The United States has been involved in many wars throughout history. Americans have fought and died in many wars, from the War for Independence in World War I to Desert Storm. One of the bloodiest wars in our nation's history is undoubtedly the Civil War. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, the country was divided over the issue of slavery. When President Lincoln was elected to office, several states seceded from the Union. During this war “over six hundred thousand men died and hundreds of thousands more bore the scars of war.” (Russell “Civil War.” Encyclopedia of American Studies) The war began in April 1861. The country expected this war to be short when the Confederacy was only 100 miles from Washington D.C. in Richmond, Virginia. President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops with only a 90-day enlistment. He didn't know that the war would last four years. Most people in the North went to war to preserve the Union and not over the slavery issue. The Union had several advantages during the war. The Union had twenty-one million people compared to the South's nine million, which included three and a half million slaves. Most of the industrial center was located in the north. This meant that the Union could produce more weapons, ammunition, and other supplies needed to win the war. The Navy also had control of the Union, which would be used to block any foreign aid. Although the North had all these advantages, the South would prove to be a fierce and formidable opponent throughout the war. The first shots of the war were fired on April 12, 1861: “The Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter and continued for 34 hours” (www.civilwar.org) and eventually this fort would fall to the Confederate forces. .. middle of the paper... with all the technological advances that came in the years after the war. I can think of very few things worth fighting for a people's freedom, whether it was back then or the recent wars in the Percian Gulf. People all over the world deserve to be free. Researching this topic brings to mind a quote. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" (Edmund Burke)Works Cited Fort Sumter. www.civilwar.org. Network. May 24, 2014.McClintock, Russell “Civil War.” Encyclopedia of American Studies. : Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2010. Reference creed. Network. May 24, 2014.Harris, Bonnie WK_16 Civil War and Reconstruction PowerPointBoyer/ Clark/ Halttunen/ Kett/ Salisbury/ Sitkoff/ Woloch. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Concise Edition Vol. I, 8th edition. Wadsworth. Ed. Ann West. 2013.