The United States Civil War: A Time of Change and Equality for All The United States Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, represented a time of major change around the world. This civil war that absorbed our nation during the mid 1860s not only fought for the rights of African Americans in the United States but for the rights and respects of African Americans around the globe. These times of fighting altered the lives of women living in a strongly patriarchal society by giving females a chance to live independently and successfully while their husbands were at war. American males came back from battle to find a stronger, liberated natio