American Civil War

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American Civil War
Clockwise from top left:
DateApril 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865
Result Union victory:
United States Confederate States
Commanders and leaders
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses S. Grant
and others...
Jefferson Davis
Robert E. Lee
and others...
698,000 (peak)[2][3]
360,000 (peak)[2][5]
Casualties and losses
  • 110,000+ KIA/DOW

365,000+ total dead[8]

Total: 828,000+ casualties

290,000+ total dead

Total: 864,000+ casualties
  • 50,000 free civilians dead[9]
  • 80,000+ enslaved people dead (disease)[10]

The American Civil War (also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865, fought between northern states loyal to the Union and southern states that had seceded to form the Confederate States of America.[e] The civil war began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina just over a month after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North, which also included some geographically western and southern states, proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery.

Of the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave-holding states were declared by their state governments to have seceded from the country, and the Confederate States of America was organized in rebellion against the U.S. constitutional government. The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states, and it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from native secessionists fleeing Union authority. These states were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave-holding states, Delaware and Maryland, were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed due to intervention by federal troops.

The Confederate states were never diplomatically recognized as a joint entity by the government of the United States, nor by that of any foreign country.[f] The states that remained loyal to the U.S. were known as the Union.[g] The Union and the Confederacy quickly raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought mostly in the South for four years. Intense combat left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead,[14] along with an undetermined number of civilians.[h] The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history,[i] and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War.[j]

The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the Southern states followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring June 23. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves.

The war is one of the most studied and written about episodes in U.S. history, and remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of particular interest are the causes of the Civil War and the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The American Civil War was among the earliest industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships and iron-clad ships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts. It remains the deadliest war in American history. By one estimate, the war claimed the lives of 10 percent of all Northern men 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white men aged 18–40.[17]


The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century. Slavery had been a controversial issue during the framing of the Constitution, but the issue was left unsettled.[18]

In the 1860 presidential election, Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported banning slavery in all the U.S. territories (parts of the U.S. that are not states). The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights, and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to eventually abolish slavery. The three pro-Union candidates together received an overwhelming 82% majority of the votes cast nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes centered in the north, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas' votes were distributed nationally and Constitutional Unionist John Bell's votes centered in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. The Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a plurality of the popular votes and a majority of the electoral votes nationally; thus Lincoln was elected president. He was the first Republican Party candidate to win the presidency. The South was outraged, and before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies declared secession and formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of enslaved people in their populations, with an average of 49 percent.[19] Of those states whose legislatures resolved for secession, the first seven voted with split majorities for unionist candidates Douglas and Bell (Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%), or with sizable minorities for those unionists (Alabama with 46%, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, and South Carolina, which cast Electoral College votes without a popular vote for president).[20]

The Confederate battle flag.


Confederate flag, the "Stars and Bars".

Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter. While in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the conflict was inconclusive during 1861–1862. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal.[23] To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy by summer 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta to William Tecumseh Sherman and his march to the sea. The last significant battles raged around the Siege of Petersburg. Lee's escape attempt ended with his surrender at Appomattox Court House, on April 9, 1865. While the military war was coming to an end, the political reintegration of the nation was to take another 12 years, known as the Reconstruction era.

Causes of secession

Status of the states, 1861
   States that seceded before April 15, 1861
   States that seceded after April 15, 1861
   Union states that permitted slavery
   Union states that banned slavery

The causes of secession were complex and have been controversial since the war began, but most academic scholars identify slavery as a central cause of the war. James C. Bradford wrote that the issue has been further complicated by historical revisionists, who have tried to offer a variety of reasons for the war.[24] Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s. The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery to newly formed states, and many Southern leaders had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won the 1860 election. After Lincoln won, many Southern leaders felt that disunion was their only option, fearing that the loss of representation would hamper their ability to promote pro-slavery acts and policies.[25][26]


