I'm reading a book called Across Five Aprils and it mentions the two opposing sides. I'm just curious to know what the differences between the two sides were since I'm not too sure. Thanks in advance.

Union... against slavery and succession (separating the US into North and South).

Confederate... for slavery and succession.

The original reason for the Civil War was economic.

The Southern states saw that they were getting a bad deal from the northern, more populated (blacks counted as only a part of a person for population count and representation in Congress) states in the way that legislation regarding trade was getting passed.

Since the south had primarilly "pantation" based economy (Tobacco and gotton as their mauin income) and the North had the manufacturing (and the mills that processed the cotten into cloth) there were some major philosophical differences.

Slavery was a side issue... it was expected that slavery would die out due to natural evolution of the southern economy (it would have taken till about now...)

blue and the gray north and south...it was about a country the (USA )splitting down the middle basically because some thought a state should have more loyalty from you as a person than your country did..the south..believed that they had the right to have slaves..the north did not..at some points it was a family torn in half because one brother might have believed it was wrong while the other thought it was his right to own a slave..it was a sad time in our country's history because we had our own civil war and countless lives were lost over something really that should never have been a problem or issue to begin with..we left a country or many countries because we wanted to be free and we turned right around and did to others what we were trying as a country to escape..and by the way if you are an american citizen you should be ashamed you should know this