civil war background 美国内战背景介绍

The overriding cause of the Civil War was the dispute over the enslavement of blacks in the South. In the 40 years before the Civil War the issue had bitterly divided the country. The South considered slavery necessary to its economy and feared that freeing the slaves would lead to violence, revolution, and social upheaval. Southerners considered slavery to be constitutionally protected, and held that the federal government had no right to interfere with slavery. In the North, however, there was a growing antislavery movement, which opposed slavery in the South and, especially, its expansion into the western ican Civil War (1861–1865), often referred to simply as The Civil War in the United States, was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25 states supported the federal government. After four years of warfare, mostly within the Southern states, the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation. Issues that led to war were partially resolved in the Reconstruction Era that followed, though others remained unresolved.