The player can enact special decisions during the course of the war which represent real strategies by the US designed to end the war, such as the Anaconda plan. Ultimately however, slavery cannot be abolished in the US until the Civil War occurs, for better or worse. Additional events and decisions preclude the Civil War, in addition to during it. In APD, the Civil War event chain is not drastically changed from Vanilla. This was done in order to give the CSA a better fighting chance against the USA, which players complained that the CSA was extremely easy to beat. In Vanilla, although the original Victoria II starts in 1836, and allows the player to guide their selected country through 100 years of the Victorian era, the House Divided expansion pack which APD is based on allows an alternative start to the game in 1861 at the onset of the Civil War. The American Civil War in APD and Vanilla Thus began The Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, which ended in 1865 with the defeat and reoccupation of the southern states, and culminated in the end of Slavery within the United States. Although Lincoln attempted to negotiate with southern politicians and assuage their fears, hostilities broke out when forces of the newly formed 'Confederate States of America' opened fire on Federal forces at Ft. When Abraham Lincoln won the election, South Carolina declared its intention to secede from the United States, and several states followed, who began seizing federal property within their states. With his fiery anti-slavery language, southern politicians feared that such an act would upset the careful balance between Free and Slave states and would ultimately preclude attempts to abolish all slavery.

Things finally came to a headway in the presidential election of 1860, in which abolitionist Abraham Lincoln of the newly formed Republican party ran on a platform of limiting the extension of slavery into the western territories. However, debate between northern abolitionists and southern plantation owners continued to heat up as more and more violence over the issue broke out, especially over events such as John Brown's Raid and the Bloody Kansas. A delicate balance between Free and Slave states was agreed upon in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which sought to continue a status quo. However, since its inception following the American war of Independence from the British crown, the country has been plagued by fierce debate over the issue of slavery, which at this time all European countries (with exception of Denmark) had banned by now.

2 The American Civil War in APD and VanillaĪmerica begins the Victorian era as one of the emerging Great Powers of the world, and one which has embraced the ideals of Democracy as its founding principles.

American civil war mod