Slavery was a major cause of disunion.[27] Although there were opposing views even in the Union States,[28][29] most Northern soldiers were mostly indifferent on the subject of slavery,[30] while Confederates fought the war mainly to protect a Southern society of which slavery was an integral part.[31][32] From the anti-slavery perspective, the issue was primarily about whether the system of slavery was an anachronistic evil that was incompatible with republicanism. The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was containment—to stop the expansion and thus put slavery on a path to gradual extinction.[33] The slave-holding interests in the South denounced this strategy as infringing upon their Constitutional rights.[34] Southern whites believed that the emancipation of slaves would destroy the South's economy, due to the large amount of capital invested in slaves and fears of integrating the ex-slave black population.[35] In particular, Southerners feared a repeat of "the horrors of Santo Domingo",[citation needed] in which nearly all white people – including men, women, children, and even many sympathetic to abolition – were killed after the successful slave revolt in Haiti. Historian Thomas Fleming points to the historical phrase "a disease in the public mind" used by critics of this idea, and proposes it contributed to the segregation in the Jim Crow era following emancipation.[36] These fears were exacerbated by the 1859 attempt of John Brown to instigate an armed slave rebellion in the South.

Slavery was illegal in much of the North, having been outlawed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was also fading in the border states and Southern cities, but it was expanding in the highly profitable cotton districts of the rural South and Southwest. Subsequent writers on the American Civil War looked to several factors explaining the geographic divide.[citation needed]


Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, aroused public opinion about the evils of slavery. According to legend, when Lincoln was introduced to her at the White House, his first words were, “So this is the little lady who started this Great War.”[37]
Theodore Parker was a prominent minister, abolitionist and reformer.

The abolitionists – those advocating the abolition of slavery – were very active in the decades leading up to the Civil War. They traced their philosophical roots back to the Puritans, who strongly believed that slavery was morally wrong. One of the early Puritan writings on this subject was "The Selling of Joseph," by Samuel Sewall in 1700. In it, Sewall condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's typical justifications for slavery.[38][39]

This portrait of Judge Samuel Sewall by John Smibert is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Massachusetts.

The American Revolution and the cause of liberty added tremendous impetus to the abolitionist cause. Slavery, which had been around for thousands of years, was considered "normal" and was not a significant issue of public debate prior to the Revolution. The Revolution changed that and made it into an issue that had to be addressed. As a result, shortly after the Revolution, the northern states quickly started outlawing slavery. Even in southern states, laws were changed to limit slavery and facilitate manumission. The amount of indentured servitude (temporary slavery) dropped dramatically throughout the country. An Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Thomas Jefferson supported it, and it went in effect on January 1, 1808. Benjamin Franklin and James Madison each helped found manumission societies. Influenced by the Revolution, many individual slave owners, such as George Washington, freed their slaves, often in their wills. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.[40][41][42][43][44][45]

Rufus Putnam was George Washington’s chief engineer in the Revolutionary War and later became the “Father of Ohio.”

The establishment of the Northwest Territory as “free soil” – no slavery – by Manasseh Cutler and Rufus Putnam (who both came from Puritan New England) would also prove crucial. This territory (which became the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota) doubled the size of the United States. If these had been slave states, and their electoral votes gone to Abraham Lincoln’s main opponent, Lincoln would not have been elected president. The Civil War would not have been fought.[46][47][48]

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the abolitionists, such as Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglass, repeatedly used the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause. The most radical anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a thousand times. Parker, in urging New England Congressmen to support the abolition of slavery, wrote that "The son of the Puritan ... is sent to Congress to stand up for Truth and Right..."[49][50]


Territorial crisis


With the conquest of northern Mexico west to California in 1848, slaveholding interests looked forward to expanding into these lands and perhaps Cuba and Central America as well.[54][55] Northern "free soil" interests vigorously sought to curtail any further expansion of slave territory. The Compromise of 1850 over California balanced a free-soil state with stronger fugitive slave laws for a political settlement after four years of strife in the 1840s. But the states admitted following California were all free: Minnesota (1858), Oregon (1859), and Kansas (1861). In the Southern states the question of the territorial expansion of slavery westward again became explosive.[56] Both the South and the North drew the same conclusion: "The power to decide the question of slavery for the territories was the power to determine the future of slavery itself."[57][58]

Man standing
Man sitting
Sen. John J. Crittenden, of the 1860 Crittenden Compromise


The second doctrine of Congressional preeminence, championed by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, insisted that the Constitution did not bind legislators to a policy of balance—that slavery could be excluded in a territory as it was done in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 at the discretion of Congress;[61] thus Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it. The Wilmot Proviso announced this position in 1846.[62]

