On November 6, 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the ... Federal troops returned the fire. The Civil War had begun. Immediately following the attack, four more states -- Virginia ...

Considered one of the nation's greatest presidents, Abraham ... after Lincoln took office, Confederate forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and the Civil War began.

Finally, constitutionally and politically, Lincoln had to grapple with the evolving meaning of the Civil ... the war must lead to “a new birth of freedom” or it would have been fought in vain. Major ...