150 Years Later, US Still Debate Issues That Fueled Civil War

08 April 2011

Dave Chaltas is dressed as Confederate General Robert E. Lee during a re-enactment of the Battle of Aiken in South Carolina This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This Tuesday is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the opening shots of the American Civil War. On April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, Confederate soldiers fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

A total of eleven southern states left the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America. They wanted to continue their economic system based on agriculture and slavery.

The War Between the States continued for four years until the Confederates surrendered. Six hundred twenty thousand Americans died during the war. President Abraham Lincoln was killed shortly after it ended.

One of the first battles took place at what is now Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. Ray Brown from the National Park Service says two percent of the American population died in the Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln, center, in Maryland after the Battle of Antietam in 1862

RAY BROWN: "You can imagine the impact that this would have on whole communities throughout the country and why there would be such passions that have been passed on from generation to generation even at the remove of one hundred fifty years."