Senator Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of territorial or "popular" sovereignty—which asserted that the settlers in a territory had the same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery as a purely local matter.[63] The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this doctrine.[64] In the Kansas Territory, years of pro and anti-slavery violence and political conflict erupted; the congressional House of Representatives voted to admit Kansas as a free state in early 1860, but its admission did not pass the Senate until January 1861, after the departure of Southern senators.[65]

The fourth theory was advocated by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis,[66] one of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[67] also known as the "Calhoun doctrine",[68] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[69] Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the federal union under the U.S. Constitution.[70] "States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.[71] As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, the "Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of federal power."[72][73] These four doctrines comprised the dominant ideologies presented to the American public on the matters of slavery, the territories, and the U.S. Constitution before the 1860 presidential election.[74]

States' rights

The South argued that just as each state had decided to join the Union, a state had the right to secede—leave the Union—at any time. Northerners (including President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the will of the Founding Fathers, who said they were setting up a perpetual union.[75] Historian James McPherson writes concerning states' rights and other non-slavery explanations:






Owners of enslaved people preferred low-cost manual labor with no mechanization. Northern manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while Southern planters demanded free trade.[82] The Democrats in Congress, controlled by Southerners, wrote the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and kept reducing rates so that the 1857 rates were the lowest since 1816. The Republicans called for an increase in tariffs in the 1860 election. The increases were only enacted in 1861 after Southerners resigned their seats in Congress.[83][84] The tariff issue was a Northern grievance. However, neo-Confederate writers[who?] have claimed it as a Southern grievance. In 1860–61 none of the groups that proposed compromises to head off secession raised the tariff issue.[85] Pamphleteers North and South rarely mentioned the tariff.[86]

Nationalism and honor

Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. While practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entire United States (called "Unionists") and those loyal primarily to the Southern region and then the Confederacy.[87]

Perceived insults to Southern collective honor included the enormous popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[88] and the actions of abolitionist John Brown in trying to incite a rebellion of enslaved people in 1859.[89]

While the South moved towards a Southern nationalism, leaders in the North were also becoming more nationally minded, and they rejected any notion of splitting the Union. The Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regarded disunion as treason and would not tolerate it.[90] The South ignored the warnings; Southerners did not realize how ardently the North would fight to hold the Union together.[91]

Lincoln's election

Middle aged man with beard sitting
Abraham Lincoln in 1864


According to Lincoln, the American people had shown that they had been successful in establishing and administering a republic, but a third challenge faced the nation, maintaining a republic based on the people's vote against an attempt to overthrow it.[93]

Outbreak of the war

Secession crisis


Newspaper in extra large text, noting "Union is Dissolved"

Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three—Texas, Alabama, and Virginia—specifically mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the slavery issue and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures.[94] However, at least four states—South Carolina,[95] Mississippi,[96] Georgia,[97] and Texas[98]—also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the movement to abolish slavery and that movement's influence over the politics of the Northern states. The Southern states believed slaveholding was a constitutional right because of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861.[99] They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said that the Dred Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual", but that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress".[100] One-quarter of the U.S. Army—the entire garrison in Texas—was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy.[101]


On December 18, 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of the line while guaranteeing it to the south. The adoption of this compromise likely would have prevented the secession of every Southern state apart from South Carolina, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it.[103][better source needed] It was then proposed to hold a national referendum on the compromise. The Republicans again rejected the idea, although a majority of both Northerners and Southerners would likely have voted in favor of it.[104][better source needed] A pre-war February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to that of the Crittenden compromise, it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed an alternative compromise to not interfere with slavery where it existed but the South regarded it as insufficient. Nonetheless, the remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.[105]


The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties[which?] and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government.[107] Secretary of State William Seward, who at the time saw himself as the real governor or "prime minister" behind the throne of the inexperienced Lincoln, engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.[107] President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter – located at the cockpit of secession in Charleston, South Carolina.

Battle of Fort Sumter

Flagpole in a ruined building
The Confederate "Stars and Bars" flying from Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter is located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Its garrison had recently moved there to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Lincoln told its commander, Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Confederate president Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply that the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive. He bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, forcing its capitulation.

The attack on Fort Sumter rallied the North to the defense of American nationalism. Historian Allan Nevins underscored the significance of the event:


Engraving of large protest
Mass meeting in New York City April 20, 1861, to support the Union.

