title: United States History: Civil War to Present: Student Edition 2009
author: RINEHART AND WINSTON HOLT
description: 2009 US History from the Civil War for High School students.
zlib_text: The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War
  The
  Civil W   r Ends
  1865
  
  CMH Pub 75–17
  Cover: The Grand Review, by Frank Wright 
  (Frank Wright)
  
  by
  Mark L. Bradley
  Center of Military History
  United States Army
  Washington, D.C., 2015
  The
  Civil W   r Ends
  1865
  
  5
  Introduction 
  Although over one hundred fifty years have passed since the 
  start of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues to 
  matter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destruc-
  tive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of the 
  Union, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. The 
  war remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with over 
  six hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle. 
  Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the American 
  Civil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sown 
  in the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over the 
  existence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict can