THE WORLD ATLAS

War · 1861–1865

American Civil War

Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina (where the war began)

After Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery, won the 1860 election, Southern slave states seceded to form the Confederacy, and the war began when Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863 declared more than 3.5 million enslaved people in Confederate territory free; General Robert E.

Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865, and the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery throughout the United States from December 1865.

See it on the map

Front page: “The Great Rebellion … The success of the Great Expedition … the attack on the forts at Port Royal Entrance” (Union capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, 7 November 1861)
Front page: “The Great Rebellion … The success of the Great Expedition … the attack on the forts at Port Royal Entrance” (Union capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, 7 November 1861) The New York Times; scan from Internet Archive via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (published in the US before 1930)

Why it mattered

The deadliest war in US history, it left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, preserved the Union and freed four million African Americans from slavery.

Related

Sources