The Civil War lasted from 1861 until 1865. The southern states wanted to have their own nation and be able to decide what laws to have. The north did not want the country to be broken apart. In the election of 1860 Abraham Lincoln stated that he wanted to stop the spread of slavery. The southern states said that if Lincoln won, they would leave the union. The southern states seceded from the union after Lincoln was elected. They formed their own nation, The Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as their President. President Lincoln was forced to declare war. The war was a long and bloody. Over 600,000 men on both sides died. Over 1,100,000 were injured. The south was devastated. General Lee surrendered to General Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The war was over.

The war began in April of 1861 when the Confederate Army took over Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and against all odds they defeated the Union Army in the first battle of Bull Run. In 1862 General Robert E. Lee became the leader of the southern states Virginia army and fought with them on the 17th of September, the bloodiest day in U.S. military history, as Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Armies are stopped at Antietam in Maryland by McClellan and numerically superior Union forces. By nightfall 26,000 men are dead, wounded, or missing. Lee then withdraws to Virginia. Lee:s military skill showed to be a strong factor to the endurance of the Confederate Army and contributed to the long time the Civil War lasted.

From the beginning of the war the Union established a trade embargo against the southern states, with the purpose to stop their export of cotton to Europe. The 8-9 of March the worlds first battle between steel ships took place at Hampton Roads. The Union´s ship Monitor won by a narrow margin over Merrimack. Monitor was constructed by the swede John Ericsson. In the meantime the Union General Ulysses S. Grant operated westwards and defeated the rebels at Shilo 1862. After that he moved south along the Mississippi River aiming to cut the Confederation into two parts.

The 4th of July 1863 the Union Army occupied Vicksburg. In 1863 General Lee defeated the Union Army at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, and after that he lead the Virginia Army into Maryland. The concluding battle of the Civil War came about in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the 1-3 of July in 1863, where Lee was defeated by General Meade. In 1864 Lee fought in many bloody battles against General Grant in Virginia, and the Confederated Army was forced back. In 1864 General Sherman occupied Atlanta, Georgia after bloody fights and then he marched east to the ocean. In 1865 Lee retreated from Petersburg and the capital of the Confederated Army, Richmond was evacuated. Shortly after that Lee capitulated with his army on the 9th of April at Appomattox.

Five days after the capitulation On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who somehow thought he was helping the South. The Civil War demanded about 630.000 dead men and was the bloodiest conflict in North American history. The most valuable results from the war was that slavery was stopped the 1st of January 1863 and the Union was saved.