Union leaders incorrectly assumed that only a minority of Southerners were in favor of secession and that there were large numbers of southern Unionists that could be counted on. Had Northerners realized that most Southerners favored secession, they might have hesitated at attempting the enormous task of conquering a united South.[109][better source needed]

Lincoln called on all the states to send forces to recapture the fort and other federal properties. The scale of the rebellion appeared to be small, so he called for only 75,000 volunteers for 90 days.[110] The governor of Massachusetts had state regiments on trains headed south the next day. In western Missouri, local secessionists seized Liberty Arsenal.[111] On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for a period of three years.[112]


Attitude of the border states

US Secession map 1863. The Union vs. the Confederacy.
   Union states
   Union territories not permitting slavery
   Confederate states

Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky were slave states that were opposed to both secession and coercing the South. West Virginia then joined them as an additional border state after it separated from Virginia and became a state of the Union in 1863.

Maryland's territory surrounded the United States' capital of Washington, D.C., and could cut it off from the North.[114] It had numerous anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly (53–13) to stay in the Union, but also rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent them from being used for war.[115] Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units from the North.[116] Lincoln rapidly took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by seizing many prominent figures, including arresting 1/3 of the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened.[115][117] All were held without trial, ignoring a ruling by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger Taney, a Maryland native, that only Congress (and not the president) could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte Merryman). Federal troops imprisoned a prominent Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard, Francis Scott Key's grandson, after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring the Supreme Court Chief Justice's ruling.[118]



After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861. A voter turnout of 34 percent approved the statehood bill (96 percent approving).[121] The inclusion of 24 secessionist counties[122] in the state and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 Federal troops for much of the war.[123][124] Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginia provided about 20,000–22,000 soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union.[125]


General features of the War



As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire U.S. army numbered 16,000. However, Northern governors had begun to mobilize their militias.[128] The Confederate Congress authorized the new nation up to 100,000 troops sent by governors as early as February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for 100,000 men under arms for one year or the duration, and that was answered in kind by the U.S. Congress.[129][130][131]





From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies had grown into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat.[139]


The number of women who served as soldiers during the war is estimated at between 400 and 750, although an accurate count is impossible because the women had to disguise themselves as men.[140]

Women also served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals.[141]

Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for her efforts to treat the wounded during the war. Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917 (along with over 900 other, male MOH recipients); however, it was restored in 1977.[142][143]


Perman and Taylor (2010) write that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:




Naval tactics

The small U.S. Navy of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000 men in 1865, with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396.[147][148] Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, take control of the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.[149] Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The U.S. Navy eventually gained control of the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about and occasionally shelled Confederate installations.

Modern navy evolves

Engraving of naval battle
Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads, gunboats and rams, complicated by torpedoes and fire rafts.


Battle between the Monitor and Merrimack.


The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS Hunley, which did not work satisfactorily,[153] and with building an ironclad ship, CSS Virginia, which was based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship, Merrimack. On its first foray on March 8, 1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage to the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day the first Union ironclad, USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it in the Chesapeake Bay. The resulting three hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, but it proved that ironclads were effective warships.[154] Not long after the battle, the Confederacy was forced to scuttle the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology and infrastructure to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Britain.[155]

Union blockade

A cartoon map of the South surrounded by a snake.

By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible.[156] Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan, but he overruled Scott's caution about 90-day volunteers. Public opinion, however, demanded an immediate attack by the army to capture Richmond.[157]


Blockade runners

Panoramic view of ships in harbor during battle

British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton. Many of the ships were designed for speed and were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out.[159] When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British, and they were released.[160]

Economic impact









Lincoln's administration failed to appeal to European public opinion. Diplomats explained that the United States was not committed to the ending of slavery, and instead repeated legalistic arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate representatives, on the other hand, were much more successful by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."[169]


War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent affair, involving the U.S. Navy's boarding of the British ship Trent and seizure of two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two. In 1862, the British considered mediation between North and South, though even such an offer would have risked war with the United States. British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding on this.[171]


Eastern theater

Map of the United States with counties colored
County map of Civil War battles by theater and year



Army of the Potomac


  2. Ohio forces would advance through Kentucky into Tennessee.
  4. The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.
Old man with gray beard and military uniform
Robert E. Lee
Army of Northern Virginia




Engraving of chaotic battle scene
Union forces performing a bayonet charge, 1862



First Bull Run


Middle aged man with large beard in military uniform
"Stonewall" got his nickname at Bull Run.


