“Essay Question 4” In 1865, the Union declared victory over the Confederate States following their surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Va. The American Civil War was fought between the Northern states of the Union and the Southern Confederate States of America. The Civil War started April 12, 1861 after the first shot was fired on Fort Sumter in the harbor outside Charleston, S.C. The first major battle did not take place until July 21, 1861, and it was a commonly held belief that the war would be decided during this one battle. It took four years of battle and destruction before the Confederate States surrendered to Union forces in 1865. The Race Relations was one area with great potential for violence, although many black leaders stressed nonviolence. Since the mid- 1950s, King and others had been leading disciplined mass protests of black Americans in the South against segregation, emphasizing appeals to the conscience of the white majority (see civil rights movement). Lastly, the question implies the possibility of a counterfactual answer: The South really won the war. I have heard this argument made, and I am not persuaded. I know the logic: The racism that emerged in the postwar U.S., especially but not only in the South, looked like slavery under a different name; the South won the war of history and memory, securing the honor of the cause and forcing reunion on Southern white supremacist terms. And, indeed at a certain, meta – historical level, that is hard to dispute, especially the latter point. The U.S. won the Civil War. It mattered, really mattered, that the South lost. The Confederate States of America was defeated, definitively defeated, politically and militarily and its path forward – the explicitly proslavery anti – democratic path for which Confederates seceded and fought – was cut off from history. Various forms of