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The Civil War was the deadliest war in American history. In four years of fighting, approximately 620,000 soldiers died-360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederacy.
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The thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, abolished slavery as a legal institution. on December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted, It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted afterthe American Civil War.
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The election was held during the Civil War. Lincoln ran under the National Union ticket against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan. Abraham Lincoln won the election.
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Transportation problems and successful blockades caused severe shortages of food and supplies in the South. The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern slave states that had declared their secession from the United States.
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The war caused the national government to expand. In fighting to defend the Union, people came to see the United States as a single nation rather than a collection os states.
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Confederate President Jefferson Davis agreed to send delegates to a peace conference with President Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward, but insisted on Lincoln’s recognition of the South’s independence as a prerequisite. Lincoln refused, and the conference never occured.
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Union General Sherman moved from Georgia through South Carolina, destroying almost everything in his path. Sherman completed his March to the Sea by capturing Savannah, Georgia. Sherman's next move was to march northward through the Carolinas to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, where he would combine with the forces commanded by Union general-in-chief Ulysses S.Grant.
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General Lee's troops were soon surrounded, and on April 7, Grant called upon Lee to surrender. On April 9, the two commanders met at Appomattox Courthouse, and agreed on the terms of surrender.
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On April 14, as President Lincoln was watching a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor from Maryland obsessed with avenging the Confederate defeat.
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Jefferson Davis president of the Confederate states during the Civil War, was captured when the Union Army caught up to him on May 10, 1865, in Inwinville, Georgia. His best general, Robert E Lee, had surrendered on April 9 at Appomattox in Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant, which effectively ended the Civil War.
