Whether they like it or not, most people don’t want civil war. They want to go to work, take their kids to school, come home to a warm meal, and spend time with their family. When politicians comfort themselves with rhetoric that demonizes their opponents as enemies of the state, however, political tensions can erupt into large scale political violence.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election with promises of “a new birth of freedom” that would include all Americans. A decade later secessionist leaders in seven slave states, all whose riverfront or coastal economies depended on cotton and other plant products that were cultivated with slave labor, declared independence.
The Union’s military fortunes ebbed and flowed for years before it gained a decisive advantage in 1865. Robert E. Lee frustrated Union offensives at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, but a string of victories by Ulysses S. Grant in the West at Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Shiloh, and by William Tecumseh Sherman in Virginia and Tennessee eventually brought the war to a close.
Almost every aspect of daily life was touched by the Civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people moved for safety and opportunity; many more were displaced by the fighting itself. The war also saw the first broad applications of recently developed military technology, including railroads that carried huge armies and massive amounts of supplies and ironclad warships that took part in battles at sea. In addition, the war brought many opportunities for women to gain employment outside the home. Northern and southern white women worked as nurses, government clerks, factory workers, and members of charitable organizations that assisted soldiers.