McClellan's Peninsula Campaign; Jackson's Valley Campaign
Man with mustache and military uniform, striking a Napoleon pose
George McClellan




Second Bull Run

The Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, ended in yet another victory for the South.[179] McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.

Painting of battlefield scene


First Fredericksburg

When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg[182] on December 13, 1862, when more than 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during repeated futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

Trench with abandoned rifles and dead men
Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863

Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering the Confederates by more than two to one, his Chancellorsville Campaign proved ineffective and he was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.[183] Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted in a significant Confederate victory. Gen. Stonewall Jackson was shot in the arm by accidental friendly fire during the battle and subsequently died of complications.[184] Lee famously said: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."


Cavalry charges on a battlefield
Pickett's Charge

Gen. Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 to 3, 1863).[185] This was the bloodiest battle of the war, and has been called the war's turning point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy because it signaled the collapse of serious Confederate threats of victory. Lee's army suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000).[186] However, Lincoln was angry that Meade failed to intercept Lee's retreat.

Western theater



Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland
Ulysses S. Grant


Army of Tennessee



Fort Henry and Fort Donelson



Albert Sidney Johnston died at Shiloh.

At the Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing), in Tennessee in April 1862, the Confederates made a surprise attack that pushed Union forces against the river as night fell. Overnight, the Navy landed additional reinforcements, and Grant counter-attacked. Grant and the Union won a decisive victory—the first battle with the high casualty rates that would repeat over and over.[187] The Confederates lost Albert Sidney Johnston, considered their finest general before the emergence of Lee.

Union Navy captures Memphis
By 1863 the Union controlled large portions of the Western Theater, especially areas surrounding the Mississippi river


In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans.[188] "The key to the river was New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center."[189] U.S. Naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South.[190] which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi. Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, and became a key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented Union control of the entire river.



Stones River




The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses.

The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga. After Rosecrans successful Tullahoma Campaign, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps (from Lee's army in the east), defeated Rosecrans, despite the heroic defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas.

Third Chattanooga

Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged in the Chattanooga Campaign. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at the Third Battle of Chattanooga,[195] eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his Knoxville Campaign and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.

Trans-Mississippi theater


The Trans-Mississippi theater refers to military operations west of the Mississippi River, not including the areas bordering the Pacific Ocean.



The first battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the Battle of Wilson's Creek. The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.[197]

Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and the logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.[198] Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and civilian settlements.[199] The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be entirely driven out of the state of Missouri until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged. By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide anti-war movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote for re-election.[200]

New Mexico




Lower Seaboard theater




South Carolina




New Orleans captured.


The following year, the Union Army of the Gulf commanded by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks laid siege to Port Hudson for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in US military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the Bayou Teche Campaign, but surrendered after Vicksburg. These two surrenders gave the Union control over the entire Mississippi.



Pacific Coast theater


Conquest of Virginia

William Tecumseh Sherman



Grant's Overland Campaign



Philip Sheridan

Sheridan's Valley Campaign


Sherman's March to the Sea




The Waterloo of the Confederacy


Confederacy surrenders

News of Lee's April 9 surrender reached this southern newspaper (Savannah, Georgia) on April 15—after the April 14 shooting of President Lincoln.[214] The article quotes Grant's terms of surrender.[214]


On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was unharmed as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his nerve, so he was immediately sworn in as president. Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered as news of Lee's surrender reached them.[216] On April 26, 1865, the same day Boston Corbett killed Booth at a tobacco barn, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 men of the Army of Tennessee to Major General William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place near present-day Durham, North Carolina. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi surrendered. President Johnson officially declared an end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865; Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was captured the following day.[1][217] On June 2, Kirby Smith officially surrendered his troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department.[218] On June 23, Cherokee leader Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.[219]

Home fronts

Union victory and aftermath


Map of Confederate territory losses year by year


Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, including James McPherson, argue that Confederate victory was at least possible.[221] McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely but not guaranteed. He also argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, they would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union.[222]


