The American Civil War ran from 1861-1865, putting it squarely inside grand strategy game Victoria 3's timeframe. This time around, Paradox Interactive is addressing the pivotal conflict head on, with some thoughtful new mechanics and events that deal with the history of the Civil War as it happened, while letting players decide how they want to handle affairs.
The already discussed in an earlier diary. Slave labour benefits specific pops in your nation, like Aristocrats, and these folks will be interested in seeing it persist.
However, if you begin a game as the United States, you'll have a journal entry for the Slavery Debate active from the start. This will track your progress in managing the conflict between pro-slavery groups and the growing abolitionist movement in the country.
Through the journal entry events and your own decisions as leader, you'll be choosing which national interest groups to and which to suppress. Depending on your decisions, tensions between abolitionists and pro-slavery groups could escalate faster or slower, leading to a different start date for the war. If the US winds up being too ive of slavery, it's even possible for an abolitionist bloc of northern states to secede from a "union" of slave-owning southern states, creating a wholly alternate Civil War.
We're still not sure when the Victoria 3 release date is going to be, but we're looking forward to getting our hands on this multi-layered historical sandbox when it arrives.