American Civil War
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The American civil war was fought between the United States and the eleven southern states that declared the confederate states of America from 1861 to 1865, and it decided whether the union would survive and whether slavery would end. The immediate cause was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which the south took as a threat to slavery in the territories; secession began before he took office. Fort Sumter was fired on in April 1861, and the war turned on industry, railroads and manpower in a north of twenty-two million against a south of nine. Robert E. Lee turned back the invasions of Maryland and Pennsylvania, but at Gettysburg in July 1863 the tide turned, and Vicksburg gave the Union the Mississippi on the same day. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 made the end of slavery a war aim and let black soldiers enlist; nearly 200,000 served. Sherman's march through Georgia burned the south's will to fight, and Lee surrendered at Appomattox on 9 April 1865. Lincoln was shot five days later. Six hundred thousand or more soldiers died, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were added to the constitution, and the reconstruction that followed was abandoned in 1877.