Confederate States

By the 1850s, many people in the United States wanted slavery to end.

However, Southern plantations still depended on it. Many Southerners

believed that each state or region should make its own decision about slavery.

In 1861, conflicts between Northern and Southern states led to the Civil War.

In a civil war, groups of people in the same country fight each other.

​

​The Civil War

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected

President. The South worried that he would abolish slavery. Many Southerners supported states’ rights. They believed that slavery and

other issues should be decided by each state.

In December 1860, South Carolina decided to secede (sih•SEED), or withdraw, from the United States, or Union. Other states soon followed. They formed the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.

​

​North Carolina Secedes

​

​Vote of secession

In April 1861, Confederate soldiers fired on the Union army at Fort Sumter, in South Carolina. This marked the beginning of the Civil War. President Lincoln asked states still in the Union

to send soldiers for the war. John W. Ellis, the governor of North Carolina, refused. In May 1861, North Carolina became the last state to secede and join the Confederacy.

​

Start of the War

​Abraham Lincoln

John W. Ellis

The Civil War divided North Carolinians.

More than 120,000 North Carolinians fought for the Confederacy. The nickname for North Carolinians, Tar Heels, may have come from these soldiers. They were known for standing

their ground in battle.

About 15,000 North Carolinians fought for the Union army. Of these, more than 5,000 were African Americans.

​

​Early Battles

​NC Union solider

Early in the war, the Union hoped to weaken

the Confederacy by setting up a blockade along

the Atlantic coast. During a blockade, an area is

blocked, or cut off, to keep people and supplies

from going in or out. The Confederacy fought

against the blockade with a new kind of ship

called an ironclad. An ironclad was a wooden

ship covered with metal plates. Some ironclads

were built in North Carolina.

​

In 1862, Union soldiers captured Roanoke

Island, New Bern, and Beaufort. As a result, the

Union controlled most of North Carolina’s ports.

​

More than 80 Civil War battles were fought in North Carolina. The largest took place in March 1865, at Bentonville. About 90,000 soldiers fought at Bentonville. More than 4,000 died.

Before Bentonville, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman had led soldiers in a march through Georgia. Along the way, they destroyed crops, homes, and railroads. Once they reached Savannah, Georgia, the Union troops turned north and marched into the Carolinas.

The War End

At Bentonville, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston launched a surprise attack to try to stop Sherman. Union soldiers forced Johnston’s troops to retreat. On April 26, 1865, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at James Bennett’s farmhouse, west of Durham. A few weeks earlier, General

Robert E. Lee, the Confederate leader, had surrendered to the Union army’s leader, General Ulysses S. Grant.

​

After the Civil War ended, people began to rebuild the country. The period after the Civil War is called Reconstruction.

During the war, in 1863, President Lincoln

signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed enslaved people in areas of the Confederate states that were still fighting against the Union.

After the war, the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in the United States. An amendment is a change to the Constitution.

​

Reconstruction

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment gave all United States citizens equal treatment under the law. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave African American men the right to vote.

During Reconstruction, many former enslaved African Americans went to work as sharecroppers. A sharecropper rents farmland and pays the landowner with a share of the crops.

The United States government set up the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865. The bureau provided food, clothing, and education to needy people throughout the South.

​