42 / 50
end of slavery and Southerners demanding “states’
rights,” meaning they wished to determine for them-
selves whether to keep slavery. Finally, the furor over the
issue erupted into the Civil War.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln
traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Just a few months
earlier, the Union Army had won a decisive yet bloody
victory there against the army of the Confederacy. The
battle of Gettysburg had turned the tide of the war in
favor of the Union Army, and would mark the beginning
of the final chapter in the Civil War, and along with it the
end of slavery in America.
Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg to help dedicate a
40
The Declaration of Independence: Forming a New Nation
A handwritten copy of
Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address, on paper with
theWhite House’s letter-
head. Delivered 87 years
after the Declaration of
Independence was writ-
ten, the Gettysburg
Address asserted again
that in America, all men
are created equal,
whether black or white.
After the Civil War, the
Thirteenth Amendment
was added to the U.S.
Constitution; it forever
ended slavery in the
United States.