On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War | Border slave states like , and did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among their citizens |
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Despite heavy Union casualties in the and at Spotsylvania both May 1864 , at Cold Harbor early June and the key rail center of Petersburg June , Grant pursued a strategy of attrition, putting Petersburg under siege for the next nine months | Congress passed the , which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict |
Congress passed the , which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them | Lee launched another invasion of the North in June, attacking Union forces commanded by General George Meade on July 1 near Gettysburg, in southern |
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He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not go so far as to free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union | The Confederates gained a costly victory in the , suffering 13,000 casualties around 22 percent of their troops ; the Union lost 17,000 men 15 percent |
They also had a cause they believed in: preserving their long-held traditions and institutions, chief among these being slavery.
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