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The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union [e] ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union.
In the many decades between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such divisions became increasingly irreconcilable and contentious. [1] Events in the 1850s culminated with the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president on November 6, 1860.
Historiography examines how the past has been viewed or interpreted.Historiographic issues about the American Civil War include the name of the war, the origins or causes of the war (slavery or states' rights), and President Abraham Lincoln's views and goals regarding slavery.
Eric Foner in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970) emphasized the importance of free labor ideology to Northern opponents of slavery, pointing out that the moral concerns of the abolitionists were not necessarily the dominant sentiments in the North. Many Northerners (including ...
The near simultaneous Battle of Gettysburg in the east and fall of Vicksburg in the west, in July 1863 is widely cited as the military climax of the American Civil War. Several other decisive battles and events throughout the war have been proposed as turning points.
James M. McPherson called Vicksburg "the most brilliant and innovative campaign of the Civil War"; T. Harry Williams described it as "one of the classic campaigns of the Civil War and, indeed, of military history"; and the U.S. Army Field Manual 100–5 (May 1986) called it "the most brilliant campaign ever fought on American soil". [42]
Kentucky was a southern border state of key importance in the American Civil War.It officially declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union Army for assistance.
Wilmington, located 30 miles upstream from the mouth of the Cape Fear River (which flows into the Atlantic Ocean), was among the Confederacy's more important cities. It ranked 13th in size in the CSA (although only 100th in the pre-war United States) with a population of 9,553 according to the 1860 census, making it nearly the same size as Atlanta, Georgia, at the time.