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The Civil War: 150 Years Later

�I think if I consider the long array of those bright youth and loyal men who have gone to their death almost before my very eyes, my heart might break, too. Is anything worth it � this fearful sacrifice, this awful penalty we pay for war?� --� Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut

Dale Smith, of Johnsonville, S.C., holds a Confederate Naval Jack | Vince Russell of Australia views slave chains on display in the Old Slave Mart Museum

Photo gallery | 9 lasting effects of Civil War on S.C.

Legacies, �truths� of war resonate today

Michael Beachler and his family emerged from the Old Slave Mart Museum last week somber and a little shaken after viewing, up close, the tangible remnants of 19th century slavery.

There were ads for gangs of �cotton and rice Negroes,� bills of sale, haunting slave narratives, and iron shackles that bound slave hands and feet. They walked inside rooms that once held auction blocks and holding pens for slaves.

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Viewpoint: Our readers

The State asked readers to weigh in on a number of Civil War-related questions in an online survey.

SEE THE RESULTS

The Civil War: 150 Years Later

Read the series

From December: The legacies of South Carolina�s December 1860 secession from the Union

From January: How the 1861 attack on Fort Sumter still colors the perception that many have of South Carolina.

From February: How the 1861 fall of the Lowcountry�s Port Royal gave rise to freed slaves, black education, African-American political power and an integrated military.

From March: How the 567-day siege of Charleston changed warfare � giving us submarines and proving the bravery of African-American soldiers � and left Charleston battered, setting the stage for a post-war shift in political power to the Upstate.

From April: How the burning of Columbia and the end of the Civil War fighting left South Carolina broken.

From May: How Reconstruction � the decade-long period after the war�s end � brought a government unlike one ever seen before to South Carolina, as African-Americans and Republicans controlled the state. Also, a look at the rise of black churches and schools from the ashes of the Civil War

From June: How white conservative �Redeemers� reclaimed political power 12 years after the war�s end, launching an era that saw the rise of Ben Tillman, the Upstate and Jim Crow segregation. Also, after African-Americans were disenfranchised, hundreds of thousands left, and South Carolina � for the first time in 200 years � became a majority white state again.

From July: How the activism of black South Carolinians helped usher in an era of �New Reconstruction� to the state and nation, ending segregation

From August: South Carolina�s �New Nullifiers� initially were Democrats, opposed to integration. Today, they have given way to Republicans who question the proper role of the federal government in the economy, health care and the workplace.

The Civil War: 150 Years Later Video

Today's fact about the war: