Learn about the Union and its characteristics during the Civil War. See a list of states that were in the Union. Read about the Union and Confederate states.
Updated: 11/21/2023
The Union in the American Civil War | States & History
Table of Contents
- The Union in the American Civil War: Overview
- Background and History: United States Civil War
- What Was the Union?
- Union and Confederate States: Comparison
- The Victory of the Union
- Lesson Summary:
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Union fighting for during the Civil War?
The Union fought to bring the southern states back into the Union and preserve the nation under the federal government. Slavery, and the goal to abolish it once and for all, was a top priority.
How many states were in the Union before the Civil War?
There were 33 states before the Civil War. 11 of these states seceded from the Union in order to form the Confederacy.
What side was the Union in the Civil War?
The Union was the North. This is the side of the Civil War that opposed slavery and ultimately won the war.
Which states were Union and Confederate?
The northern states were in the Union, while the southern states were in the Confederacy. All of the southern states were states in which slavery was legal. All but four of the Union states had abolished slavery.
Table of Contents
- The Union in the American Civil War: Overview
- Background and History: United States Civil War
- What Was the Union?
- Union and Confederate States: Comparison
- The Victory of the Union
- Lesson Summary:
The American Civil War was a major conflict that occurred in the United States between 1861 and 1865. The northern states made up the Union and the southern states made up the Confederacy. The Confederacy was devoted to preserving the institution of slavery. They started the Civil War when they seceded from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
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The two primary causes of the Civil War were the debate over the existence of slavery and conflict over whether or not new states admitted to the Union should be free states or slave states. This issue came to a head in 1820 when the state of Missouri was admitted in the Union as a slave slate. The northern states agreed to this action as long as Maine was simultaneously admitted as a free state.
The Election of Abraham Lincoln
The election of 1860 was probably the most consequential in US history. It resulted in the election of the anti-slave Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's election incensed the South because they believed that he would try to abolish slavery throughout the United States. Shortly after his election, several states seceded from the Union. Around the beginning of the Civil War, 11 states in total had joined the Confederacy.
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Secession of Southern States
These are the states that seceded:
- South Carolina (December 20, 1860)
- Mississippi (January 9, 1861)
- Florida (January 10, 1861)
- Alabama (January 11, 1861)
- Georgia (January 19, 1861)
- Louisiana (January 26, 1861)
- Texas (February 23, 1861)
- Virginia (May 23, 1861)
- Arkansas (May 6, 1861)
- North Carolina (May 20, 1861)
- Tennessee (June 8, 1861)
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The Union consisted of all the states that remained loyal to the United States. Union soldiers wore blue uniforms.
Social Organization
The government of the Union was essentially the same as it was before the Civil War. The Union still adhered to the Constitution of the United States. Most of the states in the Union had abolished slavery. The exceptions were Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri. These states were called Border States.
The North was more ethnically diverse, with large numbers of immigrants. Due to skilled and unskilled labor opportunities, social mobility was easier in the Union than it was in the states of the Confederacy.
Economics
The North was highly industrialized and contained far more factories than the South. This made the region wealthier and more equipped for war. The Union had much more infrastructure, including railways and telegraph lines, than the Confederacy. These elements gave the North many major advantages.
The South was one of the world's largest producers of cotton, and its agricultural economy was geared towards the production of this crop. Farms in the North, however, were far more diversified, and were capable of producing adequate food for Union troops.
What States Were in the Union?
The following states were in the Union:
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Vermont
- Rhode Island
- Connecticut
- New York
- New Jersey
- Pennsylvania
- Maryland
- Delaware
- West Virginia (Seceded from Virginia during the Civil War)
- Ohio
- Kentucky
- Indiana
- Michigan
- Wisconsin
- Illinois
- Missouri
- Minnesota
- Iowa
- Kansas
- California
- Oregon
- Nevada
These states were all found in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
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- The Union was more industrialized than the Confederacy
- The Union had a larger population than the South
- The Union had better infrastructure
- Union farms were more diversified
- The Union was geographically larger
- The Union had, with the exception of four border states, outlawed slavery
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The Civil War ended in 1865 with a Union victory. The Confederate states were readmitted into the Union, but most of the prominent Confederate leaders were deprived of citizenship and not allowed to participate in politics. Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery within the Union with the Emancipation Proclamation, but slavery was eradicated nationwide after the Union's victory in the war.
Men from the North who headed south to take advantage of economic opportunities were called carpetbaggers. They were much detested in the former states of the Confederacy.
Shortly after the Union's victory in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. He was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, the first president in US history to ever be impeached. Johnson was a Southerner and sympathized with many former slave owners. He survived his impeachment vote and remained in office until 1869.
The Defeat of the Confederacy
The defeat of the Confederacy was a bitter blow to the South. Union forces occupied the area and remained stationed in the former Confederacy until 1877 with the end of Reconstruction.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction was the period in American history directly following the Civil War's end. It gets its name from the fact that great attempts were made to rebuild the South and reintegrate it into the Union. During this time, a number of prominent African Americans served as Congressmen from southern states.
