Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “ Bleeding Kansas,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. His arm was amputated, and he died from pneumonia eight days later. At Chancellorsville, Jackson was shot by one of his own men, who mistook him for Union cavalry.

Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America-and thus the backbone of their economy-was in danger.ĭid you know? Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his famous nickname, 'Stonewall,' from his steadfast defensive efforts in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). In the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, while the South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of Black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco. In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions. WATCH: Civil War Journal on HISTORY Vault Causes of the Civil War The conflict was the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and much of the South left in ruin.

The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known, ended in Confederate surrender in 1865. 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. The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion.

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