The American Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked the Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina, four Southern states: North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, joined Confederacy that May.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Liberty.

The Union got an edge on the competition when The Union’s Army of the Potomac, led by Major General  George Gordon Meade, defeated the Confederate’s Army of Northern Virginia, led by General Robert E Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

 

That November, President Lincoln made the historic Gettysburg Address on the dedication ceremony.

On April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered Major General Gordon and the Civil War came to an end.

That also meant the end of Southern slavery.

About 360,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers were killed in the War.

 

The total number of casualties in the war, both military and civilian, was more than 1 million.

The South suffered the great damage in both urban and rural areas.

Approximately 4 million liberated slaves hoped to have their own lands and to stand on their own feet.

However, the ambition was held up when President Lincoln was shot in the Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1865, and died the next day. After that, the South had been underwent reconstruction until 1877.

The reconstruction of the South was started under President Andrew Johnson.

Johnson, who was born in Tennessee and was an ex-Democratic Party member, restored lands, which were not forfeited by the Union, to planters in the South.

Moreover, former governors of the South came back to power under the President Johnson regime.

Helped by these political measures, they developed black codes in each one of the states.

These laws banned and limited African- American land ownership.

In this way, the Civil War brought in the termination of slavery but it did not promote the collapse of plantations.

To Be Continued