The American civil war (1861–1865)
Découvrir un épisode historique de l'histoire américaine : la guerre de Sécession.
- La guerre de Sécession opposa
les États du Nord à ceux du Sud. Elle
avait deux causes principales :
- le problème de l'esclavage : les Nordistes souhaitaient son abolition et la libération des esclaves travaillant dans les champs de coton du Sud.
- le poids à accorder au gouvernement fédéral par rapport aux gouvernements propres à chaque État.
- Pour réagir à ces oppositions, certains États du Sud ont décidé de faire sécession, c'est-à-dire qu'ils ont quitté l'Union fédérale pour former la Confédération.
- S'ensuivront des combats armés, qui aboutissent, en 1863, à la Proclamation d'émancipation du président Lincoln : les esclaves sont libres. Mais la guerre civile dura encore 2 ans.
– the problem of slavery;
Black people had been brought from Africa and worked as slaves in cotton fields. Americans disagreed about their fate. The northerners wanted them to be freed whereas the southerners wanted them to work for them as slaves.
– the problem of the states' rights.
Should the US Federal Government be more powerful than the governments of individual states?
The North and the South were very different in character. The economy of the South was based on agriculture. The North was more industrial, with a larger population and greater wealth.
Slavery, and opposition to it, had existed since before independence (1776) but, in the 19th century, the abolitionists gradually increased in number. The South's attitude was that each state had the right to make any law it wanted, and if southern states wanted slavery, the US government could not prevent it. Many southerners became secessionists. It means they were for the partition between the northern and the southern states.
Abraham Lincoln (who was elected President in
1860) and his party (the Republicans) were against
slavery, but said that they would not end it. The
southern States did not believe them and began to leave
the Union.
In 1860 there were only 34 States in the US. Eleven of
them had left the Union (seceded) to form the
Confederate States of America (The
Confederacy).
In 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, in which all the slaves were declared free.
In the South especially, people suffered greatly from the war and had little to eat. On 9 April 1865, when the South could fight no more, General Lee surrendered to General Grant. A total of 620.000 people had been killed and many more wounded.
The war was over but the feeling of hostility against
the North remained strong. On April
14th, 1865, President
Lincoln was murdered in
Washington.
The South had been beaten, but its people had not
changed their opinions about slavery and states'
rights.
Between 1865 and 1870 the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed: they made Black people citizens of the United States and of the state they lived in. They were also theorically given the same rights as "White Americans".

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