高考英语话题阅读素材：Unit78TheAmericanCivilWar.docVIP

　Unit 78　　The American Civil War　　The American Civil War, the greatest war in American history as well as the only war fought on American soil by Americans, in which 3 million fought and 600,000 died. It was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865 between the northern states, popularly referred to as the US, the Union, the North, or the Yankees; and the seceding southern states, commonly referred to as the Confederate States of America, the CSA, the Confederacy, the South, or the Rebels.　　Before the Civil War, the United States was a nation divided into 4 distinct regions: the Northeast, with a growing industrial and commercial economy and an increasing density of population; the Northwest, a rapidly expanding region of free farmers; the Upper South, with a settled plantation system and declining economic fortunes; and the Southwest, a booming frontier-like region with expanding cotton economy. The economic and social changes across the nations geographical regions -- based on wage labor in the North and on slavery in the South -- underlay distinct visions of society that had emerged by the mid-nineteenth century in the North and in the South.　　For many years, compromises had been made to balance the number of free states and slave states so that there would be a balance in the Senate. The rise of mass democracy in the industrializing North, and increasingly hostile sectional ideologies in the 1850s made it highly unlikely, if not impossible, to bring about the gentlemanly compromises of the past necessary to avoid crisis. The United States Republican Party was established in 1854. The new party opposed the expansion of slavery in the Western territories. Meanwhile, the profitability of cotton solidified the Souths dependence on the plantation system and its foundation: slave labor. A small class of slave barons, especially cotton planters, dominated the politics and society of the South.　　Lincoln was a moderate in his opposition to slavery. He pledged