From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War grew out of sectional conflict over states' rights, the Constitution, and slavery, with South Carolina seceding after Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Virginia joining the Confederacy in April 1861 after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops. The war brought death, destruction, disease, poverty, and dislocation to families and communities, and Virginia saw more battles than any other state, including the Battle of Staunton River Bridge in Charlotte County, while many dead were buried where they fell and countless families never learned the fate of loved ones. After the war, Southern women organized Ladies Memorial Associations to locate and reinter Confederate dead and to decorate their graves, and in Charlotte County H.A. Carrington Camp No. 34 Confederate Veterans led efforts that resulted in a Confederate monument being authorized in 1900, erected at the courthouse square, unveiled on August 27, 1901, later moved in 1916, and returned in 1954. Supporters associated the monument with remembrance of Confederate veterans and dead, but others viewed it as a symbol of power and oppression during an era when Black citizens faced lynching, segregation, and systematic attacks on civil rights. In Virginia, the postwar constitution of 1868 and the 14th and 15th Amendments expanded citizenship, voting rights, and public education, and Black Virginians served in public office, but white resistance persisted through Black codes, Jim Crow laws, and violence, including the murder at the courthouse of Joseph R. Holmes of Charlotte County after he had served as a Black delegate to the 1867-1868 constitutional convention. The Readjuster Party briefly advanced biracial political reform in the early 1880s, but Democrats regained control and pursued a new constitutional convention in 1901-1902 to disfranchise Black voters and many poor white voters through poll taxes and restrictive registration rules. During that convention, Charlotte County delegate David Quin Eggleston, who opposed Black suffrage and Black education, took part in the monument's dedication, and the convention ultimately broke its promise to submit the new constitution to the voters, proclaiming it law on July 10, 1902; Virginia continued enforcing poll taxes for decades until they were ruled unconstitutional in 1966, and the Virginia Constitution of 1971 finally ended them.