The American Civil War was a conflict between 11 Southern states and 23 Northern states beginning in April 1861 at Fort Sumter, South Carolina and ending almost exactly four years later in 1865. It was one of the bloodiest confrontations in modern history, with about 970,000 casualties, including 620,000 soldier deaths. The war began shortly after Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency in 1860 when seven southern states seceded from the Union. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was inaugurated President of the confederacy in February 1861 and four additional southern states, including Virginia, seceded that spring.
The battle of Antietam in Maryland in September 1862 ended the northern invasion of the Virginia confederates and was the bloodiest day of the war, with 23,000 casualties. The battle led to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation which made the freeing of slaves a goal of the war and ensured that Britain and France would not intervene to help the Confederacy. It also allowed the Union to recruit African-Americans for reinforcements.
Robert E. Lee led the Confederate army in the east and had some victories early on but lost his best general, known as "Stonewall" Jackson, in 1863 at Gettysburg which ended the invasion to the north. By 1864, Union advantages in geography, manpower, industry, finance and transportation were overwhelming the Confederacy, and a number of bloody battles occurred in Virginia that summer. This led to Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House in April 1865 and the postwar era known as Reconstruction began. The main consequences of the war were the strengthening of the Union and the ending of slavery in the United States.
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