<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The American Civil War (also known by other names) was a war fought in the United States (U.S.) from 1861 to 1865 . The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U.S. history . Largely as a result of the long - standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861, when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, shortly after United States President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated . The loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution . They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery . </P> <P> Among the 34 U.S. states in February 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the country to form the Confederate States of America . The Confederacy grew to include eleven states, all of them slaveholding . The Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by the United States government, nor was it recognized by any foreign country . The states that remained loyal to the U.S. were known as the Union . The Union and Confederacy quickly raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought mostly in the South over the course of four years . Intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, more than the number of U.S. military deaths in all other wars combined . </P>

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