Sometimes called the first ‘modern’ war, the Civil War pitted two different social systems against each other. The free-labour industrial North had greater population, stronger financial, manufacturing, and transportation systems, and international recognition; but initially the South had much better military leaders. Because of slavery, it could also put a larger proportion of its white adult male population under arms. Lincoln’s greatest difficulty was finding an effective general; he did not succeed until the emergence from obscurity of Ulysses S Grant.

The winning strategy began in 1863, when Grant won control of the whole Mississippi Valley, isolating the W Confederate States from the rest. Meanwhile Robert E Lee was advancing into Pennsylvania, largely in the hope of winning foreign recognition for the Confederacy. His defeat at Gettysburg ended that possibility. By the autumn, the Chattanooga campaign put Northern troops in a position to bisect the Confederacy E to W, an act accomplished in late 1864 by General Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea. Grant, now the overall Northern commander, adopted a strategy of relentless pressure on Lee’s forces, regardless of his own losses. In the single month of June 1864, he lost nearly 60 000, nearly Lee’s total strength. But Northern advantages of population and material support, combined with the success of the Mississippi and Chattanooga campaigns, were making the Southern position untenable, particularly after Lincoln defeated the former army commander George B McClellan in the 1864 presidential election. The end came in the spring of 1865, as Sherman marched N through the Carolinas while Grant continued his costly siege of Richmond. Lee finally abandoned the Confederate capital (2 Apr), and a week later he was trapped by the combined forces of Grant and Sheridan. His capitulation at Appomattox Court House left only scattered Southern forces in the field, and the last surrender took place on 26 May.

The cost in death and devastation of the war was enormous. The greatest change was the end of slavery and all that it stood for. With its destruction there emerged the possibility of a modernized South and the long-range hope of a redefinition of the place of African-American people in American life - a hope which was not to be fulfilled until almost a century later.

See also Fort Sumter, Vicksburg, Grant, Ulysses S, Lee, Robert E, Lincoln, Abraham, McClellan, George B, Sheridan, Philip H, Sherman, William, Confederate States of America, Antietam, Battle of, Bull Run, Battles of, Chattanooga Campaign, Cold Harbor, Battles of, Copperhead, Fredericksburg, Battle of, Gettysburg, Battle of, Gettysburg Address, Peninsular Campaign, Reconstruction, Seven Days’ Battle.