The United States saw long-simmering sectional tensions erupt into fighting at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in April 1861, beginning what would become the most cataclysmic military struggle in the western world between Waterloo and the First World War. This book, with a new foreword by Professor James McPherson, traces the course of the war in both Eastern and Western theatres, looking at strategic, geographical and logistic factors as well as the soldiers, officers, and civilians who were caught up in the conflict. During the four years of war at least 620,000 soldiers and sailors died in bloody fighting at more than 10,000 recorded battles, engagements and skirmishes.