Abstract

The American Civil War was a defining moment in U.S. history. It remains the deadliest war the American people fought; more than 2 percent of the population—North and South—died from combat and camp diseases. It brought about a political, social, and economic revolution in the South, expanded the importance of Washington, D.C. and the federal government, and along with the second and third waves of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, helped further a great industrial revolution that made the United States the world’s number one economic power by 1900.