9 The Civil War and Emancipation

Secession and the outbreak of war

The Civil War grew out of sectional conflict centered on slavery, especially whether slavery would expand into western territories and whether slaveholding states could protect the institution. After Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery’s expansion, won the 1860 presidential election, seven Southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Four more states seceded after fighting began.

Lincoln and the federal government rejected Secession as unlawful. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The fort’s surrender prompted Lincoln to call for troops, and the conflict widened into a war between the Union and the Confederacy.

The military and political course

The Union had a larger population, more industry, and greater access to railroads and naval resources. Its strategy included blockading Southern ports, taking control of the Mississippi River, and capturing the Confederate capital, Richmond. The Confederacy sought independence, defended its territory, and hoped that military success or foreign support would help it gain recognition as a nation.

Both sides faced major difficulties raising and supplying armies. The war brought casualties, shortages, and disruption to civilian life. Early battles, including the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 and Shiloh in 1862, showed that the war would not be brief.

In 1863, the Union captured Vicksburg, gaining control of the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy. At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Union forces halted Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North. The victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg shifted the war’s momentum toward the Union, but fighting continued for nearly two more years.

In 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant pressed Lee’s army in Virginia. General William T. Sherman’s campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas weakened the Confederacy’s ability to supply and sustain its forces. The war also tested the Union politically: Lincoln faced opposition from people who wanted peace and from those who disagreed about emancipation. His reelection in November 1864 helped confirm continued Northern support for prosecuting the war.

Emancipation and Black military service

At first, Lincoln’s stated wartime priority was restoring the Union, not abolishing slavery throughout the country. Enslaved people nevertheless acted to gain their freedom, including by escaping to Union lines. As the war progressed, Congress took steps against slavery, and emancipation became both a military strategy and an increasingly central Union war aim.

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. It declared enslaved people free in areas still in rebellion against the United States, but did not apply to loyal border states or certain areas already under Union control. Its enforcement depended on Union military success. The proclamation made emancipation formal Union policy, discouraged foreign support for the Confederacy, and authorized Black men to serve in the Union armed forces.

Nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors served. Black troops also faced discrimination and unequal treatment. Because the proclamation was a wartime measure with limits, it could not by itself abolish slavery everywhere.

Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865, and the states ratified it on December 6. It abolished slavery throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime after conviction.

Surrender and consequences

After Union forces captured Richmond, Lee’s army retreated westward. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Other Confederate forces surrendered over the following weeks and months, so this surrender did not instantly end all fighting. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, and Vice President Andrew Johnson became president.

By the end of 1865, the Confederacy had collapsed, the Union had been preserved, and slavery had been abolished by constitutional amendment. The war greatly expanded federal power and transformed the meaning of freedom and citizenship in American public life.

Emancipation did not immediately ensure equal rights, safety, or economic independence for formerly enslaved people. Questions about how defeated states would return to the Union and what freedom would mean in practice remained unresolved. Reconstruction would confront these questions after 1865.