First, ask students what they know about the Civil War. Next, explain that the war was fought between the Union (the North) and the Confederacy (the South). Show students a map like this one. This video will discuss Northern President Abraham Lincoln and Southern General Robert E. Lee.

The Civil War confirmed the single political entity of the United States, led to freedom for more than four million enslaved Americans, established a more powerful and centralized federal government, and laid the foundation for America's emergence as a world power in the 20th century.

The study of the Civil War makes us remember something we must never forget—how it was that we came to a crisis of such enormous moment in our history and lived and fought through it and came out in the end not only preserved as a unique democratic republic, but made better by it.

Civil War Facts More than 3 million men fought in the war. Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died in it. In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.

The Civil War paved the way for Americans to live, learn and move about in ways that had seemed all but inconceivable just a few years earlier. With these doors of opportunity open, the United States experienced rapid economic growth.

For more than 80 years, people in the Northern and Southern states had been debating the issues that ultimately led to war: economic policies and practices, cultural values, the extent and reach of the Federal government, and, most importantly, the role of slavery within American society.

The Civil War offers us many perceived lessons. Lessons in leadership, in tactics. Lessons in victory and defeat; division and reunification. These lessons are imparted to us through a wealth of records, letters, diaries and newspapers as recorded by the participants and individuals who lived through the events.