Civil War (1861 to 1865)

During the 1850s, as the United States headed toward

civil war, more and more stories by and about enslaved
and free Black people were written.

• William Wells Brown published what is often considered the first

Black American novel, Clotel, in 1853. He also wrote the first African
American play to be published, The Escape (1858).

• In 1859 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Harriet E. Wilson became

the first Black women to publish fiction in the United States.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published serially in
1851–52, is credited with raising opposition in the North to slavery.

• Harriet Jacobs published a searing account of her life as an enslaved

woman in 1861, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
(1861) the same year that the Civil War began. It became one of the
era’s most influential slave narratives.
Civil War (1861 to 1865)
In the 1860s the Northern and Southern parts of the United States fought
against each other in the American Civil War. The war started after 11 Southern
states separated themselves from the United States and formed their own
government. Their army fought the forces of the U.S. government. The Civil
War threatened to break up the United States. It is also called the War Between
the States.

The North and the South had been divided for many years over the issue of
slavery. The Southern economy was based largely on cotton, which was grown
on large farms called plantations. Enslaved African Americans did most of the
work on the plantations. The Northern economy relied more on manufacturing.
The North had small farms that used paid workers.
Civil War (1861 to 1865)
Neither side wanted the other’s ideas to spread to new states being
created in the West. Northerners wanted to stop the spread of slavery.
But Southerners believed that the U.S. government did not have the
right to decide whether slavery should be allowed in a state. They
feared that the government’s next step would be to stop slavery
altogether.
Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by
the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln,
who opposed slavery's expansion into the western territories.
Civil War (1861 to 1865)
The Confederacy and the Union
Southerners became more upset when Abraham Lincoln was elected
U.S. president in 1860. Lincoln belonged to the Republican Party, which
opposed slavery. Southern states decided to secede (withdraw) from
the United States to protect their right to keep slaves. South Carolina,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia,
Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded. They formed a
government called the Confederate States of America, or the
Confederacy. Jefferson Davis was the Confederate president.
Civil War (1861 to 1865)
The Northern states that stayed loyal to the United States were
called the Union. Four states—Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and
Delaware—stayed in the Union even though they allowed slavery.
They were called border states. In addition, the western counties
of Virginia refused to join the Confederacy. They later joined the
Union as the state of West Virginia.
Going into the war, the Union had several advantages over the
Confederacy. It had more people, more industries, and more
railroads. But the Confederacy had better military leaders.
U.S. troops defend Fort
Sumter during an
attack by Confederate
forces on April 12,
1861.

The Confederate troops

took control of the fort.

The attack signaled the

beginning of the
American Civil War.
Civil War (1861 to 1865)
• Fighting broke out in 1861 and lasted until 1865.

• At the start of the war President Lincoln wanted mainly to keep the
United States together. Ending slavery was not his main goal. This
changed after the Battle of Antietam. The Union victory encouraged
Lincoln to issue a statement called the Emancipation Proclamation.
The proclamation freed all enslaved people in Confederate states. As a
result of the proclamation, many Blacks joined the Union army.

• By the end of May all Confederate armies had surrendered.

Civil War (1861 to 1865)
Reconstruction

After the war the defeated states were gradually allowed back into the
United States. The South rebuilt damaged property and changed its
economy so it no longer depended on the labor of enslaved people.
This period was known as Reconstruction. It lasted until the last U.S.
troops left the South in April 1877.