Civil War

Whether you prefer to call it the Civil War, the War Between The states, the war for states rights, the War of Northern Aggression, or whatever you deem appropriate, the result is the same hundred of thousands of Americans, dressed in both gray and blue, paid the ultimate sacrifice fighting for a cause that they believed in.'(globalsecurity)

When Abraham Lincoln, a known opponent of slavery, was elected president, the South Carolina legislature perceived a threat. Calling a state convention, the delegates voted to remove the state of South Carolina from the union known as the United States of America. The secession of South Carolina was followed by the secession of six more states Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas and the threat of secession by four more Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These eleven states eventually formed the Confederate States of America.

The North faced a demanding and complex political problem, namely to reassert its authority over a vast territorial empire, far too extensive to be completely occupied or thoroughly controlled. Furthermore, President Lincoln recognized that Northern popular resolve might be limited and established rapid victory as a condition as well. Lincoln's original policy of conciliation having failed, the president opted for the unconditional surrender of the South as the only acceptable aim. Lincoln's search for a general who would devise a strategy to attain his aim ended with Grant in March 1864. (Sparknotes)

There are many causes for the war and most will be found at the foundation of our political fabric, in the fundamental law, in the Constitution itself, in the conflicting constructions, which it invented, and in the institution of slavery, which it recognized and was intended to protect. It is fair to say that if there had been no slavery there would have been no war, but there would have been no slavery if the South's protests could have availed when it was first introduced. Then the Constitution was adopted and the Union formed, slavery existed in practically all the states; and it is claimed by the Southern people that its disappearance from the Northern and its development in the southern states is due to the climatic conditions and industrial exigencies rather than to the existence or absence of great moral ideas. ( A history of civil war)

Slavery was undoubtedly the immediate fomenting cause of the woeful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered.