In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the only presidential candidtate to take the stand against slavery. His debate with Stephen Douglas won him fame as an opponent of slavery. The southern states threatened that they would secede from the Union if Abraham Lincoln was elected president because he spoke out against slavery. After becoming president, Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to make slavery illegal in the Confederate states. The document said, “slaves of any state…in rebellion… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. 

There were two sides in the Civil War – the north and the south. The south was called the Confederacy and after they seceeded from the United States, they made Jefferson Davis the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Confederate Army was led by Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee was a genious in military strategies and his personalily made him with holding the Confederate Army together. The Northern States were called the Union, and Ulysses Grant was the general for the Union army. There were many people who were active abolitionists. They spoke out against slavery or helped slaves escape in the Underground Railroad to get to freedom. Frederick Douglass was a former slave who learned to read and write. He taught other slaves to read and write before he escaped. Harriet Tubman was a famous conductor in the Underground Railroad who helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom.

There were several battles in the Civil War. The first battle started at Fort Sumter because that is where the first shots were fired. The bloodiest battle of the Civil War was the Battle at Gettysburg. This was the turning point of the Civil War because that is where the Union began to win the war against the Confederacy. President Lincoln delivered a speech called the Gettysburg Address. He said this speech to bring the country together because it was divided.