Four years is a long time for a war to last, and a very short time for a country to exist. But 1861 and 1865 are the beginning and end dates for the Civil War, which pitted the extant U.S. government and its military against the Southern U.S., a collection of states that formally left the Union in order to form a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The reasons for war were complex, involving issues of economics, independence, democracy, and the tenuous relationship between sovereign states operating under a federal government. But really, the Civil War wasn't about states' rights — it was about slavery. The Union wanted to stop the expansion of slavery, and the Confederate states wanted to continue the practice unabated.

The Reconstruction Era was a truly messed-up and agonizi

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