In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election, this sparked a chain of events that led to the civil war beginning. With the election, the south seceded from the Union. South Carolina was first in December of 1860, then Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas in February of 1861. Theses seceded states established the Confederate States of America naming Jefferson Davis as the first Confederacy president. The states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina were then motivated to secede when the Confederate troops opened fire on the federal army base in Fort Sumter, SC. The Confederates attack also helped the North to commit to the war. The North’s Union Army has several advantages over the South’s Confederate …show more content…
The reason for the Civil War was more about the Union wanting to keep states’ rights vs federal power than the issue of slavery. A lot of the early battles ended with no clear winner but lots of losses on both sides. The Confederate Army, led by General Robert E. Lee, managed to break Union lines in June 1862 but the momentum would slow down on September 17, 1862 with the Battle of Antietam. This battle became known as the bloodiest single battle of the war with over 8,000 dead and 18,000 wounded, the North would win with the halt of advancement of General Lee. With this win, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves under the Confederacy as of January 1, 1863. The Union began enlisting black soldiers to conquer areas of the South, almost 200,000 enlisted. Their enlistment was a import symbol in black citizenship. Union Army commander General Ulysses S. Grant had already secured the West and the Mississippi River early on in the war. Union General William T Sherman had won in Georgia which helped Lincoln win his re-election of