The South fired the first shots in the American Civil War on this date in 1861, attacking a U.S. military installation - Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.
The South seceded over slavery, pure and simple. That fact was spelled out in most of their respective Ordinances and Declarations of secession. There is a good article about secession here.
Those who refuse to call it "the Civil War" because "there was nothing civil about it" are simply ignorant of the English language. How "civil" was the Spanish Civil War? (Or do you have some foolish euphemism for that war too?) How "civil" was the English Civil War? (Yes, they had one of their own over a two hundred years before ours.)
Civil wars are rarely "civil" in the sense of "a civil conversation," but are wars between factions within a state or nation. That is why they are called civil wars.
Today I learned something about arrowheads
1 hour ago
Luckily the Royal Navy, then the most powerful naval force in the world, was able to help impede the Confederate states getting the supplies of new slaves they craved, as well as succouring those who managed to get to Royal Navy ships. Of course it wasn't until the 1960s, almost a century after the Civil War, that the US finally, in legal terms if not always in practical terms, managed to give full civil rights to its African-American citizens.
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