Comparison of Union and Confederacy, 1860–1864[224]
Year Union Confederacy
Population 1860 22,100,000 (71%) 9,100,000 (29%)
1864 28,800,000 (90%)[k] 3,000,000 (10%)[225]
Free 1860 21,700,000 (81%) 5,600,000 (19%)
Slave 1860 490,000 (11%) 3,550,000 (89%)
1864 negligible 1,900,000[l]
1864 29,100 (98%)[226] negligible
Manufactures 1860 90% 10%
1864 98% 2%
Arms production 1860 97% 3%
1864 98% 2%
Cotton bales 1860 negligible 4,500,000
1864 300,000 negligible
Exports 1860 30% 70%
1864 98% 2%


A minority view among historians is that the Confederacy lost because, as E. Merton Coulter put it, "people did not will hard enough and long enough to win."[230][231] According to Charles H. Wilson, in The Collapse of the Confederacy, "internal conflict should figure prominently in any explanation of Confederate defeat."[232] Marxist historian Armstead Robinson agrees, pointing to class conflict in the Confederate army between the slave owners and the larger number of non-owners. He argues that the non-owner soldiers grew embittered about fighting to preserve slavery and fought less enthusiastically. He attributes the major Confederate defeats in 1863 at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge to this class conflict.[233] However, most historians reject the argument.[234] James M. McPherson, after reading thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that continued to the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty. Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in 1864–65, he says most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard.[235] Historian Gary Gallagher cites General Sherman who in early 1864 commented, "The devils seem to have a determination that cannot but be admired." Despite their loss of slaves and wealth, with starvation looming, Sherman continued, "yet I see no sign of let-up—some few deserters—plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out."[236]


Historian Don Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on the course of world history.[239] The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues that:


Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South.[241] The prevailing view is that the southern planter elite retained its powerful position in the South.[241] However, a 2017 study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their economic status, the turmoil of the 1860s created greater opportunities for economic mobility in the South than in the North.[241]


One in thirteen veterans were amputees
Remains of both sides were reinterred
National cemetery in Andersonville, GA.

The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.[9] Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.[14][242] The war accounted for more American deaths than in all other U.S. wars combined.[243]

Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South.[244][245] About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War.[246] An estimated 60,000 men lost limbs in the war.[247]


  • 24,866 died in Confederate prison camps
  • 9,058 killed by accidents or drowning
  • 15,741 other/unknown deaths
  • 359,528 total dead


Black troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll, they amounted to 15 percent of disease deaths but less than 3 percent of those killed in battle.[6] Losses among African Americans were high, in the last year and a half and from all reported casualties, approximately 20 percent of all African Americans enrolled in the military lost their lives during the Civil War.[248]:16 Notably, their mortality rate was significantly higher than white soldiers:

[We] find, according to the revised official data, that of the slightly over two million troops in the United States Volunteers, over 316,000 died (from all causes), or 15.2 percent. Of the 67,000 Regular Army (white) troops, 8.6 percent, or not quite 6,000, died. Of the approximately 180,000 United States Colored Troops, however, over 36,000 died, or 20.5 percent. In other words, the mortality "rate" amongst the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War was thirty-five percent greater than that among other troops, even though the former were not enrolled until some eighteen months after the fighting began.[248]:16

Confederate records compiled by historian William F. Fox list 74,524 killed and died of wounds and 59,292 died of disease. Including Confederate estimates of battle losses where no records exist would bring the Confederate death toll to 94,000 killed and died of wounds. Fox complained, however, that records were incomplete, especially during the last year of the war, and that battlefield reports likely under-counted deaths (many men counted as wounded in battlefield reports subsequently died of their wounds). Thomas L. Livermore, using Fox's data, put the number of Confederate non-combat deaths at 166,000, using the official estimate of Union deaths from disease and accidents and a comparison of Union and Confederate enlistment records, for a total of 260,000 deaths.[6] However, this excludes the 30,000 deaths of Confederate troops in prisons, which would raise the minimum number of deaths to 290,000.


Union: 853,838

  • 110,100 killed in action
  • 224,580 disease deaths
  • 275,154 wounded in action
  • 211,411 captured (including 30,192 who died as POWs)

Confederate: 914,660

  • 94,000 killed in action
  • 164,000 disease deaths
  • 194,026 wounded in action
  • 462,634 captured (including 31,000 who died as POWs)
Burying Union dead on the Antietam battlefield, 1862






The war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment Confederate bonds was forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. The income per person in the South dropped to less than 40 percent of that of the North, a condition that lasted until well into the 20th century. Southern influence in the U.S. federal government, previously considered, was greatly diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.[252] The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar era known as Reconstruction.

