The American Civil War was one of the most important events for America. It happened in the middle of the 19th century, just one hundred and fifty years ago.

You might think that, of all times, a civil war was really unlikely at a time when people were flooding into the country and the United States was on a path to becoming the world’s richest country.

But in among this success there was also a problem that had not been dealt with – what we might call ‘the elephant in the room’. It had existed since the early years when America was a group of colonies. During the 19th century, this problem would get worse and worse until it erupted in war of the most terrible kind – civil war.

Civil war means a war between peoples within the same country. At this time America did not have quarrels with her neighbors. The quarrels were between people who lived inside the United States. The Civil War began in 1861. Let’s just see where this in the history of America. We will start by thinking back to the American Revolution – when 13 of the original British colonies broke away from Great Britain and became the independent country ‘The United States’.

A few years earlier, all of these people were British, and proud of it. But things gradually became sour and in the end one group of people felt so aggrieved that they broke away from the main country, and the Revolutionary War began. This was actually a civil war, too. It happened between 1775 and 1783.

The U.S. Civil War began just 80 years later, not that far away in time really. The war was long and hard, but eventually the British realized they could not win, and a peace treaty was signed. But in a way this victory for the colonies seeded the start of discontent that was to build up and become the U.S. Civil War.

Why was this? You would have thought the colonists would have been the happiest people in the world. They had a new country that was prosperous. How could anything be wrong? Well, people in the 13 states came together to make war only because they had common disagreement with Britain. But they had been used to going their own way since they were formed as colonies over a century earlier, and although they were called the United States, on many things they were not at all united. This was due to the way they had been founded and the way each colony made a living.

The book and toolkit screen tell you what happened...