Civil wars are rarely ended by stable power-sharing agreements. When they are, it typically takes combatants who are not highly factionalized and years of fighting to clarify the balance of power.

Civil wars also tend to greatly entrench any ethnic, religious, or ideological divisions within a society and restoring unity can be very difficult. The record of United Nations peacekeeping forces in healing such war-torn societies is mixed.

Southerners therefore opposed high tariffs, or taxes that were placed on imported goods and increased the price of manufactured articles. The manufacturing economy of the North, on the other hand, demanded high tariffs to protect its own products from cheap foreign competition.

South Carolina, however, feared a trick; the commander of the fort, Robert Anderson, was asked to surrender immediately.

Anderson offered to surrender, but only after he had exhausted his supplies.

The site contains background on the island's extensive Civil War History and information about what little is known about the light destroyed in the 1860's to prevent its being used as a navigational aid by the Federal Navy.

Their excellent Save the Light site allows you to visit the nearly inaccessible lighthouse and view the surrounding landscape so important during the war. I would love to hear how historians go about writing tactical studies of Civil War battles.

This would include the organization of notes and charts but I am also interested - perhaps even more so - in the cognitive process involved in translating those detailed notes into narrative.

More than 2 million people have died, and more than 4 million are internally displaced or become refugees as a result of the civil war and war-related impacts. Here the Sudanese practice mainly indigenous traditional beliefs, although Christian missionaries have converted some.