During the Reconstruction era, national unity was slowly restored, the national government expanded its power, and civil and political rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation.


Slavery as a war issue

Abolishing slavery was not a Union war goal from the outset, but it quickly became one.[253] Lincoln's initial claims were that preserving the Union was the central goal of the war.[254] In contrast, the South saw itself as fighting to preserve slavery.[253] While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting for slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.[255] However, as the war dragged on it became clear that slavery was the central factor of the conflict. Lincoln and his cabinet made ending slavery a war goal, which culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation.[253][256] Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered both Peace Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.[256] By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.[257]

Emancipation Proclamation

Left: Contrabands—fugitive slaves—cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews—fled to the Union Army, but were not officially freed until 1863. Emancipation Proclamation
Right: In 1863, the Union army accepted Freedmen. Seen here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers.


During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. Lincoln's fears of making slavery a war issue were based in a harsh reality: abolition did not enjoy wide support in the west, the territories, and the border states.[259][260] In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game."[260] Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.[261]

At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.[262] But only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, which was enacted by Congress. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".[263] Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published in abolitionist Horace Greeley's newspaper.[264]


Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves to fight for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) and Union-controlled regions around New Orleans, Norfolk and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware.[267] Still, the proclamation did not enjoy universal support. It caused much unrest in the Western states, where racist sentiments led to great fear of abolition. There was some concern that the proclamation would lead to succession of Western states, and prompted the stationing of Union troops in Illinois in case of rebellion.[259]

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.[268] The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France.[269] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent.[270]

Texas v. White




The war had utterly devastated the South, and posed serious questions of how the South would be re-integrated to the Union. Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and it continued until 1877.[272] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the outstanding issues of the war's aftermath, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution: the 13th outlawing slavery (1865), the 14th guaranteeing citizenship to slaves (1868) and the 15th ensuring voting rights to slaves (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to consolidate the Union victory on the battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a "republican form of government" for the ex-Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.[273]


The Civil War would have a huge impact on American politics in the years to come. Many veterans on the both sides were subsequently elected to political office, including five U. S. Presidents: General Ulysses Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley.[275]

Memory and historiography

Left: Monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veteran organization
Right: Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903


Professional historians have paid much more attention to the causes of the war, than to the war itself. Military history has largely developed outside academia, leading to a proliferation of studies by non-scholars who nevertheless are familiar with the primary sources and pay close attention to battles and campaigns, and who write for the general public, rather than the scholarly community. Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote are among the best-known writers.[278][279] Practically every major figure in the war, both North and South, has had a serious biographical study.[280]

Lost Cause

Memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause": that the Confederate cause was a just and heroic one. The myth shaped regional identity and race relations for generations.[281] Alan T. Nolan notes that the Lost Cause was expressly "a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and fame" of those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery; some appeals highlight cultural differences between North and South; the military conflict by Confederate actors is idealized; in any case, secession was said to be lawful.[282] Nolan argues that the adoption of the Lost Cause perspective facilitated the reunification of the North and the South while excusing the "virulent racism" of the 19th century, sacrificing black American progress to white man's reunification. He also deems the Lost Cause "a caricature of the truth. This caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter" in every instance.[283] The Lost Cause myth was formalized by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, whose The Rise of American Civilization (1927) spawned "Beardian historiography". The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. Though this interpretation was abandoned by the Beards in the 1940s, and by historians generally by the 1950s, Beardian themes still echo among Lost Cause writers.[284][285]

Battlefield preservation



The modern Civil War battlefield preservation movement began in 1987 with the founding of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS), a grassroots organization created by Civil War historians and others to preserve battlefield land by acquiring it. In 1991, the original Civil War Trust was created in the mold of the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation, but failed to attract corporate donors and soon helped manage the disbursement of U.S. Mint Civil War commemorative coin revenues designated for battlefield preservation. Although the two non-profit organizations joined forces on several battlefield acquisitions, ongoing conflicts prompted the boards of both organizations to facilitate a merger, which happened in 1999 with the creation of the Civil War Preservation Trust.[288] In 2011, the organization was renamed, again becoming the Civil War Trust. After expanding its mission in 2014 to include battlefields of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, the non-profit became the American Battlefield Trust in May 2018, operating with two divisions, the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War Trust.[289] From 1987 through May 2018, the Trust and its predecessor organizations, along with their partners, preserved 49,893 acres of battlefield land through acquisition of property or conservation easements at more than 130 battlefields in 24 states.[290][291]

