Existing comment:
War and Freedom
One year after Brown's unsuccessful raid, Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the recently formed Republican Party, was elected President of the United States. Lincoln, who considered slavery an "injustice" and an evil, carried all the free states, with the exception of New Jersey. He failed to win a single border or southern state.
White southerners viewed Lincoln's election as a threat to their political and social system. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries in South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter, a federal installation. The Civil War had begun.
During the next four years, 359,528 Union troops died, and 258,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives. In 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Two years later, the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery in the United States, was ratified. Approximately 4 million African-Americans gained their freedom as a result of the Civil War.
Although the struggle for racial equality was still in an early stage, slavery was no longer legal in American society. |