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Definition: The American Civil War from DK Eyewitness Books: Soldier

In 1861, 11 largely agricultural, slave-owing states in the southern US broke away from the largely industrialized northern states of the Union and set up the independent Confederacy. Civil war then broke out between the two sides and raged until the final defeat of the Confederacy in 1865.

Civil War

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The American Civil War began in April 1861 and ended in April 1865. Those four years transformed American society. Over six hundred thousand men died, and hundreds of thousands more bore the scars of war. The institution of slavery was abolished, and the society built around it was destroyed. The national government was strengthened tremendously, altering federal relations permanently. The Southern states were wrecked physically and condemned to over a century of economic underdevelopment, while Northern wartime financial and industrial consolidation have influenced the course of American development to the present day. Origins of the War The mid-nineteenth-century United States was notable for its rapid expansion, especially in the areas of geography, population, and economy. Yet despite a common language, religious faith, and history, two distinct economic and cultural regions (North and South) were coming to see each other as threatening to their own ways of life and visions of the…
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Full text Article Civil War

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Civil War A general stands watch at a Washington,...
The conflict between the Northern states (the Union) and the eleven Southern states that seceded from the Union and were organized as the Confederate States of America . It is also known as the War between the States, the War of Secession, and the War of the Rebellion. Background and Causes: …
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Full text Article American Civil War

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
American Civil War
A conflict between Northern states (the Union) and Southern states that had seceded (the Confederacy). The causes of the war included disagreement over slavery (which by then existed only in the South) and conflict over how much control the federal government should exert over the states ( states' …
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Full text Article American Civil War

From Encyclopedia of Intelligence & Counterintelligence
Allan Pinkerton, whose detective agency got its...
No previous war between the United States and a foreign nation could have prepared the armies amassed by the Union and Confederacy for the intensity, duration, and strategic complexities of fighting during the Civil War. The conflict was waged on native ground. Soldiers on both sides shared a…
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Full text Article Civil War, American

From Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
After the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1,...
The abolition of slavery in the United States and the emancipation of nearly 4 million enslaved people was the most significant outcome of the U.S. Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Although slavery was not the only matter at issue in the conflict, it was the central cause, and after…
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Full text Article Civil War

From The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Houghton Mifflin
The war fought in the United States between northern ( Union ) and southern ( Confederate ) states from 1861 to 1865, in which the Confederacy sought to establish itself as a separate nation. The Civil War is also known as the War for Southern Independence and as the War between the States. The war…
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Full text Article Civil War, American

From Philip's Encyclopedia
War fought in the USA between the northern states (the Union) and the forces of the 11 southern states that seceeded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America (Confederacy). Its immediate cause was the determination of the southern states to withdraw from a Union that the northern…
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Full text Article Civil War (1861–65)

From Dictionary of American Government and Politics
The Civil War was the war fought between the federal government and the eleven southern states that seceded from the Union to form their own independent Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). Tension between the Northern and Southern states had been developing for some time over issues…
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Full text Article American Civil War: Causes

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Introduction The American Civil War was fought with such ferocity that it cost more lives than all of America's other wars combined. The ferocity of the arguments about its causes reflects the complexity of the forces at work in American pre-war society, which brought on the war after a decade of…
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Full text Article American Civil War

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendering to...
(1861–65) Conflict between the U.S. federal government and 11 Southern states that fought to secede from the Union. It arose out of disputes over the issues of slavery, trade and tariffs, and the doctrine of states’ rights. In the 1840s and ’50s, Northern opposition to slavery in the Western…
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Full text Article AMERICAN CIVIL WAR TRUCE DOCUMENTS

From Encyclopedia of Historical Treaties and Alliances
TREATY AT A GLANCE Completed April 7–9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia Signatories Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, for the U.S. Army, and General Robert E. Lee, for the Army of Northern Virginia Overview The American Civil War did not end with General Robert E. Lee's celebrated…
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