Three Constitutional amendments were passed after the Civil War. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery for good. The 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all African Americans and to anyone born in the United States. The 15th Amendment gave African Americans the right to vote.
Despite the passage of these amendments, virtually all civil rights were stripped from African Americans by southern states after the withdrawal of federal troops in 1877.
Ulysses S. Grant, who was the leading Union general during the Civil War, became president of the United States. He was in office between 1869 and 1877. He is widely considered to have been a relatively unsuccessful peacetime leader due to a number of scandals and his inability to truly integrate freed slaves into American society.
Reconstruction also saw the birth of racist terrorist groups in the South, including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
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During the Civil War, the North was known as the Union. They won the war by defeating the Confederacy, the Southern states. The cause of the Civil War was slavery, with the Union fighting to keep the nation together. The Confederacy was made up of states that supported the continuation of slavery and opposed federal government oversight. One of the reasons that the Union won the war was because it contained many industrial centers, something that the South lacked.
Some states that were located along the border of the North and South had a difficult time deciding which side to join. These states were known as Border States.
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Video Transcript
The Civil War
Most nations have some point in their history when it all just fell apart. For the United States, that moment came in 1861. The states of the American South seceded in protest of Lincoln's election as president in 1860, and the nation plunged into a four-year Civil War (1861-1865).
The Civil War was traumatic for many, and the nation filled with stories of families who were divided between the two sides. The Southern secessionists called themselves the Confederate States of America. They were opposed by the American federal government and the Northern states, collectively called the Union during this conflict. The American national motto is e pluribus unum: out of many, one. When that one became divided in 1861, it was the Union that fought to bring it all back together.
The Union States
While the Confederacy was made up entirely of Southern states, the Union actually had states from multiple regions. Northern states included Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio.
In addition, the Union claimed many of the newly settled West, including Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, California, and Oregon. Each of these states sent soldiers to fight in the Union Army.
The Union was operated by the federal government, which did give them one distinct advantage in terms of land. While states had the ability to secede in 1861 (and 11 of them did), the territories of the West had a lot less freedom. Territories were directly controlled by the federal government, so these lands were also seen as part of the Union. Some battles between the Union and Confederacy were fought in the territories, with each side claiming certain victories.
The last region we have to talk about is what we call the Border States. Border States were technically part of the upper South, but chose not to secede in 1861. These states included Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.
Abraham Lincoln put a lot of effort into trying to convince the Border States not to leave the Union. In fact, when the Emancipation Proclamation was first issued, it only applied to slaves in rebelling states. Border States were allowed to keep their slaves.
Much of the Civil War was fought in and for the Border States, with thousands of individual citizens from this region volunteering to fight in both the Union and Confederate armies. However, the Union was able to use the Border States as a launching pad to invade the South due to this area's official support of the Union.
Beliefs & Characteristics
When asked what the Union was fighting for, many people will claim that it was to end slavery. That is true, to a degree. By 1863, Northerners fully associated the abolition of slavery with the success of the war, but it didn't start out that way.
Back in 1861, Northerners opposed slavery, but it wasn't an issue in their lives. Most Northern states had abolished slavery decades earlier. What really offended them was the fact that the South seceded from the nation.
When the Union began the Civil War, their primary agenda was to bring the South back into the United States. It's important to remember that the nation was still less than a century old at this point. Americans still had to prove to the world that their republic could stand.
The Union itself was large and relatively diverse in both people and economies. The Union did contain lots of agricultural territory, which meant they were able to continue feeding themselves during the war. The three agricultural products they lost when the South seceded were cotton, tobacco, and rice. While the South produced nearly all of the rice in the nation, the Union had millions of acres of corn and wheat.
What really set the Union apart from the Confederacy, however, wasn't agriculture but industry. Most of the nation's major industrial centers were in the North. Throughout the Civil War, the Union produced weapons and supplies on an industrial scale and built railroads across the West to increase their transportation networks.
Meanwhile, the Confederates had to melt down church bells and plows to make bullets and supplies. While the South won most of the battles in the early parts of the Civil War, the Union had more resources and was able to outlast the Confederacy's original momentum. The Union's lands, industries, and transportation systems gave them the long-term stamina they needed to push the Confederacy back into the deep South, divide the Confederate Army in half by securing the Mississippi River, and finally end the war. The Confederacy was dissolved, and those 11 states were added back into the Union. Once again we were one, out of many.
Lesson Summary
The Civil War was a major American war fought from 1861 to 1865. It was fought between the secessionist Southern states, called the Confederacy, and the remaining parts of the United States, called the Union. The Union consisted of the Northern states, as well as all the states and territories of the West with the exception of Texas.
For the most part, the Union also claimed the five Border States, those in the upper South that chose not to secede with the Confederacy. The Union opposed slavery but originally was fighting the Civil War simply to keep the nation intact. Ultimately, the extra lands, industry, and transportation systems of the Union provided them an advantage over the South, leading to a Union victory at the end of the war.
The nation was restored, bringing the 11 secessionist states back into the United States. Out of many, the Union was fully restored.
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The Union in the American Civil War | States & History
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