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English Audio Request

frenchfrog
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The Civil War was a conflict between southern and northern states of the United States. It took place from April 1861 to April 1865. It was the deadliest war in American history: over 600,000 soldiers died.

After the end of the American Revolution in 1783, many northern states banned slavery. Many people in the north of the United States thought slavery was wrong and cruel. These people were called ‘abolitionists’ because they wanted to abolish slavery in all the United States.

In 1820, Missouri wanted to become a state, but many people were upset because it was a slave state. To keep the balance between slave states and free states, Congress decided to admit Maine as a free state at the same time. This decision was called the Missouri Compromise.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the southern states were afraid that he would ban slavery. The South needed slaves for its economy and its way of life. South Carolina was the first southern state to break away or ‘secede’ from the United States. Ten other southern states followed: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. These 11 southern states decided to make their own country which they called the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy. The remaining 25 states, which were located in the north, called themselves the Union.

President Abraham Lincoln said the 11 southern states did not have the right to leave the United States. As a consequence, he sent troops and the fighting started at Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12, 1861. The North had an advantage in the Civil War because it had more industries, more people, more resources, and more money than the South.

The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. Slavery was abolished in December 1865 when the 13th Amendment was added to the US Constitution.

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