4 The Civil War
This great country of 31
million people was known
as the Union, but in fact
there were deep differences
between the North and the
South. And in 1861 war
broke out - the most
terrible war that the world
had ever seen. At least
600,000 people died in the
fighting or from illness.
The war was fought to
keep the United States
united. It began because the
southern states kept slaves
to work in the cotton fields. Slaves
were not allowed in the North, and
the two sides argued about whether
they should allow them in the new
lands of the West. In 1860, Abraham
Lincoln, who belonged to the
Republican party, which was against
keeping slaves, was elected president.
On December 24, South Carolina
said that it wanted to be independent
and the other southern states soon
followed; they called themselves the
'Confederate States of America'. The
fighting began on April 12 1861, at
Fort Sumter.
Slaves working in the cotton fields
The South had some of the best
soldiers - one was the great Robert E.
Lee - and they had plenty of money
from selling their cotton to England.
But the North had more men and
more factories. They also had
Lincoln, one of the best presidents
that the USA has ever had.
Two famous soldiers helped the
North to win the war: General
Sherman is remembered in a famous
song about how he took 60,000 of
his soldiers on a journey from
Atlanta, in Georgia, to the Atlantic
coast, breaking the Confederate