Civil War & Emancipation (5/10)

The Civil War erupted after escalating conflict over slavery’s expansion and the authority of the federal government versus states. It was fought on an industrial scale: mass mobilization, rail logistics, modern rifles and artillery, and total-war economics. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) reframed the war’s moral and political meaning by making the destruction of slavery a central goal, and the Union victory preserved national unity. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) formally abolished slavery, while Reconstruction attempted—often violently resisted—to define citizenship and rights in the postwar order.
This card is the nation’s blood-price for coherence—and the legal end of slavery as a system.