American Civil War

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American Civil War/War of Northern Aggression
Begun	April 12, 1861
Ended	April 9, 1865
Casualties	970,000
Total dead	620,000
United States of America
President	Abraham Lincoln
Secretary of War	Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of the Navy	Gideon Welles
Secretary of State	William Seward
Confederate States of America
President	Jefferson Davis
Secretary of War	Leroy Pope Walker, Judah P. Benjamin, George W. Randolph, James Seddon, John C. Breckinridge
Secretary of the Navy	Stephan Mallory
Secretary of State	Robert Toombs, Robert M.T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin

The American Civil War (also referred to as the War of Northern Aggression in the southern states) was a conflict which took place from 1861 to 1865, involving the government of the United States of America and eleven southern states which seceded from the Union and formed their own government called the Confederate States of America. The worst war ever fought in American history, it involved casualties of nearly a million soldiers and civilians, roughly three percent of the country's total population.

Prelude to war

Political machinations and compromises

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed for the entry of Maine into the Union as a free state, and Missouri as a slave state. It was further agreed that slavery was to be excluded from territory north of Missouri or the remaining western territories. Before admission could be granted to Missouri a clause in the state's constitution provoked controversy: the exclusion of "free negroes and mulattoes". Under Henry Clay's influence in the U.S. senate, an act of admission was passed, upon condition that the controversial exclusionary clause should "never be construed to authorize the passage of any law" impairing the privileges and immunities of free citizens. Sometimes called "the Second Missouri Compromise", it seemed deliberately ambiguous; the compromise could be interpreted to indicate that free blacks and mulattos did not qualify as United States citizens, which would be put to direct test years later with a slave named Dred Scott. [1]

Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott was a slave owned by an Army physician who was transferred to the state of Wisconsin, a free state, for several years before a transfer to Missouri, a slave state. Scott sued on the grounds that his residence in a free state where slavery was illegal made him free. After a series of unsuccessful lawsuits, Scott appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where in 1856, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott vs. Sanford:

• Blacks were not entitled to citizenship according to the U.S. Constitution.
• Blacks were not entitled to freedom under the Ordinance of 1797 while within the area of the Northwest Territory, of which Wisconsin was a part.
• The Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibiting slavery north of Missouri and in free states was voided.

What the Dred Scott decision meant was any slave could be taken anywhere in the Union without fear that the owner of the slave would lose his property; a slave was private property, Taney stated, and according to the Fifth Amendment could not be taken from the owner without due process. [2]

The decision further frictionalized North/South relations, as a stunned North realized that free states had to support the institution of slavery.

Links

• Library of Congress Civil War map collection
• The Civil War Homepage
• The PBS/Ken Burns documentary
• The History Place
• Civil War at a Glance; US Interior Department
• Shotgun's home of the American Civil War
• US Civil War Center, from Louisiana State University
• Civil War Treasures, from New York Historical Society

Prelude to war

• Full text of the Dred Scott v. Sandford
• Missouri Compromise