What event triggered the beginning of the Civil War?

The attack on Fort Sumter is widely recognized as the event that triggered the beginning of the Civil War. This confrontation took place on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on the Union garrison stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. This was significant because it marked the first military engagement between the North and the South, leading to a swift escalation of tensions into full-scale war.

Prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, although there were numerous events and growing sectional tensions, including the election of Abraham Lincoln, which underscored the divide between pro-slavery and anti-slavery states, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry that heightened fears of slave rebellions, they did not directly result in open conflict. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation occurred later in the war and aimed at freeing enslaved people in the Confederate states, which was a strategic shift rather than a trigger for the conflict itself. The attack on Fort Sumter ultimately galvanized both sides, as it prompted the North to mobilize its forces to suppress the rebellion, thus officially beginning the Civil War.