The American Civil War
What is a Civil War?
A civil war is just a war between citizens of the same country. So, in this case, Americans were fighting other Americans.
What was the American Civil War all about?
In short, it was basically a war about slavery…but the long answer is a bit more complicated.
Slavery was practiced in America for centuries before the Civil War. In 1619, the first Africans slaves arrived in Virginia, which was a British colony at the time. These people had been kidnapped from the west coast of Africa and transported to America where they would be sold into slavery. This is known as the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Over the next two centuries, slavery in America would spread more and more, particularly in the southern states where more slaves were needed to work on plantations that the northern states didn’t have. Not everyone was a supporter of slavery though. As time passed, people in the North became unhappy about it and wanted to make it illegal. These people were called abolitionists. However, people in the South that made lots of money from slavery did not agree. In fact, they wanted to spread slavery even more. In the end, this disagreement would lead the war.
How did the Civil War start?
You might have heard of Abraham Lincoln. He was the 16th President of the United States of America. He was elected in 1860, but this made the Southern slave owners very angry because Lincoln did not like slavery and he wanted to stop it spreading to other parts of the country.
After he was elected, the Southern States did not want to be a part of the United States anymore and they decided to leave. This is called secession. Together, these eleven states formed the Confederate States of America, and they allowed slavery in all parts of it. President Lincoln had other ideas though and he refused to let them leave. He wanted to defend the Union and keep the United States together. So, in 1861, the two sides went to war. North against South. American against American.
Abraham Lincoln in November 1863.
What happened in the end?
The war lasted for four long years. Eventually, after a great many battles in which both sides suffered enormous casualties, the North won the war. As a result, the United States stayed together and Congress passed the 13th Amendment which officially ended slavery in the country.
