Civil War, The

The, in American history, a conflict between the northern and the southern sections of the Union. So far as open hostilities are concerned, the war may be said to have begun with the bombardment of Fort Sumter April 12, 1861, and to have closed with the surrender of the Army of West Virginia at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865. The eleven states of the South forming the Confederacy had a total population of 8,900,000 of whom 3,500,000 were colored slaves. The Northern, Federal, or Union area had a population of 22,100,000. The Confederacy had about 1,400,000 white men between eighteen and sixty years of age. The Union had 5,000,000 men of military age. The Confederacy enlisted and drafted 1,230,000 different men. An equivalent of 1,080,000 men were under arms for three years. The Union enlisted and drafted 2,500,000 men, and maintained a total service equivalent to 1,560,000 men for three years.

The war was confined almost entirely to the territory of the Confederacy. Slavery was abolished. The doctrine of state sovereignty was overthrown. The North increased in wealth and military strength from year to year. The Union troops laid plantations waste, ran off the stock, and devastated the most fertile valleys of the Confederacy. The South was reduced to dire poverty.

On the Union side 360,000 soldiers died on the field of battle or of disease. The Confederacy lost 258,000. It would not be far out of the way to say that the war cost 1,000,000 lives. The Union paid out $3,660,000,000, and the Confederacy spent about $1,500,000,000, gold values. All in all the conflict, counting the destruction of private property, inflicted a loss of $10,000,000,000, a sum equivalent to one-tenth of our present national wealth.

See Nullification; Brown; Taney; Slavery; Secession; Antietam; Gettysburg; Richmond; Arlington; Grant; Lee; Jackson; Sheridan; Sherman; Confederate States; Lincoln; Davis; Beauregard; Charleston; Bull Run; Fremont; Douglas; Butler; Vicksburg; Emancipation; Contraband; Sumter; Torpedo; Monitor; Farragut; Alabama Claims; Carpetbaggers; West Virginia; Libby; Ku-Klux-Klan; Greenbacks; Debt