American Civil War - Page Two
The white men of the Confederacy elected their own president, Jefferson Davis (but
the enslaved African-Americans were still not allowed to vote, and neither
were women or anyone who didn't own any land). Lincoln decided to use the
United States army to recapture the South and force them to be part of the
United States.
The actual fighting started in 1861. The Confederate
army was greatly outnumbered, and the United States also had more guns and
more ammunition for their guns. The only hope of the Confederates was to
get help from England or France, the way they had in the American
Revolutionary War a hundred years earlier. But this time both England
and France said no. They would not help any country where it was legal to
hold people as slaves. England did send some guns and ammunition to the
South, but no soldiers.
A Civil War hospital
But the Confederates and the United States fought a lot
of battles anyway. Hundreds of thousands of men died in these battles, without
anything being solved. Many other men lost their legs or their arms or their
eyes. This was mainly because men had invented new kinds of guns which were
more powerful and more accurate than earlier guns. Using these new guns,
it was a lot easier to kill somebody. But generals kept on fighting battles
in the old way, with a bunch of men marching along in a long line. The two
lines would just shoot at each other until most of them were dead.
Dead Confederate soldier
In the end, the Confederacy ran out of both men and guns.
Robert E Lee surrendered to the United States general, Ulysses S Grant,
in April, 1865. So the southern states became part of the United States
again.
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