ABSTRACT
The Civil War provided the most severe test of civil liberties in US history by challenging, and ultimately abolishing, the institution of slavery and by spawning a host of postwar civil rights laws and jurisprudence. The Civil War actually began as a struggle to preserve the Union. By the time the war ended with General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, the point of the Civil War was to put an end to slavery and to secure the civil liberties of the newly freed men and women. The conflict ultimately laid the groundwork for a veritable explosion of civil liberties that went far beyond ending slavery, though for African Americans these would be extraordinarily slow in being realized. The civil liberties of African Americans began a dismal spiral downward, as Jim Crow laws proliferated throughout the early twentieth century and racial discrimination hardened markedly.
