The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his march to the sea. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Lee's incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in states in rebellion to be free, which made ending slavery a war goal. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.ĭuring 1861–1862 in the war's Western Theater, the Union made significant permanent gains-though in the war's Eastern Theater the conflict was inconclusive. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy ultimately came to control over half of U.S.

forts and other federal assets within their borders. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.ĭecades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. It was fought between the United States (the Union or 'the North') and the Confederacy ('the South'), which was formed by states that seceded. The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States.

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