Further information: American Civil War and Reconstruction Era
The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the Civil War by Thure de Thulstrup.
Differences of opinion and social order between northern and southern states in early United States society, particularly regarding Black slavery, ultimately led the U.S. into the American Civil War.[102] Initially, states entering the Union alternated between slave and free states, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. But with additional western territory and more free-soil states, tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over federalism and disposition of the territories, whether and how to expand or restrict slavery.[103]
With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the first president from the largely anti-slavery Republican Party, conventions in thirteen slave states ultimately declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the U.S. government maintained that secession was illegal.[103] The ensuing war was at first for Union, then after 1863 as casualties mounted and Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, a second war aim became abolition of slavery. The war remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of approximately 618,000 soldiers as well as many civilians.[104]
Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution brought about the prohibition of slavery, gave U.S. citizenship to the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[105] and promised them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power[106] aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves.[107] Following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites. Over the subsequent decades, in both the North and the South blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination, including racial segregation and occasional vigilante violence, sparking national movements against these abuses.[107]
Industrialization
Main articles: Economic history of the United States and Technological and industrial history of the United States
Ellis Island in New York City was a major gateway for European immigration.
In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.[108] National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The later invention of electric light and the telephone would also impact communication and urban life.[109]
The end of the Indian Wars further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets.[110] Mainland expansion was completed by the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[111] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War.[112]
Rapid economic development at the end of the 19th century produced many prominent industrialists, and the U.S. economy became the world's largest.[113] Dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[114] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms in many societal areas, including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.
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