The five major Civil War battlefield parks operated by the National Park Service (Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Chickamauga/Chattanooga and Vicksburg) had a combined 3.1 million visitors in 2018, down 70% from 10.2 million in 1970. Attendance at Gettysburg in 2018 was 950,000, a decline of 86% since 1970.[292]

Civil War commemoration

Top: Grand Army of the Republic (Union)
Bottom: United Confederate Veterans

The American Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities ranging from the reenactment of battles to statues and memorial halls erected, to films being produced, to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which helped to shape public memory. This varied advent occurred in greater proportions on the 100th and 150th anniversary. [293] Hollywood's take on the war has been especially influential in shaping public memory, as seen in such film classics as Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the Wind (1939), and more recently Lincoln (2012). Ken Burns's PBS television series The Civil War (1990) is especially well remembered, though criticized for its historiography.[294][295]

Technological significance

Numerous technological innovations during the Civil War had a great impact on 19th-century science. The Civil War was one of the earliest examples of an "industrial war", in which technological might is used to achieve military supremacy in a war.[296] New inventions, such as the train and telegraph, delivered soldiers, supplies and messages at a time when horses were considered to be the fastest way to travel.[297][298] It was also in this war when countries first used aerial warfare, in the form of reconnaissance balloons, to a significant effect.[299] It saw the first action involving steam-powered ironclad warships in naval warfare history.[300] Repeating firearms such as the Henry rifle, Spencer rifle, Colt revolving rifle, Triplett & Scott carbine and others, first appeared during the Civil War; they were a revolutionary invention that would soon replace muzzle-loading and single-shot firearms in warfare. The war was also the first appearances of rapid-firing weapons and machine guns such as the Agar gun and the Gatling gun.[301]

In works of culture and art

The Civil War is one of the most studied events in American history, and the collection of cultural works around it is enormous.[302] This section gives an abbreviated overview of the most notable works.




Video games

See also



  1. ^ Last shot fired June 22, 1865.
  2. ^ a b Total number that served
  5. ^ Although a formal Declaration of War was never issued by either the United States Congress, nor the Congress of the Confederate States, as their legal positions were such that it was unnecessary
  6. ^ Although the United Kingdom and France granted it belligerent status.
  7. ^ Including the border states where slavery was legal.
  9. ^ Assuming Union and Confederate casualties are counted together - more Americans were killed in World War II than in either the Union or Confederate Armies if their casualty totals are counted separately.
  10. ^ At least until approximately the Vietnam War.[16]


  5. ^ "The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies; Series 4 – Volume 2", United States. War Dept 1900.
  7. ^ a b c d Official DOD data
  8. ^ Chambers & Anderson 1999, p. 849.
  10. ^ Professor James Downs. "Colorblindness in the demographic death toll of the Civil War". University of Connecticut, April 13, 2012. "The rough 19th-century estimate was that 60,000 former slaves died from the epidemic, but doctors treating black patients often claimed that they were unable to keep accurate records due to demands on their time and the lack of manpower and resources. The surviving records only include the number of black patients whom doctors encountered; tens of thousands of other slaves who died had no contact with army doctors, leaving no records of their deaths." 60,000 documented plus 'tens of thousands' undocumented gives a minimum of 80,000 slave deaths.
  12. ^ Recounting the dead, Associate Professor J. David Hacker, "estimates, based on Census data, indicate that the [military] death toll was approximately 750,000, and may have been as high as 850,000"
  14. ^ a b "U.S. Civil War Took Bigger Toll Than Previously Estimated, New Analysis Suggests". Science Daily. September 22, 2011. Retrieved September 22, 2011.
  15. ^ a b Hacker 2011, p. 307–48.
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  18. ^ Keith L. Dougherty, and Jac C. Heckelman. "Voting on slavery at the Constitutional Convention." Public Choice 136.3–4 (2008): 293.
  19. ^ "Date of Secession Related to 1860 Black Population", America's Civil War
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