The Civil War
Before Lincoln was inaugurated, South Carolina and other Southern states seceded. Buchanan failed to act against the seceding states, which soon formed their own confederation. The Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, beginning the Civil War. The main aim of the federal government was to preserve the Union and this was accomplished, after four years of bloody fighting, by the federal triumph in 1865. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in December, 1865.
American Civil War: battles and campaigns in the West. This map shows the location of important early battles and campaigns of the American Civil War (1861-1865) that took place in the West. Fighting in the West centered in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, Lincoln had been reelected President in 1864 on a Union party ticket with Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat who opposed secession, as Vice President. Lincoln died from an assassin's bullet on April 15, 1865, six days after the surrender of the main Confederate forces and only a few weeks after his second inauguration. Johnson became President.
