History teaches us that our Civil war was from the period of 1861-1865, and subsequently ended at the Appomattox Court House; but this really just represents the ending of the military engagements between the two sides. While it is true that each State that rebelled against this Union of States, are now once again conjoined into the United States; what is also true is that this bloody and destructive war, that cost the lives of an estimated 624,000 soldiers in battle, and had a monetary cost as estimated by civilwarhome.com, of $6,190,000,000 -- is that the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as the 13th though 15th Amendments to our Constitution, have never, not even until this day, been fully and fairly implemented.
That is to say, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but that Amendment did not abolished the replacement of such with, at best, second class citizenship for those previously enslaved, as well as the reconstitution of a system involving landless blacks being pressed into service by the white plantation class into doing the same sort of menial labor as they did previously while enslaved. So too, the 14th and 15th Amendments, guaranteed to all citizens equal protection under the law, as well as the enfranchisement of the vote, respectively; but even today, these Amendments are effectively put to the sword, by the fact that blacks in so many communities are still segregated into impoverished and dilapidated neighborhoods, and denied fair opportunity as well as good schools, and often are exploited by those that are in power. So too, many blacks are consistently denied equal protection under the law, of which, we can see this played out by the overwhelming amount of crime and punishment that blacks suffer to the exclusion of the powered class, that does not. Additionally, despite the 15th Amendment, and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965, blacks are denied the vote or essentially precluded from voting for all sorts of dubious reasons, so that the powers within those jurisdictions are able to well maintain their dominance.
In all of these things, the blood and sacrifice of so many that gave their devoted best to reunite the peoples of this union under the banner of true freedom, in the conscious recognition that all are created equal, and that all are thereby entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, have instead seen that in so many ways, these brave men that gave their last dying breath to this great republic, still have not had this unfinished work, yet advanced in a manner in which their noble deaths have not been made but in vain.
While the physical battles of this war have long been over, the enduring tragedy is that the Civil war in so many respects, has not lived up to its noble and lofty ambitions as expressed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th - 15th Amendments. The South that rose up against their National Government, in defense of the institution of slavery, somehow, despite their defeat, was thereupon able to resurrect slavery in everything but its actual name -- has still not seen their ruinous mindset completely vanquished. So then, until such a time as when America becomes a country that provides opportunity, fairness, and justice in a manner in which accommodates all, and especially takes into consideration those that have been historically denied what was theirs as per its Constitution and its Declaration of Independence, then America, still battles against itself in the Civil War that has not yet ended.