ABSTRACT
The Civil War remains the key event in American history, as the outcome of the conflict laid the foundations for the political direction, military might, and economic prosperity of the modern United States. Victory for US president Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) ensured that the United States of America would emerge as a federal and indivisible union of states, and not the loose confederacy envisaged by the South. The Union victory also ensured the economic dominance of the industrial North and the end of slavery in the South.
