What year did the civil war end and was there slavery after?

Answer 1

The War of Northern Aggression, commonly (if improperly) known as the American Civil War, began upon the assertion of a number (eleven) States of what was then the "United States of America," of their right to divorce themselves from their abusive metaphorical spouse ("the Union").

Abraham Lincoln, who had campaigned on a pro-slavery platform (indeed, whose entire political career and opinions as an attorney had been very much pro-slavery), would not brook such disrespect; he therefore directed his militia in the commission of every sort of war crime against the seceded States.

Note: Until the 20th Article of Amendment to the United States Constitution (1933), US presidents served from 4 March; thereafter the date was from 20 January. Lincoln was the President-elect until he assumed office on 4 March 1861.

South Carolina adopted an ordinance declaring its secession from the Union shortly after Abraham Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860, and by February 1861, six more Southern states had adopted similar ordinances of secession.

On 7 February 1861, the seven seceded States adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America and established their temporary capital at Montgomery, Alabama.

A pre-war February peace conference met in Washington, D.C., in a failed attempt at resolving the crisis. Confederate forces seized all but four Federal forts within their boundaries (they did not take Fort Sumter).

Then-President (of the USA) James Buchanan protested but made no military response aside from a failed attempt to resupply Fort Sumter via the ship Star of the West (the ship was fired upon by Citadel cadets), and no serious military preparations.

In his inaugural address, he argued that the purpose of the United States Constitution was "to form a more perfect union" than the Articles of Confederation which were explicitly perpetual, thus the Constitution too was perpetual;

Lincoln wrongly proposed during that address that even if the Constitution were a simple contract, it would require the agreement of all parties to rescind it (consider the counter-example of a contested divorce), and called any ordinances of secession "legally void."

Lincoln stated he had no intent to invade Southern states and that he had no intent to end slavery in states where it already was legal -- a comment indicating either that he did not comprehend the issues that impelled the common conscience to separation (because Lincoln had either no functional conscience, a grossly defective and largely missing sense of human concern, or both) or that he understood those issues but elected to re-characterize his quest for personal achievement and glory for transcendent political ends.

The reason such should be obvious is because slavery is not a sustainable economic model, and the seceded States were organized not in the hope of perpetuating a failed institution, but in the hope of discovering a way to both (a) humanely liberate the slaves and (b) integrate them into society:

Slaves in 1861 were generally illiterate and had no comprehension of civics or the reason for taxation. All their needs -- from food and beverages to shelter and clothing, from training and recreation to medical care (slaves were exceedingly costly to purchase, even more costly to own) -- were provided by their keepers:

Simply releasing the slaves all at once would have been insanely and gratuitously cruel to the released slaves; moreover, it would have been devastating to public order: most would have had no reasonable alternative recourse to robbery and burglary as they attempted to make their way through life.

Knowing this, Lincoln decided to frame his war in terms most devastating to his enemy; the mid-to-late 19th-Century shift in global popular morality away from formal slavery (as described in the foregoing) and towards a system vastly more profitable for "de facto" slave owners and managers (variously denominated as "capitalism" and "free enterprise") ensured not only that Lincoln's version of history-through-opportunistic-propaganda would survive, but also that he would be regarded as a hero despite his war crimes.

Lincoln during his Inaugural Address further stated he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, closing with a plea for restoration of the bondage of union.

The Confederate States of America sent delegations to Washington D.C. and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States; eager for war, bloodthirsty Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents, steadfastly asserting that the CSA had no legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government. Despite this, the Union's Secretary of State William H. Seward engaged without success in "unauthorized and indirect" negotiations with the seceded States.

The war itself is officially said to have occurred between 12 April 1861 and 9 April 1865; the last shot officially attributed to the war being fired in June 1865.

After the war, slavery continued to be practiced only in the North; New Jersey, for instance, continued the practice for at least 61 years after it was "officially" ended in that state.