The four-year Civil war preserved the nation but transformed it in countless ways. It made heroes of citizen soldiers, permanently changed the role of women in society, and hastened the end of slavery, freeing more than 3 million enslaved Black Americans.
The conflict grew out of the tensions between pro- and anti-slavery forces in the United States. The Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) and the 1859 raid by abolitionist John Brown at Harper’s Ferry convinced many southerners that their northern neighbors were intent on destroying this “peculiar institution.”
Despite intense political battles, both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party embraced the philosophy of popular sovereignty, which asserted that the people of a territory should determine its laws, including whether to allow or disallow slavery. This doctrine wiped out a decades-old political compromise on the issue and set the stage for a war over slavery in the western territories.
Both sides mobilized on a scale unmatched in American history. The Union mustered 2.1 million military-age white men—half of its 1860 population—and gathered up to 180,000 African American men for the Army. The Confederacy mustered between 800,000 and 900,000 men.
The war featured numerous applications of recent technological advances, such as railroads that moved massive armies and supplies and telegraphic communication that enabled rapid coordination of military movements across the country. In addition, the battles introduced new weaponry such as rifle muskets and ironclad warships that were able to engage on a large scale.
About the Author
