The Civil war is the bloodiest war in American history, and also marshaled in a new era of fighting, a more modern form of battle. Tactics such as General Sherman’s “total war” depleted and disheartened the Southern troops as well as expanded use of new technologies such as telegraphs and the railroad, eventually contributing to a Union victory. The Civil War contributed to growing divides between social classes evident by the New York Draft Riots of 1863 and the Southern cry that it was a “rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.” The war changed the status of all blacks as Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and the union army enlisted colored regiments. Taken together, theses changes represented vast alterations in American society that would reverberate for decades to come.