I'm a big war history buff so here's my little summary of the Civil War.
There is a common misconception that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. That actually had little to do with it until President Lincoln had the idea that freeing the Southern slaves would produce more fighters loyal to the Union cause. However the country was divided along clear slavery vs. non-slavery lines. It had to do with property rights (property meaning slaves). Southern plantation owners were upset with Lincoln because they knew he was against many bills that the South felt they needed to secure their "property". Lincoln was also opposed to the spreading of slavery into any expansion territories even if they were decidedly "Southern".
When Lincoln took office South Carolina immediately seceded, prompting other Southern states to follow suit until they eventually drafted their own constitution and elected Jefferson Davis to be president of the new Confederacy. Lincoln however was a shrewd politician and although he knew that war was likely to happen he was reluctant to fire the first shot even though you can argue that he goaded the South into firing first. The first shots eventually came with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, a Union held fort in Confederate territory.
The three names that most people hear when someone talks about the Civil War are Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. Robert E. Lee was the commanding general of the Southern troops. And while for a long time the Union elected generals who didn't take the South seriously Lee would be causing serious damage even to the point of coming within miles of Washington D.C. The union's Eastern Theatre generals were horrible, while in the Western Theatre General Ulysses S. Grant was the only real commander the North had that was willing to fight toe to toe with the South. So eventually Lincoln in his frustration appointed Grant commander of all Union forces and gave him the task of hunting down Lee's army.
Before that though probably the most famous battle of the Civil War (and widely regarded as the War's turning point) was the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Deep within Union territory, this battle was do or die for the Northerners because if they lost Lee's army would go unchecked throughout all of the North. This battle also had the highest casualties of any battle in the war. This is where the doomed "Pickett's charge" took place. On the third day the South decided to make a direct frontal assault of the Union lines. In charge of this assault was General George Pickett. The tragedy of this charge is that battlefield strategies had not yet caught up with modern advances in weapon engineering. So a frontal assault with ranks of soldiers lined up shoulder to shoulder was no competition for the new cannon technology. Most lethal to this charge was the use of a type of scattershot that resembled a grenade rather than a simple roundshot cannonball.
The Union went on to win this battle and force the Confederacy out of Northern territory and effectively ended any significant advance into Union states. Afterwards Grant employed a scorched earth campaign, believing that in order to win against the South he had to destroy their economic base as well as their army and government. He started an invasion campaign by assigning most of his generals to march through the South and capture various cities while burning everything along the way. The most recognized of these being "Sherman's March". He was ordered to take Atlanta, Georgia and march East until he reached the sea, utterly destroying everything he passed. Grant eventually caught up with Lee's exhausted army and a treaty ending all hostilities and dissolving the Confederacy was signed by Grant and Lee at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865. Interesting to note in this treaty was Grant's willingness (indeed his suggestion) to fully pardon all those loyal to the South, including it's military men and generals. The generosity of this gesture was fully endorsed by Lincoln, who sought to immediately heal wounds between North and South states. Lincoln sent massive aid to the South to help it rebuild.
The worst part of the war was probably the fact that fighting got so brutal, on a large part tributed to General Grant. When you hear people saying it was "fathers against sons" and all that stuff they really aren't lying. Most of the commanding officers on both sides knew each other personally as they had all attended West Point Academy. There were even Southern generals with Northern sympathies and the other way around. There was one story I think from the battle of Gettysburg that a Confederate general (forget his name) was ordered to make an advance against a corner of the Union line but was mortally wounded and lay under a Union cannon. The defender of this charge was General Hancock I believe, who was close friends with the dying Southern general and upon finding his dying friend wept bitterly. His soldiers were all taken aback by this and many noted it in their journals expressing great remorse for the killing of their own countrymen.
That's about it. Don't get me started on stuff like this cus I could talk forever if given the chance.
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