There were many causes of the American Civil war, but perhaps the most significant was the issue of slavery between the North and the South. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the economies of the North and South differed tremendously. In the North, factories and the manufacturing of goods were prevalent. Farms were very few and far between. In the South, farming and the growing of crops was the catalyst of their economy. In order to produce a large amount of crops, a vast number of slaves were needed to do the work. .
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. He and his fellow Republicans wanted to only stop the expansion of slavery, not abolish it altogether. Not one state from the South had voted for Lincoln because they did not believe he would follow through with his promises regarding slavery. As a result, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas formed the Confederate States of America. The states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union. The South wanted to protect and preserve slavery within its borders, and the North did not want slavery to expand into new areas. Therefore, the South and the North went to war. In April of 1861, the United States only had control of two forts in the South, Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida and Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. .
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, ordered General Beauregard to attack the Fort. Beauregard sent someone to ask the Fort to surrender, but that failed. The next day, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter. Lincoln responded quickly to this attack and prepared the North for war. He recruited seventy-five thousand troops to fight the rebellion and ordered the United States Navy to seal off southern ports. The American Civil War was underway.