The End of Slavery

Despite the power of the slaveholding clique, there was a growing debate within the U.S. concerning slavery and its possible expansion beyond the South. In order for slavery to survive, the system needed to expand into the new Western states. These contentious debates began to lay the basis for a conflict between the North and South that eventually ended in the Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln of the newly formed Republican Party was elected president in 1861, the South pre-empted any formal debate on the question of slavery by launching the secession crisis that provoked the Civil War. This was the bloodiest war of the 19th century. In a span of four years, more than 650,000 people were killed. The central issue was slavery. Two years into the war, Northern generals, led by Abraham Lincoln himself, tried to articulate a vague concept of "national unity" as the central issue. But it was not until Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863--which only freed slaves in the seceded states of the Confederacy--that Union forces actually began to have some sustained successes.