Answer:
What specific issues and events led to the American Civil War?
The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States, who opposed the expansion of slavery in the Western Territories.
The Southern Leadership saw Lincoln as a menace to the institution of slavery, upon which the Southern Plantation economy was built. This led to the secession, first of South Carolina, and then, of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, states that formed the Confederate States of America.
Lincoln considered the secession unconstitutional, but the war was started by the Confederacy when the confederate army attacked Fort Sumter.
What was the outcome of that conflict and what did it mean for the nation as a whole?
The Confederacy was defeated and the Union was preserved.
Slavery was abolished by the thirteenth amendment, and over four million African Americans were now free.
The Southern economy, which depended largely upon slavery, was ruined. The damages to cities, ports, and railroads during the war only made things worse.
Over one million people died during the war, the deadliest war of American history.
