One hundred and fifty years since the US Civil War

FORT SUMTER

One hundred and fifty years since the US Civil War - World Socialist Web Site: 
Between Lincoln’s election as president in November 1860 and his inauguration four months later, millions of people in the free states of the North came to the conclusion that resistance to the slave owners was necessary. As a historian has recently written, “It was during this crisis that citizens of the free states finally defined the fundamental nature of the American Union, a task at which their Revolutionary forebears had deliberately and tragically balked.” [Lincoln and the Decision for War, by Russell McClintock (Chapel Hill, 2008)]
The bombardment of Fort Sumter began in the early morning hours of April 12. Within a day, the Fort, which had not been built to withstand an attack from land-based artillery, fell to Southern guns.
Despite the long buildup of the crisis, the actual attack on Fort Sumter provoked shock and outrage in the North. Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the slave owners’ rebellion, issued April 15, 1861, was met with overwhelming support. A war ensued that over the next four years would result in the loss of more than 625,000 people, approximately 2 percent of the population of the United States in 1860.