The civil war did not start out about slavery and misrepresentation of this fact is spread far and wide. Therefore, the battle flag could not have been about slavery either.
The outbreak of the Civil War forever changed the future of the American nation. The war began as a struggle to preserve the Union, not a struggle to free the slaves, but many in the North and South felt that the conflict would ultimately decide both issues. Many slaves escaped to the North in the early years of the war, and several Union generals established abolitionist policies in the land Southern land that they conquered. Congress passed laws permitting the seizure of slaves from the property of rebellious Southerners. On September 22, 1862, following the dramatic Union victory at Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln presented the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
This document decreed that, by the power of the United States armed forces, all slaves in states that were still in rebellion one hundred days after September 22 would be "thenceforward and forever free." Furthermore, Lincoln established an institution through which blacks could join the U.S. Army, an unprecedented level of integration at that time. The United States Colored Troops (USCT) served on many battlefields, won numerous Medals of Honor, and ensured eventual Union victory in the war.
On December 6, 1865, eight months after the end of the Civil War, the United States adopted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed the practice of slavery.
—Sources: Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War edited by Patricia L. Faust (Harper Perennial, 1991), Encyclopedia of the Civil War edited by John S. Bowman (Dorset Press, 1992), and The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton (Bonanza Books, 1982).
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