rivers bearing familiar American names. It left a nation divided and weakened, its agricultural economy in ruins, and its people impoverished for generations. In many ways, it still shapes our lives today.
Before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, senators like Kentucky’s John Crittenden clung to the hope of reconciliation. They worked on a number of peace proposals, including an amendment to extend to the Pacific Ocean the line in the 1820 Missouri Compromise that separated free from slave states. But Radical Republicans like Charles Sumner dismissed these efforts, declaring that secession was not a mere “political question” but rather a revolution.
The Union’s victory at the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861 sparked declarations of secession by seven states in the South whose economies relied heavily on slave labor. By the summer of 1862, the Union had destroyed much of the Confederacy’s river navy and captured the city of Vicksburg. The emancipation of the nation’s slaves became an official Union war goal in January 1863 with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Across the country, more than three million Americans fought in the Civil War—two-thirds of all the men who ever served in our nation’s military.
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