Fact #5
The Civil war was the result of competing visions for the American nation and its future. Many Americans believed that the Constitution required the Union to remain united, while others argued that the country could not survive as a democracy without substantial changes to its social and economic structures. The conflict also reflected the growing tension between the era of industrial growth and the prevailing agrarian society, with its dependence on the labor of enslaved people. Moreover, abolitionist events such as Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in Virginia, the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry fueled fears that slavery was in danger of disappearing.
In response, the states that favored continuing slavery—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—agreed to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. Five states that were neither slave nor free—Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Virginia, and West Virginia—stayed in the Union, but they were essentially cut off from the rest of the Confederacy by General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan, featuring a tight naval blockade and a series of major offensives west of the Mississippi River.
As the war raged on, both sides suffered significant casualties. The Union victory was accompanied by enormous challenges for reconstructing the Union and helping freedmen. A reconciliation movement emerged in the North and South that sought to forget the bitter animosities of the secession crisis and the Civil war.