Innehållsförteckning
Civil War
Reconstruction
The Westward expansion

Utdrag
Between 1861 and 1865, a gruesome conflict unfolded on American soil, pitting the Northern States, known as the Union, against their Southern counterparts, identified as the Confederacy. At the core of this bitter divide lay profound differences in economic and societal structures.

The North boasted an increasingly industrialized society, while the South remained predominantly agrarian, marked by sprawling cotton plantations dependent on slave labor.

The South's struggle was twofold: preserving the institution of slavery, established after the American Revolutionary War, and advocating for its expansion into newly acquired territories.

The North vehemently opposed this, advocating for the exclusion of slavery from these new regions. The simmering tensions eventually led to several Southern States seceding from the Union in 1860, forming the Confederacy.

It was during this tumultuous year that Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency, firmly opposed to the expansion of slavery into new states.

This stance prompted the Confederacy to withdraw from the Union as an act of protest, viewed by Northerners as a rebellion against the United States as a whole.

The ensuing conflict would go down in history as the bloodiest ever witnessed on American soil, claiming the lives of 620,000 soldiers and an untold number of civilians.

The Confederacy initially saw success under the leadership of General Lee, but their fortunes took a decisive turn after the Union's victory at Gettysburg in 1863, led by General Ulysses S. Grant.

From that point on, the Union seized control of the conflict, pushing the South into dire straits, and in April 1865, the Confederacy surrendered.

With the end of the war, the South was reintegrated into the Union, and slavery was ultimately abolished throughout the nation.

Initially, the Union's goal had been to prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, but Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 altered the course of the war, leading to the abolition of slavery nationwide.

However, despite this monumental change, racial inequality persisted in the South.

Reconstruction
Following the conclusion of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's earnest pursuit of peace and reconciliation with the South stirred controversy, particularly among the most radical factions within the Republican Party.