When the U.S. Constitution was negotiated in 1788, slavery was already controversial, but its framers chose to ignore or obscure their differences in favor of unity. A pattern was set, though, with the definition of the Northwest Territory as forever free. At about the same time, industrialization and other alternatives were replacing slave labor in the North. Economic development there trended toward manufacturing and a transport system to move goods to the new factories.
In the South, the new cotton gin set in motion a mass movement toward that lucrative crop. The huge cotton profits led to a concentration of wealth, power, and slaves, as Southern states, particularly in the lower South, became ever more beholden to their largest slave owners. The cotton economy also demanded new lands, as the crop rapidly depleted land, and at the same time, the world had a seemingly insatiable demand for cotton.
A series of political crises developed as the country grew. As each new state was added, a careful balance had to be maintained between free and slave states or the balance in the U.S. Senate would tip. Factions began to harden, and by the 1850s the country was deeply divided. In 1860, for the first time, a party dedicated to the nonexpansion of slavery, the Republican Party, won the presidency. Led by Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans clearly stated that they were not opposed to slavery itself, just its expansion.
But even that was far too radical for the South. Led by South Carolina, the Southern states began seceding from the Union. By February 1861, a new nation had defined itself: the Confederate States of America. In April 1861 the Confederate government authorized the bombing and seizure of Fort Sumter, a Federal fort in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. With that, the Confederacy and Union were at war. Both sides expected quick victory. After the first battle (Bull Run, or First Manassas, near Manassas, Virginia) in July 1861, it was clear the war would be long and bloody.
The Battle of Antietam in Maryland on September 17, 1862 was a crucial turning point. It cooled French and British interest in recognizing the new country and with this, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 (after issuing a preliminary proclamation in September). The Proclamation had only the limited objective of freeing slaves in territory to be liberated, but it changed the war from one of conquest to one of liberation. It also authorized the enlistment of African American troops, and by the end of the war almost ten percent of Union soldiers were African American.
The summer of 1863 was decisive, with Union victories at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and Vicksburg in Mississippi; although war would continue for almost two years these victories ended any chance of British or French involvement. An increasingly successful Union blockade also limited Confederate exports as well as imports of supplies and other materials. Several events in 1864 moved the Union closer to victory: Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant, leader at Vicksburg and other Union victories, as General-in-Chief of the Union Army (the 1865 print shown here depicts Grant among symbols of heroism and victory, an image many Northern homes may have displayed); all Union offensives were coordinated; Atlanta, Georgia, fell.
Atlanta proved decisive in the 1864 presidential elections; before that, it appeared Lincoln would lose, but he swept to victory with a clear mandate in the presidential vote and in nearly all congressional races. With Atlanta’s fall, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led his troops through the heart of the Confederacy to the sea. His army, hardened by four years of war, lived off the land, destroyed plantation estates they encountered, and in the process freed tens of thousands of slaves. Sherman then turned north into South Carolina, the first state to secede. When his army approached Columbia, the state capitol, he ordered that the first troops to enter the city would be African American.
In April 1865 the Confederate lines before Richmond, Virginia, finally collapsed, and on April 9 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, bringing the country’s bloodiest war to a close. Only days later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, DC, by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. By June 2, when Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith hauled down the flag in Galveston, Texas, the Confederacy ceased to exist.
The Civil War resolved the issue of slavery and of states seceding from the Union, but left many other issues and problems unresolved; the Reconstruction of the next decade would take steps toward readmitting the Southern states into the Union and reuniting former enemies.
