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Was the Civil War fought to abolish slavery?

Historians have long debated whether the American Civil War (1860–65) was fought because of a campaign to put an end to the practice of using Africans slaves for forced labor in the Southern states. Also known as the War Between the States, the bloody four-year conflict was fought between states in the North, called the Union, and states in the South, called the Confederacy. For years, American schoolchildren learned that slavery was the only cause of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) served as the U.S. president during the war, and eventually he freed the slaves. In fact, before he took office he had called the United States "a house divided" because there were nineteen free (nonslave) states and fifteen slave states. While slavery definitely was central to the war, many historians have identified additional causes.

By the mid-1800s, important...

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