Title: Overview - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)
Headings: The Civil War - An Introduction
The Civil War - An Introduction
Last updated: August 5, 2013

Content: There is no middle ground." Defeat would make the country a "sepulcher in which should be buried our institutions, our nationality, our flag." For African Americans the stakes were freedom if the North won, or continued slavery if the Confederacy prevailed. Two hundred thousand of them, mostly former slaves, fought for the Union and for their own liberty. A growing number of Northern white soldiers also came to see freedom as a vital issue in the contest. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, a soldier from New York State exulted that "the contest is now between Slavery & freedom, & every honest man knows that he is fighting for," while an Iowa sergeant was confident that "the God of battle will be with us . . . now that we are fighting for Liberty and Union and not for Union and Slavery." Northern victory in the war resolved two festering issues that had been left unresolved by the Revolution of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787 that gave birth to the United States. The first was the nagging question whether this fragile republic, this precarious new democracy, would survive in a world bestrode by monarchs, czars, tyrants, and aristocrats. Americans were painfully aware that most republics through history had collapsed into anarchy or tyranny or had been overthrown by foreign invaders.