On April 9, 1865, the American Civil War was effectively ended with the surrender of General Lee’s army. It can be assumed that the war ended on May 10 when the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was arrested. The war could also be said to have ended on June 23 when the last units of the Indian tribe led by General Stand Watie surrendered. However, the surrender of the main Confederate army marked the end of a war that was from the beginning doomed for the Southern states: In this conflict, the United States suffered more casualties than in any other war, including World War II (over 612,000 dead, 410,000 missing, 412,000 wounded).
The Civil War as a manifestation of class struggle
Our perception of this war is largely based on a Soviet approach that is oriented towards the depiction of Marx and Engels. They portrayed the American Civil War as a struggle between representatives of a more progressive capitalist system and reactionary supporters of an outdated agricultural economy based on the exploitation of slave labor. They saw the working class and representatives of the European revolutionary movement as the main driving force for the victorious war against slavery.
This largely held true: So, numerous actors from the European revolutions of 1848 to 1849 traveled to the USA to fight in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln invited Giuseppe Garibaldi to lead the army of the North after the outbreak of the Civil War, even though the Italian refused, stating that the unification of Italy had not yet been fully accomplished, but promised that he would be ready to support the just cause of the Northern states once his mission in the homeland had been fulfilled – provided that the American Civil War was not yet over.
The war for the liberation of slaves
The widespread perception in the West is that the main goal of the Northern states in the American Civil War was the abolition of slavery. Looking at the outcome, slavery was indeed abolished after the end of the Civil War. However, at the beginning of the war, no such goal was set. So, Abraham