True, the remaining United States still held significant advantages over the Confederacy. The addition of those states to the Confederate fold would have narrowed the disparity in population and resources between North and South, already reduced by the decisions by Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to join the Confederacy. Only Delaware seemed certain to remain within the United States.Īs both sides raised volunteer armies and began mobilizing for conflict, everyone realized the fate of the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri would prove crucial in shaping the early course of the conflict. In North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas, news that a war was underway tipped the scales in favor of secession, whereas in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, it remained unclear which faction would prevail. Before long, the fort had surrendered and Lincoln made his first call for troops to put down the southern rebellion. Would Lincoln choose to evacuate the fort, postponing a confrontation with the new Confederacy, or would he seek to resupply it? Would the Confederacy, under the leadership of its new president, Jefferson Davis, contest such efforts and initiate hostilities? (See the Fort Sumter and the Coming of the War Narrative.)īoth presidents decided to make their stand at Sumter, with Lincoln authorizing its resupply and Davis ordering an attack on the fort in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861. The fort’s garrison, under the command of Major Robert Anderson, was under siege by the Confederate Army and running out of supplies. Everyone’s attention was focused on the fate of Fort Sumter, located in the harbor outside Charleston, South Carolina.
The new president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, the first member of the antislavery Republican party to hold that office, pondered what to do next. The Civil War and Reconstruction produced significant political, economic, and social transformations in the United States, but for African Americans, the progress had mixed results at best. Since the war was primarily fought over the question of slavery and its expansion, questions of freedom, equality, and justice were central to the war and the reconstruction of the Union after the war.
The failure to resolve the sectionalism of the previous decades resulted in a civil war with Americans battling each other and more than 700,000 killed. Eight more slave states were contemplating whether to follow suit: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Seven southern slaveholding states had seceded from the republic the previous winter and established the Confederate States of America. Compare the relative significance of the effects of the Civil War on American valuesĪs the spring of 1861 arrived, the United States teetered on the verge of war.Explain the context in which sectional conflict emerged from 1844 to 1877.