Since the independence, the USA has followed a spectacular path of growth on all sides ( politics, economy, social life...).  Therefore, America attracted a huge number of foreign visitors whom have studied the situation of the country especially during the mid 19th century. Although,  all the world was marveled by it's vitality and strength but one big black spot that turned to critics all the complements that should have been conceded, it is slavery.

Abraham Lincoln

          By 1850, the American society included 23 million people in a union comprised 31 states. During that time the USA reached a high level of development; The northern part especially New England & the middle Atlantic states were a great centers of manufacturing, commerce and finance they produces textile, lumber, clothing, implements... by the same time shipping was a big sector that has prospered, vessels from the United states were crossing the whole world. The south from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River and beyond was a relatively compact political unite featuring an economy centered on agriculture. The southern states produced cotton, tobacco, wheat, meat... All this crop was produced by slaves working in plantations.  Thereof, slavery was a fundamental  base of the southern  economy.

          In the 19 century the major difference between the North and the south was the the adoption of slavery in the latter. The northern part was a prosper industrialized area whether the South was an agriculture based economy. So the Northerners justified the south backwardness by the adoption of the slavery system. Thereof, the slave population that served to cultivate crop should have been used to promote the industrialization movement. To Northerners  slaves constituted a labor capital that was not adequately utilized. Besides, slavery was a system of brutality in which beating and separating families was commonplace. However, the fact that censored slavery was not the behavior of individual   masters and overseers toward the slaves, but slavery's fundamental violation of every human being's inalienable right to be free.

         Antislavery movements have begun since the  revolution, on of its actions was the abolition of slaves' trade with Africa by the Congress  in 1808. Till 1830, the American antislavery movement was a bit shy. In  the1830's  the rising abolitionist  movement was combative, the movement demanded an immediate end to slavery with no compromise. The movement's  leader  was William Lloyd Garrison from Massachusetts.  Garrison, played an active role in  awakening northerners to the evil of slavery who was helped by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became the spokesman for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society  and the editor of The Abolitionist weekly newspaper.
Many actions took place by the antislavery movement to liberate slaves such as the setting of a network of secret routes to help slaves escaping from the south to Canada.

       Although great efforts were do by  abolitionist movement to make slavery a question of conscience, The wholesome of northerners set aside from taking active role in the cause or actively opposed it. Moreover, in 1836, abolitionists asked the Congress to vote a ban of the slavery in the District of Columbia but nothing was noticed about this claim till 1844 the date of the repeal of the  so called "gag rule" which consisted on adjourning the debate on the claim every time it was bring to table.

         In 1845 Texas became the 28th state after its independence  from Mexico in 1836.  At that time the United States wanted at any price to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the American government attempted to buy the New Mexico and California from the Mexican Government, but the latter refused. After a clash between the American and the Mexican troops in El Rio Grande, the United States declared war in 1846, so the U S A occupied the territory of New Mexico, invaded Mexico in 1847. After the resignation of Santa Anna, the United States negotiated the Treaty   of Guadalupe Hildago in which Mexico ceded the southwest region and California for $15 million.

 After the conclusion of the Mexican war the Federal Government of the United States gained a vast territory of 1.36 million squares Kilometers which include the present day states of Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. This acquisition  revived the question of whether these new States would  be slave or free.
The Mexican War American troops proved to be a training ground in which many new war techniques and military  strategies have been experienced. Those troops which will fight on both sides in the civil war.

          In the first time that quarrels between the North and the South commenced they resulted in the Missouri Compromise in 1820. However, The newly acquired territories reopened once again the debate upon slavery.
Northerners believed  that slavery should decline & die and there were no way for the admission of new slave states, to legitimize their point of view they pointed to the statement of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and to the Ordinance of 1787  which forbade the extension of slavery to the Northwest. From the other corner of the ring, extremist southerners wanted that all the newly sized territories should be opened to slavery at least they wanted to extend the Missouri Compromise  line to the Pacific Ocean with free states  northward and slave states southward. Others proposed that the question should be left to popular sovereignty, that means that government should permit to settlers to enter the new territories with or without slaves as they want. And when it would be the time to establish an organized government the people themselves would decide whether the state would be slave or free one. Many states   din   not      approve the   Popular  Sovereignty Issue.  Meanwhile, by  the  year  1848  about  300.000 Northerners voted the creation of a Free-soil  Party.

