The answers to both questions lie in the financial strength and global dominance of the products of the Slave economy. Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina famously boasted in 1858:

"Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet ... What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? ... England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king!"

This faith in the critical importance of Slave cotton was not wrong but unfortunately for the Confederacy it didn't help them during the Civil War. Bumper cotton crops in the years leading up to the war meant that the warehouses of Britain and France had plenty of supply. Fearing a loss of trade with the Northern States and skeptical regarding the outcome of the war neither country, nor any other, recognized the Confederacy as a sovereign nation. As a result, there was no legal challenge to the Union blockade of Southern ports that effectively stopped the cotton trade for the duration of the war. In a theatre of the war that does not get the same attention as the famous battles in the east, the Union moved quickly to control the Mississippi river commercial waterway capturing New Orleans in May 1862 and Fredericksburg in December 1862. This had the effect of splitting the Confederacy in two and simultaneously choking off much of the Southern economy.

Despite the victories in the Western theatre the war did not go well for the Union in the east. General Robert E. Lee won several major battles and prevented the Union from taking the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia. At the same time the casualties on both sides were horrific and wholly unexpected due to a combination of out-dated tactics and ever-improving weapons.

As more and more Northern youth fell on the battlefields of Virginia enthusiasm for the war waned. The war had been promoted as necessary to maintain the United States as one nation. Ending slavery was not the primary goal. In a famous open letter to Horace Greely, editor of the New York Tribune in August of 1862, Lincoln made this clear.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

The status of slavery within the Nation's capital indicates just how conflicted the politics of slavery had become. Within the confines of Washington, D.C. slaves had continued to be imprisoned with the intention of returning them to their owners as late as April 1862. And in the four "border states" which had remained loyal to the Union (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri) slavery remained legal throughout the Civil War.

Lincoln knew just how difficult a problem abolishing slavery would be and how any Federal move in that direction would be resisted even in those states that had remained loyal to the Union. In the fall of 1861 Lincoln had proposed that the slaves in Delaware be freed with Federal government compensation payments to slave owners.

The Delaware General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled."

After more than a year of bitter conflict the war seemed to be a stalemate. Lincoln remained committed to ending Slavery but his thinking about the matter had evolved. In speaking to New York businessman and journalist James Gilmore he said:

"The war has educated our people into abolition, and they now deny that slaves can be property. But there are two sides to that question. One is ours, the other, the southern side; and those people are just as honest and conscientious in their opinion as we are in ours. They think they have a moral and legal right to their slaves, and until very recently the North has been of the same opinion. For two hundred years the whole country has admitted it and regarded and treated the slaves as property. Now, does the mere fact that the North has come suddenly to a contrary opinion give us the right to take the slaves from their owners without compensation? The blacks must be freed. Slavery is the bone we are fighting over. It must be got out of the way to give us permanent peace, and if we have to fight this war till the South is subjugated, then I think we shall be justified in freeing the slaves without compensation. But in any settlement arrived at before they force things to that extremity, is it not right and fair that we should make payment for the slaves?"

It was in this frame of mind that Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It is important to understand the purpose of that proclamation. It was not to actually free the enslaved people of any state. It was an attempt to have the Confederate States rejoin the Union. The implied carrot was that an end to slavery would be negotiated after the States in rebellion had given up their attempt to leave the Union. The stick was that in January 1863 all slaves in the Confederacy would be declared free by Federal decree, without compensation to slave owners.

Receiving no response from the Confederate States, Lincoln signed the final Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. The impact of this proclamation was minimal. It did not free slaves in the border States nor in many areas in the South that were already under Union control. However, it did affirm that the goal of the war effort was now to end slavery.

The superior industrial might and manpower advantages of the Northern States eventually turned the tide and the Southern armies surrendered piecemeal throughout the spring of 1865. On the 19th of June the State of Texas came under the control of Union troops which marked the end of slavery in the Confederacy. That date is celebrated as Juneteenth. However, it should be noted that slavery was still legal and practiced in Delaware and Kentucky for six months after the end of the Civil War.

The Emancipation Proclamation had been implemented as a wartime executive order and there was some considerable risk that it could not survive legal challenges based upon the property rights clause of the 5th Amendment. The only way to end slavery for all time was through another constitutional amendment and as a result the 13th Amendment was presented to Congress over a year before the end of the Civil War.

Despite the fact that no Southern states were represented in the House of Representatives at that time the Amendment failed to pass on the first vote taken in June. Only through intense political manoeuvering did the Amendment obtain the 2/3 majority needed to pass on January 31, 1865.

After the cessation of hostilities and before Congress was to reconvene at the end of the year President Andrew Johnson hurriedly began the Reconstruction Era by moving to get Confederate States to ratify the 13th Amendment. By the end of 1865 the Amendment had been ratified by the required 27 States (3/4 of all States) including 8 that had been members of the Confederacy.

There were two significant problems with the 13th Amendment. First, there was a loophole. Slavery was still allowed "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted". Second, the Amendment was silent as to the status of freed slaves with regard to citizenship, suffrage, or economic rights such as property ownership.

To address the issue of the status of freed slaves the 14th Amendment was passed by Congress in June 1866. That amendment clarified that all people born in the United States were citizens and had equal rights before the law. But this amendment ran into a problem.

Because the Confederate States had ratified the 13th Amendment, they were now properly part of the United States once more and all but Tennessee refused to ratify the 14th Amendment so that it could not attain the needed approval of 3/4 of all states. To overcome this problem Congress declared the governments of the states that had been part of the Confederacy to be illegitimate and imposed military rule over the South. They effectively evicted the Confederate States from the Union again and reconstituted their governments. Under this questionable governance structure the 14th amendment was ratified on July 20, 1868.