Struggle for the Union

Connecting the Causes and Conflicts of the American Civil War

The Civil War was a defining moment in American history that ended slavery and preserved the Union, the “United” States of America. Sandra Zink’s most recent book, Struggle for the Union: Connecting the Causes and Conflicts of the American Civil War, describes how the newly formed America modified its views about slavery over the decades following its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776 and creation of the American Constitution in 1787. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in states north of the Ohio River but did not prevent slavery in states that would be later admitted. After the purchase of Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, slavery expanded into the new territory, prompting the Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in all new states north of Missouri’s border. In the 1840s, the country clashed over whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 became a breaking point when it nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and was soon followed by the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The South seceded from the Union, formed the Confederacy, and fired the first shots of the American Civil War. The book describes how these national conflicts arose and then follows the critical battles of the Civil War which cost the lives of three-quarters of a million soldiers over a four-year period and the defeat of the Confederacy. After the war, several Civil Rights Acts granted voting rights and full citizenship to the freed Blacks, but their acceptance as equal citizens into American society created new challenges that are not resolved even today. The book is organized by year between 1861 and 1865 and contains over seventy maps and figures as illustrations for many of the battle descriptions. Each sectional year contains a sector on public opinion and what people were thinking at the time. Brief biographies of the commanding generals for both North and South are included as appendices.