      Tensions raised between Northern and southern politicians and threatening  conflict was about to blast until Senator Henry Clay,  who twice  before  in  time of   crises   had   come   forward   with compromise arrangements. Senator  Henry  Clay set up a compromise    known   as   the    Compromise of 1850    that contained  the following provisions:
               -California would enter the Union as a free-soil State (Slavery is prohibited);
               -The other territories would be divides into the the territories of New Mexico and Utah that would be organized without mention of slavery;
               -The claims of Texas to a portion of New Mexico can be appeased by the payment of $10 million;
               -More effective machinery  would be set to catch runaway slaves and returning to their masters;
               -The slaves' trade would be abolished (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia.
This compromise saved -for a few time - the country from being sectioned.

       As new territories have been settled  ( which comprises the actual states of Nebraska & Kansas)  arranging them into free or slave states set the quarrels more bitter and division seemed to be more obvious into the nation.
During that epoch marking men entered the political scene among  them we can mention Stephan A Douglas, the democratic senior  senator from Illinois who proposed a bill that permitted  carrying slaves  into the  territories of Nebraska  & Utah which enraged the free-soil supporters. But the Republicans opposed this suggestion. In 1856 the Republicans nominated John Freemont the Far West expeditionary force leader. The free-soil leaders such as Salmon P. Chase  and William Seward had active role in the Northern awakening. Anyway, the most remarkable figure was an Illinois Attorney Abraham Lincoln.
For a long time Abraham Lincoln regarded Slavery as an evil that would sooner or later shacked the integrity of the United States. In his opening speech opposing Stephan A. Douglas for the US Senate from Illinois in 1858, he said:" A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved- I do not expect the house to fall -but I will expect it will cease to be divided" 

          
In  1860 the Republican candidate  for the  presidential  election was,   Abraham    Lincoln    versus the democratic Douglas. By  February  1861,  7 slave states including  South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas   declared secession from the union,  fearing the absolute fact that Abraham Lincoln, the anti-slavery, would be elected president of the U S A.  In March 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as a president of the United States of America. In his inaugural address, president Lincoln, refused to recognize secession and invited the nation to save its integrity, but the south didn't consider the president's directives. And on  April 12 the first clash occurred between the South and the North at Fort Sumter. in response to clash the other slave states that remained loyal such as Virginia, Arkansas Tennessee and North Carolina seceded  as well. with Virginia went Colonel Robert E. Lee who declined the commandment of the Union Army out of loyalty to his state. thereafter, a Confederate government was established and a president a the Confederation of the United States of America was appointed, the Mississippian Jefferson Davis.

The most remarkable men in the civil war were general Ulysses S. Grant the Commander of the Northern Armies  and General Robert E. Lee the commander of the Southern troops. Both men combated for the honor of their beliefs, they set up strategies and fighting frameworks that are still taught in war universities.

The Unionists gained the war after the defeat and the capitulation of General Robert E. Lee to Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox . the most known battle that was the decisive one is Gettysburg, it was a tree- days battle in which the Northern forces intercepted Robert E. Lee  and his army on his way to Harrisburg. Unionists Lost 3.000 soldiers and Southerners lost 4.000 one.

          This event that shacked the American  normal life produced a great hero in the person of Abraham Lincoln who saved the nation from the collapse of the split not by force and oppression but by wisdom and generosity. In 1864  he was reelected as president, defeating his democratic opponent, George McClellan, the general whom Lincoln had dismissed after the battle of Antietam September 17, 1862. 
Lincoln's second inaugural address closed with these memorable words:

          "...With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as god give us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans...to do all which may archive and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

On an attendance of a performance at Ford's theater on April 14, 1865 he was assassinated    by John Wilkes Booth who was embittered by the South's defeat. Lincoln died on the morning of April 15.