Page 59 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - USA

HIST OR Y OF THE USA  57

free the slaves. Instead, the battle lines attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
were drawn over the question of extending President Lincoln mobilized US soldiers
slavery into the newly forming western to quell the rebellion, and soon four other
states. The South, resisting the federal slave-holding states, including Virginia,
government’s growing power, wanted seceded from the Union. Richmond
each new state to decide this question became the new Confederate capital, and
independently. The northern states wanted Virginia provided most of the Confederate
to keep slavery within its current limits, military leadership. Four slave states
in part to protect their own manual labor. remained in the Union, and the western
The federal government left the decision to counties of Virginia separated to form West
the new states, and riots between pro- and Virginia, which joined the Union in 1863.
anti-slave campaigners raged across the The Confederates won the first major land
west. In 1856, pro-slave guerrillas burned battle at Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861, and
the city of Lawrence, Kansas, and 200 for the next two years battles raged across
people were killed in retaliation. Three years Virginia and Maryland. With their defeat at
later, 22 abolitionists led by John Brown Gettysburg in 1863, the Confederates were
attacked the Federal Armory at Harpers finally turned back. In the same year, Union
Ferry, Virginia, hoping to incite a slave forces gained control of the Mississippi River.
rebellion. He and his forces were killed, Union forces destroyed Atlanta in 1864 and
but his efforts further polarized the already marched across Georgia, cutting off supply
divided nation. By 1860, the country was lines and virtually encircling the remaining
composed of 18 “free states” – mainly in the Confederate army. By April 1865, the Civil
North, and 15 “slave states” – mainly in the War was over.
South. When Abraham Lincoln was elected The destruction caused by the war
president in 1860, South Carolina seceded was immense. Nearly three million soldiers
from the Union, followed by six other (some 10 percent of the total population
southern states, which joined together at the time) fought in the war, and 620,000
to form the Confederate States of America. of them died. Entire cities lay in ruins,
The first shots of the Civil War were fired and it would be years before the nation
in April, 1861, when the Confederates recovered from the ravages of war.

Confederate forces occupy Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 15, 1861

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