A war between the Northern (Union) and Southern (Confederacy) states of the USA. It was officially known as the War of the Rebellion and usually called the War between the States in the South. Economic divergence between the industrialized North and the agricultural, slave‐based economy of the South was transformed into political rivalry by the abolitionists, and by the dispute over the expansion of slavery into the western territories. By the late 1850s, all efforts at compromise had failed and violence had begun with John Brown’s armed descent on Harper’s Ferry (1859). South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860 in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election of that year. When the war began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter (1861), the newly established Southern Confederacy increased to eleven states under the presidency of Jefferson Davis.

The war itself is best considered as three simultaneous campaigns. At sea, the North held the upper hand, but the blockade imposed in 1861 took a long time to become effective. Virtually no cotton was exported. Massive naval expansion produced a blockade which helped to cripple the Confederate war effort. On land a series of engagements took place in the Virginia Campaigns, where the close proximity of the Union and Confederacy capitals, Washington and Richmond, and the military genius of General Lee enabled the Confederacy to keep superior Union forces at bay for much of the war. In the more spacious western regions, after a series of abortive starts, the North managed to split the Confederacy in the Vicksburg Campaign, by gaining control of the Mississippi. From here General Grant moved through Tennessee in the Chattanooga Campaign, opening the way for the drive by Sherman through Georgia to the sea. This ruthless strategy, together with Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, brought the war to an end in April 1865. Over 600,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. While the immediate results were the salvation of the union and the abolition of slavery, the challenges of revitalizing the South and promoting racial justice and equality persisted.