Less than two months after Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, South Carolina became the first southern state to secede. Six more followed—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—and Missouri remained neutral. But the newborn Confederacy faced serious challenges. It had only 10 percent of the nation’s white population and 5 percent of its industrial establishment. It also had only a tiny fraction of the country’s military establishment and no seaports.
Even so, the southern economy was based on large-scale farming, and the enslaved people who worked the fields were an indispensable part of it. Black enslaved labor provided the muscle that kept major southern cities afloat and allowed the South to put a significant percentage of its military-age men into uniform.
The war was a long and brutal struggle. Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides died, and the battles raged throughout the United States, from Vermont to the New Mexico Territory.
But the war also resolved some long-festering problems. It transformed a fight for Union into one that also would kill slavery. It also finished what the American Revolution and the Constitution started, by ratifying the 13th Amendment—which stated that slavery was never to be allowed anywhere in the United States—and establishing the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed that all people born or who had lived in the United States were citizens with equal rights. Many of the war’s leaders went on to serve as presidents, and the 14th Amendment established that all citizens had the right to vote.
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